Data comparing US gun culture with the world | Hacker News Reader

Data comparing US gun culture with the world

cnn.com

6 pointsjahnu9 comments

Even before clicking on the story, I knew there would be a "gun-related homicide" vs. "gun ownership" graph, and not an "all homicide" vs. "gun ownership" graph. Do we want to minimize all homicide, or only gun homicide, and don't care about people killed by other means? (It goes without saying that any human right that increases homicide rate should be abolished /s)

The missing data: https://diegobasch.com/homicides-vs-gun-ownership

And more on typical data manipulation in gun debates: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-...

Almost a third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns. However, multiple studies show that where people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more frequent

This is frustrating because it dangles the question 'is there less crime where there is very high gun ownership' but then follows with the answer to a different question, 'do more guns lead to more gun deaths'.

What would be helpful is a comparison of US's crime levels in the presence of high gun ownership with all other countries. From there we could add on other mitigating factors to compare.

Also, comparing gun violence with gun ownership is still just examining a single facet. I'd like to see mass-shootings compared with non-gun mass murders. I'd like to see guns deaths compared with other weapons.

It is on the table I could become anti-gun. The pro-gun movement is nearly obnoxious enough to drive me there on it's own. However, I need certain info, if I'm going to take an anti-gun position with conviction.

disclaimers: gun agnostic, US

the answer is so obvious though... It beggars belief that people can't see it.

Less guns -> Less crime

That might well be the case - however a stance w/o reliable indicators doesn't work for me.

There is logic, and there is statistical inference. The latter might require empirical indicators and analysis; the former does not.

This is a matter of logic, not statistics.

Except banning guns =/= less guns. All you do is take them away from the responsible users who would be the only ones adhering to the law.

er... it does...

Source: the UK

Not in America for multiple reasons from historical reasons (centuries of people owning guns) to logistics like the country being too large to control gun trafficking because we can't control the southern border and people just cross over, so trafficking is guaranteed.

Regarding mass shootings, Zeynep Tufekci once led a charge for news orgs to stop auto-include the shooters' name, when covering an event.

While brilliant, I feel that's only part of a solution. I believe years of very loud, very frequent shooting coverage are drumming siren-calls to the next shooters.

We've never tried treating shootings as local events (arguably they are) while muting and minimizing the coverage of the event and yearly memorials.

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