Guns are cool, stats are tedious
Charley on the MTA at BlueMassGroup is beating his chest over a new study from Harvard School of Public Health that may suggest that there may be a link between gun ownership and homicide rates. Writes Charley:
Turns out states with more guns at home have, like, more homicides. Who woulda thunk it?
And then he quotes an article based on the press release for the study:
For instance, in Oregon, 40 percent of households have guns, and more than half of the homes in Alabama own guns. Compare that with Massachusetts, where some 12 to 13 percent of households reported firearm ownership.
I supppose one is meant to think that Oregon had a higher murder rate than Massachusetts in 2001 – 2003, the years the study cover.
These are the homicide rates in Oregon and Massachusetts for the relevant years
| 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | |
| OR | 2.4 | 2.0 | 1.9 |
| MA | 2.3 | 2.7 | 2.2 |
As the study’s abstract puts it:
Although causal inference is not warranted on the basis of the present study alone, our findings suggest that the household may be an important source of firearms used to kill men, women and children in the United States.
The “causal inference is not warranted” part did not make it into the press release. Do read the abstract to get an idea of how pretzelized the study had to get to reach its meager conclusion.
Then again, maybe what the study is trying to say in a cowardly way is that murder rates for whites is higher in states with high gun ownership rates than in those with low rates. Or at least in some states. But then you have to duck the issue that whites in different parts of the United States are of different ethnicities and therefore theoretically may have different behaviors anyway. Either way, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to own a bunch of guns (handguns, rifles, shotguns) just because some meth-cooking white douchebag on the other side of town settles his business disputes by use of a sawed-off shotgun.
Washingtonpost.com has a table that shows gun-ownership rates per household in the 50 states and District of Columbia. If I find the time later today I shall attempt to do something interesting with that.
