Assault hammers and standard capacity clubs kill more people per year than rifles.
I know I talked about this in the past, but Brietbart brought it up again.
You can check out the FBI crime stats – HERE
Sure the “Other guns or type not stated” numbers might add to the rifles column… but if it wasn’t a rifle, shotgun, or handgun what could the “other” be? Zip guns I guess… or punt guns… I’m sure there are lots of punt gun murders daily, those things are killing machines.
This is all using the same unbiased FBI crime stats that advanced v-neck guy talked about a couple days ago.
Thoughts?
Hat tip: Brad
Comments
6 responses to “FBI Says Rifles Are Safer Than Clubs And Hammers”
If I put nails on my baseball bat does it make it an ASSAULT BAT!!!? The punks in my neighborhood can’t afford a gun but after a few gun bans I might have to worry about fighting like a gladiator outside my own home.
No, you have to mount a whiff surpressor and a bungee cord to assist you in rapid reset; then it is an assault bat.
Only if its more than 10 nails
Of course the facts will be ignored by legislators because they need to “Do Something.”
looking at the FBI data…. Sniper Attack…. with a pistol? I guess a RedHawk with a big ass scope maybe?
As for facts…I’ve personally done a lot of number crunching, having run into some number tossing gun control people in online comments. I have one set I think fairly well nails the problem and sets them up to fail if they want to claim crime, safety, murder, or whatever.
First, get the 2011 murder rates for each state from the FBI UCR, Table 4.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-4
Throw that in a spreadsheet and sort them from lowest to highest murder rate.
Then go to the Brady site and get their state rankings:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/stateleg/scorecard/2011/2011_Brady_Campaign_State_Scorecard_Rankings.pdf
and put the Brady Rank next to the Murder Rate for each state.
Looking at a chart which plots the Brady Rank against the Murder Rate, there is no trend. The points are all over the place. Looking at the numbers themselves, the 10 states tied at 39th by Brady Rank have murder rates from 2.5 to 7.5 per 100,000. For comparison, the national average is 4.71. The data also shows that California, rated best for gun control, has a murder rate of 4.8, more than double of worst rated Utah’s 1.9.
In order to have easier numbers to compare I used the murder rate from the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011 to rank each state by murder rate from 1, lowest murder rate, to 50, highest murder rate.
That gets the below data. I have it sorted from best to worst murder rank. Ties were assigned the same Rank, the highest (worst) number for that set, because that’s how the Brady’s did it. Take a look over it. I’ll wait.
State Brady Rank Murder Rank
Hawaii 6 1
Rhode Island 8 4
New Hampshire 27 4
Vermont 27 4
Minnesota 17 5
Iowa 25 6
Utah 50 7
Maine 25 8
Oregon 15 9
Idaho 47 10
Washington 15 12
Wisconsin 41 12
South Dakota 39 13
Massachusetts 3 15
Montana 47 15
Colorado 15 16
Wyoming 39 17
Kentucky 47 19
North Dakota 47 19
Connecticut 5 21
Nebraska 29 21
Virginia 19 22
Kansas 39 23
New York 4 25
Alaska 50 25
New Jersey 2 27
West Virginia 39 27
Ohio 25 29
Texas 39 29
Delaware 18 30
California 1 32
Indiana 39 32
Pennsylvania 10 33
Nevada 29 35
Florida 41 35
North Carolina 12 36
Arkansas 39 38
Oklahoma 47 38
Illinois 9 40
Georgia 22 40
Tennessee 22 41
Missouri 39 42
Michigan 11 44
Arizona 50 44
Alabama 17 45
Maryland 7 47
South Carolina 22 47
New Mexico 39 48
Mississippi 39 49
Louisiana 47 50
If gun control works, better gun control should mean less murder. In that case, the Brady Rank and the Murder rank should be similar. This would be seen in the chart as the dots following some sort of line. Ideally, low Brady Rank (indicating “good” gun laws) would also have low Murder Rank (meaning low murder rate). If that were the case, we would see a line starting in the lower left and sloping upwards to the upper right of the chart. That just isn’t what the data shows. Number one Brady state California is 32nd for murder rate. Dead last Brady state Utah is seventh best in the nation for murder rate. The Brady Rank and Murder Rank just don’t match up.
If gun control works, it should save lives and reduce crime. If anyone can reliably evaluate a state’s gun control, The Brady Campaign should be able to. If anyone can provide useful murder rates, the FBI should be able to. Using what should be reliable numbers, a state’s gun control doesn’t seem to have any relation to murder rate.
If it doesn’t reduce murder, should anyone be seriously considering gun control?
I don’t know if gun control has worked for other countries or other times, but I think comparing gun control ranks and murder rates shows gun control doesn’t work now, here.
In the interest of being thorough, I don’t actually find the numbers dispositive. My decision is based on the fact that my life has value and I have the right to defend my life from assault. Self-defense is a right supported even by Ghandi. With the right to self-defense comes a right to the tools to defend myself. There is no reason to deny me the best tools for my family and myself. The best tools for stopping violent criminals are the ones police and military use, which is why they use them. I deserve the best tools to defend myself and my family from assault, be it a lone criminal, gang, mob, riot, invading army, or domestic tyranny, now or in the future, real or potential.
However, I frequently see numbers used to support gun control so it seemed worthwhile to dispute those numbers in the simplest way I could conceive. If gun control works at all like I see claimed, there should be at least some effect on murder rates. There is none. There is not even a large enough effect directly on firearms murders to show up in the overall murder rate. I mention this because if gun control even just affected gun murders, given the percentage of murders committed with guns, it should be apparent in the overall murder rate. Again, it is not.
In the event anyone finds this useful, feel free to use it. Take the steps yourself and claim it as your own, whatever. I’m going to start spreading this about because I think it refutes their number claims by using their own numbers. And, I haven’t seen anyone else do it quite this way, but it seems to make sense.