Ezra Klein’s ‘Facts’ About Guns and Violence Tell a Slanted Story
Soon after the Aurora mass murder, Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein waded into the fray, citing curious data to “prove” that we need more gun control to make society safer. But what he said and how he said things show he’s just another anti-rights elitist using tragedy to advance his agenda.
Klein displayed bias by claiming that not politicizing the Aurora shooting is only to halt discussing gun control:
The aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado shootings has been thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.”
His assumption is code for “the only desirable outcome here is more gun control.” Klein’s politicizing is okay; your desire to have a viable self-defense tool—and not be held accountable for a murderer’s actions—is not.
Mr. Klein, why has the civil right of self-defense become political?
Klein attempts to make six major points in his defense of gun control.
1. America is an unusually violent country.
Klein supports this assumption by citing a researcher’s graph of assault deaths in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. By conveniently ignoring most of the dataset, he made it appear that America is much more violent than any other country.
The latest United Nations homicide data show that America tied Argentina for the 50th most violent country, again using murder as an indicator. Like Klein’s graph, this dataset consists of OECD member countries, except for Tajikistan, which had a lower murder rate and didn’t affect our ranking.
Including Small Arms Survey’s firearms inventory research destroys the “guns equals violence” premise. (SAS is a pro-gun control, UN-affiliated organization.) All countries with higher murder rates—and more gun control—have much lower rates of gun ownership than America. The graph below shows a downward trend in murder rates as firearms ownership increases (more guns, less murder).
Curiously, Klein considers a country like Syria “less violent” because its murder rate is lower than ours. Government agencies provide crime data, and murders that are carried out by government are legal and therefore not crimes. So when Syrian security forces killed 44 protestors last fall—or when the UN says “more than 5,000 people have died in the uprising since March [2011]”— according to Klein, that’s not violence. But those 5,000 victims mean Syria’s murder rate was about 22 per 100,000 population in 2011, not the 3 per 100k reported by the UN.
This would tie it with Brazil for the 12th highest murder rate in the world. Acknowledging these truths would undercut Klein’s goal of politicizing a mass murder to build more reliance on government, because it’s government that murders the most people. University of Hawaii Professor Emeritus Rudy Rummel studied government-sponsored mass murder, and concluded that governments murdered 262 million people in the twentieth century. Totalitarian countries that disarm their subjects are the most violent.
(For greater detail, read chapter 6 in Four Hundred Years of Gun Control.)
2. The South is the most violent region in the United States.
Here’s one fact Klein had right. The FBI divides America into four regions: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. In 2010, the South accounted for 41.5% of all violent crimes reported to the FBI. But Klein ignores relevant issues to create a simplistic conclusion.
Between 2000-2010, the South experienced a 22.3% decline in its violent crime rate, beating the U.S. decline of 20.3%.
Also, Klein doesn’t account for illegal immigration-related crime, which has a significant impact on southern states like Texas. For example, a 15 year old was charged with nine murders after crashing a van smuggling illegal immigrants near the Mexico border. Fifteen more illegal immigrants died recently when another smuggler crashed his overloaded truck. Minus the dead driver, that’s 23 more murders in Texas this year, all related to illegal immigration.
Houston police officer Rodney Johnson and Dallas officer Brian Jackson were murdered by illegal immigrants.
In Florida, a Haitian illegal immigrant with a long rap sheet and deportation order murdered three people in their North Miami home. After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, the president put deportations on hold, so ICE put him back on the street.
Obviously, illegal immigrants commit violence in other parts of the country. But simply saying the South is more violent ignores the impact of policies created by the government Klein believes will make us safer.
I’m pissed that they turned this tragedy into a tool to push their pet projects. This is wrong not because its to soon. But because it is in bad taste. Gun control made those people easy targets not the lack of gun control.
Every tin pot dictator wanna be from Diane Fienstien (who still calls magazines clips even though its been 20 years and should have it down by now.) to The Brady Bunch sickens me. How would a ban on threaded barrels have made one bit of difference here?
Now a person that could have shot back and killed him or scared him off since he wasn’t facing a bunch of cowards would have done more than our (so-called) representatives trying to destroy a civil right. And I don’t think they want to do it for anything as nobel as the people. I think they want to make things easier for themselves and push whatever law they want without fear of the people rising up against them. Or they are just selfish and think that they are the only people that should have a gun. I have seen that a lot. Like with the cop with Glock fo’tay he is the only one trained to use it and then shoots himself with it.
This should be about those that lost their lives and justice for them. Anything else is stupid and petty and repugnant.
Not you Howard you always get a pass because you poke holes in the lies that others tell.
Thanks. Mass murders like this always make me sick to my stomach. I did NOT wade into this immediately because I knew what was coming, and after all, what can a reasoning person say that could magically make it better?
However, when people begin to twist the truth in order to promote an agenda historically proven to endanger our lives and liberty, that’s like using force to defend yourself against an attack. Self-defense is NOT violence. It is a reasoned, sacred response to protect the life and liberty that were gifted us by God. Responding to written assaults like this are in that vein. Glad you could see the difference.
Well done, Mr. Nemerov.
“I’m pissed that they turned this tragedy into a tool to push their pet projects. This is wrong not because its to soon. But because it is in bad taste.”?
“. . . . in bad taste.”? Is that all?
Dear David, what you’re missing is, I offer, that, except as might serve the purpose du jour of those concerted individuals of whom any given government is composed, the underlying predicate which shows governments as inherently violent, first and foremost.
Probably, the primary cause for this is that—apart from the founding papers—that part of any government which is composed of the people who are hired to implement the paperwork, those very individuals are mostly unskilled in productive physical work, but yet, are educated to work together toward the common good—their own common good first, not yours. AND, they will use any means, ruse, whipsaw, or otherwise, to get control of the populace so that, violence may be brought to bear, . . . just as it was in the final phase in ancient Rome, ultimately, those who are not of the dictators’ group, are to be chained to the land, or to other productive activity, . . .
A very thoughtful analysis. Unfortunately, gun control advocates are not persuaded by facts, reason or logic. The demand for more gun control is an emotional response by those who choose to ignore the root causes of violence (especially their beloved popular culture which glorifies sadism and gore…no not that Gore). Guns are regarded as evil, rather than the individual wielding them.
Actually, they only regard guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens as evil. Guns in the hands of their own hired minions are just fine.
Because those guns are pointed at everybody else, to protect them from a public which (as George Will once accurately defined their mindset) they regard as ignorant, bigoted, and vicious. Largely because the rest of us have never given them the absolute power they believe they are entitled to by virtue of their “innate superiority”.
Once only the government is armed, they believe they will be able to rule forever without let or hindrance. And create Utopia.
Everyone else who has ever tried it has created hell on earth, instead, but the “enlightened ones” believe that they are too smart to fail.
Except for the ones who think that Dante’s Inferno is exactly what the rest of us deserve. And who fully intend to enjoy subjecting the rest of us to it.
clear ether
eon
I do believe there are some fellow travelers without the strong urge to bring enlightenment to the rest of us through government coercion. Some, I think, just want to live in a country that has universal health insurance, outlaws guns in private hands and has a carbon trading scheme because they have been taught that only when those things (and others of similar ilk – you know the list)) are in place can there be a truly virtuous society that they can be proud to belong to. Efficacy is not required.
Perhaps true, but largely irrelevant. Every totalitarian movement needs its share of “useful idiots” who think they are on the fast track to Paradise. They need their votes, their money, and most of all they need them to be as condescending as possible to anyone who disagrees. “I’m more moral than you are, and why don’t you want to live in Paradise with me?”
After the leaders get what they want, those same idiots tend to realize that the “reactionaries” they were condescending to while preening themselves for their moral superiority were actually correct in their assessment of the “movement”, its leaders, and their goals.
Of course, by that time, it’s generally too late for the “reactionaries”, and the “useful idiots”.
clear ether
eon
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ~C.S. Lewis
I have an easy question to ask the gun control people. What would they rather use to defend themselves if confronted by attackers at a 2-1 ratio? A gun and some training, or a cell phone and a strongly worded response?
Then ask a criminal who he wants to assualt if 75% of everyone around is carry a gun and knows how to use it?
The Washington Post hasn’t printed an actual fact since 1988, and that one was a typo that was quickly “corrected”.
When seconds count the police will get to you right after the City Council approves a pay rise, increased vacation days, an enhanced pension and safer working conditions… oops, that last one is a real killer so “When seconds count the Coroner is only hours away”.
Klein, as a certified liberal, is not interested in “gun control”. His interest is simply in “control”. The Kleins of this world are driven nuts by the fact that you can, after jumping through reasonable hoops, go into a firearms store and walk out with a newly purchased gun. That the individual can enjoy such a liberty is simply too much. The fact that you won’t bend to the will of the liberal dogma is the issue while the issue of public safety is simply the cover. If gun control legislation is enacted and gun violence increases will the liberal re-think his position? Of course not. Controls over the behavior of the individual were enacted and that is the redeeming feature for the liberal. I have often wondered if the time will ever come when an anti-gun advocate will stand at the side of his daughter’s casket after she has been brutally raped and murdered in her home by a knife wielding home invader and tell visitors “she could have taken NRA training and protected herself with a gun but it is better that she died for the good of civility and the state”.
Britain and Australia enacted draconian gun control in 1997, both after a nutjob committed mass murder. Gun control was supposed to make people safer. 10 years later, violent crime skyrocketed, let by increases in rape in both places. By 2007, women in Australia were raped three times as often as American women; British women were raped twice as often. American women could buy guns for self-defense.
Did their governments say: “Oops, well let’s let them have their guns back”?
NO. As you say. Most importantly, the People didn’t demand change. That’s where we have to be smarter and more involved.
The giving away of a right is a permanent thing…
The issue is not guns, and maybe not control. Some people of all social levels regard owning a weapon as an indication of privileged social position. Lessers cannot have symbols of high status, sort of a sumptuary rule. How many of the self elected elite own firearms? What is the attitude elk hunters in general have toward widespread possession of hand guns? How do the ghetto gang bangers regard possession of a handgun? About the same, all the way across.
From what I’ve heard about Britain, you overlook something: No one has a chance to get elected without the support of one of the political parties, all of whom support gun control.
Most don’t, because they are convinced that firearms are Evil Incarnate. They just “own” armed bodyguards, instead.
On the principle of, it’s OK to have a professional protecting them, as a status symbol. Rulers have always had Praetorian Guards, after all.
Also, Ted Kennedy had his Private Army. One of whom once tried to tote an Uzi into the Capitol Building, and Ted told the Capitol PD security detail to “back off”. (They arrested the fool, anyway.)
If Senator I Hate Guns, 57 More Reasons Why could have his own wannabee Delta Force, most of our modern “enlightened elite’” conclude that they not only are allowed to have gun-bunnies, they must have them. Otherwise, how will anyone else tell that they are the elite’?
(Lamborghinis are so ten minutes ago, and Teslas just look silly.)
cheers
eon
every progressive liberal statist is welcome to live in CA, Chicago, New York and DC and enjoy all the gun control those places offer.
We’ll take the rest of the country.
And we have a winner!!! ding, ding, ding
“So when Syrian security forces killed 44 protestors last fall—or when the UN says “more than 5,000 people have died in the uprising since March [2011]”— according to Klein, that’s not violence.”
Journ-O-listas like Klein view government murder as a feature, not a bug.
Indeed. If that population were well armed, perhaps they might have had a chance to throw off the tyrannical gov’t they are forced to live under.
It cuts both ways though. The so-called rebels in Syria may end up being worse that Assad’s government. Every clip I’ve seen showing the rebels in action include the words “Allahu Akbar!”, suggesting that they are all Islamists. How has that worked out in Iran since 1979?
How would you feel about the various American communist parties or the Black Panther Party being armed to the teeth?
How would you feel about the various American communist parties or the Black Panther Party being armed to the teeth?
There are no laws on the books at present to prevent the American Communist Party or the New Black Panthers from being “armed to the teeth”. Members of those groups have the same constitutional rights as other Americans.
“How would you feel about the various American communist parties or the Black Panther Party being armed to the teeth?”
They are and that is why I must be allowed, legally, to own my weapons.
What I ask you is why is it you never see LEOs going into ghettos or black and brown neighborhoods where gangs rule, and arrest and disarm the gangs? How come we allow MS13 to live in America?
Gun control is about the leftist progs accumulating all power and the only way they can do that is by disarming, if you will, white, America loving citizens. Blacks and browns are merely their muscle so they allow them to have their guns.
There is a difference between a discussion and a Mukden, Gulf of Tonkin or Sudeten. All 3 could be encompassed in a new word – “Zimmermaned.” They all “prove” a thing so another phantom can be chased. Now, we’ve been “Aurora-ed” to “prove” a trend and before that “Columbined.”
Exception, meet rule. Reality will be arriving shortly.
Journalists no longer give a damn about the truth; they only care about plausibility.
For example, listen to Juan Williams explaining how Prez Barack Hussein has cut taxes for the middle class several times. Sounds plausible. Unless you step up to a whiteboard and do a flow chart diagramming the salient facts that most of the cuts are temporary, which historically means they’ll have no effect on hiring. And that some of the cuts are actually tax credits (not rate cuts), and worse they’re wrapped in regulatory packages so confusing and time consuming that claiming them is unfeasible because it’d cost more to apply than the money you’d get. And that the big cuts are made on a type of tax that won’t produce capital formation and job creation, such as the social security payroll tax, which by the way further undermines the fiscal viability of that gigantic program.
But what Juan says is plausible. He’s too busy yapping to go through these boring facts, the examination of which would be time consuming, confusing and make for bad TV. And the average person watching the TV is even less inclined to go to the whiteboard to figure things out.
This is how fake facts are sold, and fictive realities built and maintained.
***
Exception, meet rule. Reality will be arriving shortly.
A nice thought, Fail, but likelihood of reality arriving is remote. Maybe after the election, as with so many other critical things. That way the voters won’t be bothered with confusing and troubling facts. After all, elections are supposed to be fun.
What qualifies Klein to be taken seriously anywhere outside the self-referential echo chamber in which he opines?
Best I can tell, he went from college to full-time punditry, where he dilligently confirms the unthinking prejudices and childlike worldview of those who hold him in such high regard.
Do we really need to have the world explained to us by liberal arts majors who can’t read a balance sheet, know next to nothing about history or science, and have precious little in the way of life experiences which are often the source of wisdom and insight? People who can’t change a tire or stop a running toilet have no business formulating public policy.
We’ve already got way too many of them busy running the ship of state aground.
Klein is just like Obama. He’s never done a darn thing…. except talk smart.
Well put Sir, well put!
Hear! Hear!
The gun control group will not be any happier in the future as we develop laser weapons and who knows what else to replace bullets and cartridges. People are entitled to protect themselves.
A citation backing up the statement “There are 100 million gun owners of voting age” would be useful. Where did that stat come from?
Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf
Small Arms Production in the United States
National Shooting Sports Foundation, 2008
U.S. Firearms Industry Today
http://www.shootingindustry.com/Firearmsreport10.pdf
ATF Reports
http://www.atf.gov/statistics/
United States International Trade Commission
(requires setting up account)
Then you’ll have to assemble the data into a spreadsheet. Manufacturing plus imports minus exports. You can double check this trend against the FBI NICS background check report. You’ll find that NICS checks are far greater than the estimated number of firearms purchased, so 100M may be conservative.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics
Since we don’t have registration (thank God) these provide accepted indicators of relative civilian purchasing activity. I hope you see that trying to place all that in the article would have made it tedious beyond readability.
Libs love anecdotal. Here for them especially is one of those, an incident to count in the numbers for a conservative, a world-shaking single incident for a Demunist:
http://www.abc4.com/content/about_4/bios/story/conceal-and-carry-stabbing-salt-lake-city-smiths/NDNrL1gxeE2rsRhrWCM9dQ.cspx
Here’s how antis can spin it.
“Nobody died, so we don’t know how many lives were saved.” (sounds plausible, but displays antis’ fascination with death)
“He didn’t use the gun, merely displayed it. So it’s not a defensive gun use. Had he used it, we still don’t know how many innocent bystanders he would have shot.” (Despite the dearth of stories where defenders shot bystanders.)
Ad nauseum.
Right on the money.
Funny how a bank robber can “use” a gun to rob a bank without firing a shot, yet an honest citizen cannot “use” a firearm for defense unless he kills someone.
Oh, and when I checked my results against the U.S. estimate provided by Small Arms Survey, I found they were very close. That’s why I’m comfortable with my formulae.
The Gallup ole showing that gun ownership has declined is pure BS.
How many Gun Owners answer poles of any sort? Not many.
How many Gun Owners would tell the truth about owning guns to some polester?
Almost none.
The suprise is not that the pole says that Gun Ownership has declined but that it says that it declined only 3 percent!
+1
I would be as likely to respond honestly to the questions “do you own guns, do you have firearms in your home?” as I would to “do you leave large amounts of cash lying about the house?”
This is yet another attempt by the rabid anti gun crowd to marginalize what is actually a majority belief, that an armed citizenry is good for this country.
A few years back, I had to take my daughter (then 2) in for a physical for insurance reasons (Usually we stay away from doctor types, unless there is a need, which is rare). Since we didn’t have a regular dr. and were going to have to pay out of pocket, we used the county health department (this is in Silicon Valley, so not the most pro-gun place on the planet). The dr. was going down a checklist of questions to ask the parent. She had already obviously determined that a. My kid was beyond fine, and b. I was not the sort of parent she usually dealt with. She got to the (kinda sheepish) “I have to ask this: Do you have guns in the home?” question, and my response was “You may have to ask that, but I don’t have to answer”. And that was the end of that.
A few months ago I saw an informal poll on a pro-gun blog asking if you would tell the truth or lie were a pollster to ask you if you owned guns. The results were very telling. Now, I realize that the sample set was biased, but somewhere around 90% of respondents said that they would tell the pollster that they did not own any guns, even though they did.
The reasoning for most was that they don’t know who these people are or what their political motivations are. They don’t want to be put on a list that can later be used if confiscation became a real possibility.
Maybe they’re being prudent and maybe they’re being paranoid. The point is, though, when you see stats indicating gun ownership, it’s very likely that they are significantly under-reporting actual ownership.
Many of my associates and mentors discuss sampling error in surveys for the reason you state. I tried to go with an expert concensus and stay on the more conservative side of estimates. Considering the response I’ve seen as a Women on Target instructor, and all the stories I’ve read in the last 5-6 years from MSM and local media sources, plus the growth in women’s concealed carry licenses, it’s reasonable to assume 100M gun owners is conservative, and that’s scaring the anti-rights feudalists. Much of this growth is women, the demographic that gave Clinton his moment of power (Million Mom March). When women shooters began organizing (Second Amendment Sisters, Liberty Belles, etc) the Million Mommies died, the media lost their darling sales schtick for promoting gun control, and anti-rights legislation hit a wall, except for places like California.
Is there any data on how women entering the military may be helping to make more women comfortable with guns?
Exactly and for the same reason.
It usually takes less than a minute to determine what the pollers are actually looking for.
I have no qualms about lying to them.
Would they report you for answering honestly about gun related issues, I’m not willing to find out.
In the era of 0bama and the socialist tyranny is it paranoid?
Every time a pollster calls, I hang up. I neither know nor care who they are working for. It’s enough for me to know that their poll will say whatever the group paying for same wants to hear.
Which means anything I say will most likely be ignored, or else after the pollster tries to force me (by “push” questioning) to say what they want to hear, and I don’t play along, they hang up on me.
As the old saying goes, Fox Tango Sierra. I have more important things to do.
clear ether
eon
Everywhere that you said “pole” (or “ole”), you SHOULD have said “poll”. The two words sound the same but the differences are vast.
My thoughts exactly! I know I would never let some lib poll taker know about what I own. I’m not looking to be taxed on my firearms or have them confiscated.
Howard,
I am curious about your stat that gun ownership grew from 30 to 40% of the voting population. On that stat you have a link to a census .pdf, but after a quick perusal, I can’t find that data in there. Do you have a more specific cite? I’d love to have that data close at hand, cause I hear that stat that gun ownership is declining quite regularly, but it just doesn’t comport with ATF sales data nor my anecdotal experience.
The NRA and other sources agree that ownership has grown to about 100M. Since you have to be voting age to buy a gun, that means that about 100M gun owners can vote. (If you’re a criminal, you can’t vote or own a gun, according to the law.)
The Census data shows there’s about 234.6M people of voting age as of 2010. When I think about it, many of these cannot vote. This would include legal aliens and criminals age 18+. May even include illegal aliens. So my estimate is conservative. Klein knows this truth, and can’t stomach the idea that we control elections. That’s why gun control is not popular among the pols who want to get reelected.
For the rest of your answer, see my response to #11.
You have to be 18 to buy a pistol. I beleive you have to be 12 to own a rifle in Florida. Might be a little older, but…
Must be 18 or older to buy long gun, too. You can transfer, say, to your son.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_the_United_States
But you have a point. Subtract under 18 gun ‘owners’ and over 18 felons and immigrants. Ends at the estimate I stated.
“5. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.”
Chicago has some of the toughest gun control laws in the country. How’s that been working out for them lately? Criminals and insane people will always be able to get their hands on guns. Crime is going way up in England too, a country that has some of the harshest gun control laws in the world. Doesn’t seem to be working out too well for them, either. High crime rates may have more to do with poor economies and high unemployment. Guns used in crimes are only a symptom of a much larger socio-economic problem, something people in the gun control crowd always refuse to acknowledge. Unless they start to admit WHY people commit cirmes, we will not be able to have an honest debate about gun ownership.
A shooting like Aurora happens about once every 3-5 years. Together, DC and Chicago, our paragons of gun control, match or exceed the casualty count every week.
I recently saw a commenter on another blog recommend we use units of “Chicago weekends” to describe the number of casualties in a mass shooting. Looking at recent headlines from the Windy City, it appears that Chicago averages around 6 dead and 30 wounded from gun violence each weekend (these numbers are not based on scientific research, actual values may vary). So it could be said that the Aurora shooting resulted in roughly two Chicago weekends worth of casualties.
I thought it was a given: When Mr. Klein opens his mouth, he’s already lying…
If you look at data from WHO, you will see that “gun free” Japan has a higher suicide rate than “gun crazed” USA or Switzerland.
In fact, Japan’s suicide rate is higher than the combined suicide (all mechanisms) and homicide (all mechanisms) rates in the United States.
ECS
In the latest UN study I have, America ranked 41st (out of 89) in the world for suicide rate. All 40 countries with higher suicide rates have far more gun control and lower gun ownership rates. (As you noted.)Japan ranked 6th. 1-3 were Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia. Try buying a gun in Russia (legally).
Avoided in particular is gun violence statistics in rural areas. Gun ownership tends to be close to %100 in the country, but most of my relatives that live in the sticks don’t lock their doors at night or even when they leave the house.
One will search in vain for Ezra’s email address. He should be told that the solution to all crime is this law: “Criminals must announce their intentions, in person, verbally, no less that 30 minutes before committing any crime.” What do you mean, it won’t work…? Why not?
ezra.klein@gmail.com is from WaPo site.
Ezra seems to be making a career out of manipulating statistics to support false conclusions. He really does seem to think that he is entitled to his own facts.
The statistic the gun control nuts will always avoid is this; From the CDC Mortality DB, 2009: Firearm homicide (victimization) rates by race:
Non-hispanic white (200 million) 1.4/100k
Asian (17 million) 1.3/100k
Hispanic: (48 million) 6/100k
Black: (38 million) 16/100k.
They will also scream about children accidentally shooting themselves. While they are tragic and I don’t mean to speak lightly of them or dismiss them, the numbers for age 0-16 are:
70 out of a total population of 70 milllion. 1 in a million. Drop the age group to 0-10 and it is 30 out of 46 million. Yet the likes of David Frum will claim this is a tragedy waiting to happen. Accidental drowning deaths in the 0-16 age group? 800 out of 70 million. Accidental falls. 112. Poisoning 230. Suffocation 1125 (90% in the 0-3)
So just in those categories, out of those 2337 accidental deaths of children age 0-16, 3% were from firearms. And I did not even include 2450 “transportation related”, which includes 622 bike/pedestrian deaths. So, again, while I am not making light of this, accidental shootings of children ranks at the very bottom of causes of accidental deaths. If you take all causes of accidental death, total 5469, they account for 1%.
Until the mid 60′s, criminal activity by blacks was minimal. White racists did commit criminal acts against blacks, and those were not counted as crimes of violence, so the actual victimization level is not known with any certainty.
Mid 60′s, Malcolm X said that laws were made by whitey, for whitey, so blacks should ignore the laws.
The average crimimal goes where he is comfortable to commit his crimes, so crime by blacks against other blacks shot up. (Malcolm X had in mind victimizing whites, but it did not work that way.)
Until the mid 60′s, criminal activity by blacks was minimal.
I bet you also believe that a fat man in a red suit leaves presents for you at Christmas.
White racists did commit criminal acts against blacks, and those were not counted as crimes of violence.
You’re a kook. Another fine product of the leftist brain-washing system which is American education.
Try “grandson of a serial killer who, along with a local Deputy Sheriff, went out ‘hunting coons’ every weekend”. And bragged about it.
Most of the increase in crime in the US during the 60′s was by black criminals, not whites, not hispanics, and few other minorities were around back then. I hold Malcolm X, a darling of the Left you accuse me of being brainwashed by, as responsible for a good part of the increase in crime that I witnessed in the US.
How can a crime rate increase if it was not less to start with, anyhow?
“Please, my mind is made up; don’t confuse me with facts.”
Yes, Ezra, we’re talking about you.
“The graph below shows a downward trend in murder rates as firearms ownership increases (more guns, less murder).”
I support your pro gun rights argument, but the conclusions you draw from that graph are really lame. I just dont see any trend, I just see a bunch of widely scattered data points, and a bunch of points all at the bottom low crime end. I also see plenty of nations with both low gun ownership and low crime, and high gun ownership and high crime, with litle to no readily apparent tend. Any good statistician or scientist would laugh your red line trend off the page. I dont know what numerical/graphical analysis tool you used to draw your neat red line, but it looks highly suspect. I susect any trent you claim is not stastically significant, and is swamped out by too much scatter. all that graph shows to me is there is no meaningful corelation at all between gun ownership and violence.
The rest of your article is good, but if you want to use that graph and your redline “trend” again you had better consult somebody with statistical or scientific training to see if they agree with your “trend”.
Assumption as to what somebody with more statistics training might conclude is not very scientific, either. Complaints are more valuable if you offer another alternative. However, since Spearman’s Rho on this was -0.10 (weak as you note), it still derogates any thesis that more guns means more murder. And there’s that nagging weak more guns, less murder trend…
Also, while I occasionally make a typo, here’s one clause you wrote: “I susect any trent you claim is not stastically significant…” (italics added) Credibility, as you note, is hard to gain and easy to lose.
Mr. Nemerov
I applaud you and your effort at presenting legitimate data in order to promote the truth. I have noticed a trend over the last 2 to 3 years concerning posted comments on gun control articles on various media sites. While I have not gathered statistical data to be able to prove it, I believe I have observed the opinion shifting away from screams for more gun control and towards understanding the reality shown by the data. It is my theory that increased access to information has lead to this. We can access articles such as yours and actually go to the sources cited to corroborate the legitimate data and not be mislead by the manipulated or made up data. This intentional creation of misleading data for furthering of political agendas is sickening. Thank you for your work.
The gun control crowd was well skilled at swamping all available news outlets with the gun control message so those of us who opposed additional gun laws did not have a chance to get a word in edgewise. Also, people are not inclined to speak up if they think they have an unpopular, minority position.
We gained our voices with the internet.
That’s what happened in Britain after Dunblane and all that. It reached the point where one Tory MP who had come under fire for criticising the demand for civilian ownership of handgyns to be banned made this comment in parliament: “I now realise whay it was like to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany”. Just change the Sun for Der Stürmer and the Sun’s editor fro Julius Streicher(who duly swung at a rope’s end for his crimes in WW2).
English Warning To Americans: DONT GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYwL3GLaryk
Holder Outlines How To Change Public Opinion On Guns
http://content.bitsontherun.com/previews/vvy0FSoM-svqBtzyp
Slogging through the data also shows that hate crimes are more prevalent in states with lower levels of gun ownership.
http://hogewash.com/2011/10/28/hate-crimes-vs-gun-ownership/
Amazing! That’s excellent and I’ll have to explore that. The FBI offers hate crime data. It’s another data point reinforcing the fact that American gun control has historically been used as a tool of racist oppression. I write about that in Chapter 1 of my book 400 Years of Gun Control.
One caution. He combined 2001 BRFSS with 2009 FBI crime data. That’s an apples-oranges mix assuming no significant reordering of state ownership ranking after 8 years. Better to use 2001 hate crime data and make it a proper cross-sectional analysis. So far, it appears CDC stopped including firearms ownership after 2002, though 2004 is a possibility.
While the data used to generate the graphs are from different years (It’s what I had readily available late one night), I believe that the general shape of the plots would hold up with better synchronization do the data sets. Especially at the extreme ends of the plot. Gun ownership rates have changed much in DC, for instance, and hate crime rate are soaring in Idaho.
If you can pull together better data, I would like to see the plots.
One of these days, I’ll learn to type well.
That sentence should read “aren’t soaring in Idaho.”
Correcting the correction …
“… hate crime rates aren’t soaring in Idaho.”
I need another cup of coffee.
Klein seems to drink from Bloomberg’s Castalian Spring: Puff yourself up, sound important, and say exactly what you want people to believe. Get caught up in your own narrative to the degree that you don’t blush when you say it.
Fortunately he is a writer to we can’t see him. I believe his job is such that all shipments or crackers to him and his helpers would be much appreciated.
The South is the most violent region in the United States.
That’s an odd thing for Klein to say. Not that it isn’t true, but all of his other talking points are arguments for more gun control. That the South is the most violent region in the US does not lead to any obvious conclusions with respect to gun control, or any other subject.
What Klein does not mention is that the rate of violence in the US is tied pretty closely to the proportion of young black males in the population. The South has an exceptionally large black population, and a correspondingly high rate of violence. Klein’s omission of this fact is even more odd because Kieran Healy, linked to and cited by Klein, does mention it.
America is not a more violent place than Europe because of its gun laws. America is a more violent places than Europe because of its different demographics. The homicide rate among white non-Hispanic Americans is just a little higher that that of white Europeans. The homicide rate among Hispanic and black Americans is four to ten times higher than that among whites.
Per the CDC -
During 1999–2002, among persons aged 10–19 years, the homicide rate for blacks was estimated to be 17.8 per 100,000 population, a rate 10 times that of whites (1.8 per 100,000) and higher than the rates reported for American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) (6.0 per 100,000), Asian/Pacific Islanders (A/PIs) (2.9 per 100,000), and Hispanics (8.0 per 100,000)
Excellent point. Just needs an analysis of census data by state. I’ve got the raw data in an Excel workbook already, but focused on CDC homicide rates.
What’s the homicide rate among the young in the poor and often alienated third world immigrant communities in Europe and how does it compare with the rate among young American blacks and Hispanics?
I suspect reckless behavior among young males is universal. I can’t recall the source but I few years back I recall reading that if you look at deaths from all causes other than disease there wasn’t that much difference in the total rates for young American males across racial and income classes. Poor blacks and Hispanic youth certainly are more likely to become murder victims. On the other hand more affluent young males drive cars into bridge abutments, ski into trees or succumb to suicide at higher levels than the poor.
I can’t recall the source but I few years back I recall reading that if you look at deaths from all causes other than disease there wasn’t that much difference in the total rates for young American males across racial and income classes.
This is false. Please see the CDC data I linked to. There is a huge difference in murder rates across racial lines in America.
I suspect reckless behavior among young males is universal.
I don’t have any data for “reckless behavior”. The data for murder shows that it is far from being “universal”.
Ezra Klein is one of ten Poster Children propagandist for the Marxist Socialist Agenda. I wish these anti-american traitors who hate the constitution just f–cking leave! I am sick and tired of their lies and manipulation of the mindless masses.
Klein is just a little insignificant puppet boy spewing his rhetoric on behalf of the progressives who will stop at nothing to disarm the population so they can exercise their freewill of mass eradication of conservative minded citizens. There is no other way to look at it! The progressives that have hijacked this country have been very tactful in their coup. They control the money supply, the information in the MSM, all 3 branches of the government and now they get to control our Healthcare.
For those who are considering letting them take your guns, remember these very powerful individuals are ALL DEPOPULATIONIST! From Rockefeller to Bill Gates. read for yourself while you still can read freely on the net.
I noticed the exterminationist attitude of the gun grabbers a long time ago. I’m thinking that our best approach for saving ourselves from them might be to actually trick them into making their big move before they have succeeded in disarming us. That means we must make as big a stink in society as we can, speaking our minds, expressing our opinions, casting our aspersions on the communistic idiocy.
“Speaking in code”, a favorite trope of the left. Funny, but the code never seems to work and is always exposed. Could it be their paranoia?
Holder Outlines How To Change Public Opinion On Guns
http://content.bitsontherun.com/previews/vvy0FSoM-svqBtzyp
English Warning To Americans: DONT GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYwL3GLaryk
Ezra Klein is a mere boy. In times past someone his age would have been a man for a number of years, but in today’s infantilized society, where a 26 or 28-year-old can still be on Mommy and Daddy’s health insurance and still be living in their old room at home, Klein is still a boy. He even has a boy haircut. He thinks like a boy, as best dramatized by his spectacularly stupid remarks about the Constitution being “more than a hundred years old.”
For the reasons I just stated above, no one in their right mind should pay any attention to anything that this sniveling ninnypants has to say. I bet the whining little boob still gets carded.
RangeBag: M1 Garand and Obama’s Historic Rifle Ban
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4u0xUsxKEMfeature=player_embedded#!
Nobody manipulates data like a gun grabber. I confronted that argument about the south’s gun crime once, and when I went out and did the research, it was primarily in urban areas and among criminals that skewed the stat for the rest of the state. Places like New Orleans and Houston give Louisiana and Texas an undeserved rap if you go by state. And why wouldn’t you go by state, if you furthers you position. Accurately detailing the truth is just to inconvenient.
The suicide statistic has long been included in any anti-gun accounting. They love to use it, despite its obvious dishonesty.
Obama’s mentor and bomb-making terrorist buddy Bill Ayers and his 1970′s Weather Underground co-conspirators, in the presence of an undercover FBI agent, discussed murdering 25 million Americans they estimated would resist assimilation into their Communist Borg Collective once they gained power. They are closer than Ayers, Dohrn, Davis, Dunham, & Obama ever dreamed to turning America into the Marxist shithole they call Utopia.
On the whole, I like the article. However, while I have nothing but contempt for Klein, and wholly support the right to bear arms, I find this part disturbing:
“Klein cited surveys by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and Gallup as evidence that gun ownership is declining in America.
NORC received $300,000 from the Joyce Foundation in 2011. Joyce also gave the Violence Policy Center $500,000, and VPC is proven to manipulate data to advance their agenda. Joyce’s “gun violence” grantees are all demonstrably committed to gun control.”
This argument is guilt by association, and should be left to the libs. Nothing you say impugns NORC’s surveys, directly. They may or may not be faulty. But it tells us nothing to say that VPC is dishonest, and also funded by NORC.
The inclusion of this passage weakens the article.
Little Ezra Klein and “facts” are diametrically opposed. I’ll take what Little Ezra says and head in the opposite direction.
Participation in our Women On Target Clinics is booming! We conduct them Quarterly (Jan., April, July, and Oct.) and I’m currently taking reservations for April 2013! I could fill them monthly. We have been presenting them since April 2006 and THEY ARE ALL FULL! We furnish all the firearms, ammunition, targets, eye and hearing protection as well as Volunteer Mentor/Coaches in each discipline for each participant. The youngest participant was 10 and the oldest are Grandmothers! Participants shoot Handguns, Rifles and Shotguns at clay pigeons. Funding via Grants from the NRA Foundation with a small fee ($25.00) from the participants. Nothing but smiles and Thank you’s at the end.
I wasn’t the 2nd amendment that won WWII, baby.
Look Ma, I found the new KKK site. When is our next gun rally? I do not read good so please send a picture map.
Look, ezra klein is a vile, radical, lying, HYPOCRITICAL, ultraliberal, left-wing extremist propagandist whackjob creep, who obviously hates America and hates the fact we have a Second Amendment in this country!!! Too bad for him, what a loathsome, odious jerk.
Another point- The 15 year old illegal in the van and the driver of the truck were charged with murder for traffic accidents, not acts of violence. While the may technically be guilty of murder under the law, it has nothing to do with the rate of violence in the country. How many more “murders” counted are the result of such accidents?
FBI has statistics on firearm deaths. This removes murders that do not involve firearms from the equation. Then you can adjust the number because half of all firearm deaths tend to be suicides.
FBI shows 8775 firearm related deaths (remember half are suicides) in 2011. In 1993, that number was over 17,000. In 1993, background checks were instituted. The total number of deaths from handguns dropped quickly until about 2000. It began to slowly creep up until 2004 before dropping again. The assault weapons ban ran from 1994-2004 when it expired. The use of firearms other than handguns has been gradually decreasing since 1993.
Ezra Klein is high if he believes we have a gun problem in America in 2012. Since the expiration of the AW ban, fiream deaths have decreased despite increasing during the last few years of the ban. Background checks and concealed carry have cut firearms deaths in half since 1993. As I state here http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2012/07/solvingthe-wrong-problem-after-aurora.html let’s keep guns out of the hands of the bad people and get them into the hands of good people.
Look at the “manipulate data” link under point 3. This guy cites himself! Nice circular reference.
If I say “that’s dumb” in this thread and then cite my comment somewhere else, does that make it fact? What a joke!
SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2012 Homeland Security and Military Vehicles – Pictures I Captured while in Kentucky
http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2012/07/homeland-security-and-military-vehicles.html
“4. More guns tend to mean more homicide.
Klein cited the Harvard School of Public Health—another Joyce Foundation grantee—which published research concluding that more guns equal more murder.”
Funny, they didn’t refer to another Harvard study, for obvious reasons I’m sure.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf