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Gifford’s Goof — 8 Comments

  1. Your breakdown on firearms deaths, suicides, justifiable homicides, felony murders and finally real murders – the kind we all think or worry about, is a great analysis that helps focus on the real issues as a result.

    One thing to add to the suicide discussion, that while regrettable, suicides are not a threat to the public which makes them categorically outside the realm of interest in any crime prevention analysis.

    Further, in my discussions with gun control advocates, they are so in need of including those numbers in their statistics because, when depending on how you winnow down the numbers, finding that there are likely only 5000 deaths by gun that really count, not 33,000 or whatever they try to use, they don’t have a case in the eyes of most rational people. They know this and will go to lengths to avoid this embarrassment.

  2. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
    In 2016, the organization merged with Americans for Responsible Solutions, led by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Navy combat veteran and retired NASA astronaut Captain Mark Kelly. In 2017, the organization changed its name to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
    Now you know!

  3. Having sifted the data a few times myself, I can second the notion that if all the states adopted the same laws as the very restrictive states, it would make no improvement at all in the violent crime rate.

    I don’t know how Gifford creates their ratings, but the Brady’s do publish their formula. One of the inputs to their formula is the gun death rate. Has no one explained to them the problems involved in circular calculations?

    You can see additional details at https://notsofast2015.wordpress.com/

    • Thanks for the link. The author articulated the low-pop density issue very clearly (better than I have in the past).

  4. this is incredibly helpful and informative. Does anybody know statistics for Mexico? Citizens in Mexico are not allowed to own/possess firearms. Declared hunters can possess weapons but I am told expensive and extremely bureaucratic “privilege”. Have also been reliably advised “mordida” (pay-off) helps quite a bit. I believe most violent deaths in Mexico involve use of firearms. I have spoken with multiple Mexican citizens who report they would prefer to have a firearm to protect family/selves but this is far more complicated issue than can be clarified/settled in a brief email

    • We have not (yet) dug into gun vs non-gun death rates in Mexico. It might be of interest in as much as there is likely a very low rate of defensive gun use (DGU) given the restrictions on private ownership in MX.

  5. Thank you for being the voice of common sense and actual facts concerning guns and gun violence. I wrote to Giffords Law in an email but I got an error message and it did not go through.
    They, Giffords, prey on the ignorance, note I’m not saying stupidity…as there is a difference, of the gun and non-gun owning public. Like someone once said, most anything can be made to sound right…until you hear the other side of the issue.

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