HUFFINGTON POST: U.S. Gun Deaths Since Sandy Hook Top 1,280

[Botany]

http://rolandmartinreports.com/blog/2013/02/huffington-post-u-s-gun-deaths-since-sandy-hook-top-1280/

Source: Jason Cherkis / The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — There were at least 41 homicides or accidental gun deaths on New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Day, at least 54 people died from bullet wounds.

Through Google and Nexis searches, The Huffington Post has tracked gun-related homicides and accidents throughout the U.S. since the schoolhouse massacre in Newtown, Conn., on the morning of Dec. 14. There were more than 100 such deaths the first week after the school shooting. In the first seven weeks after Newtown, there have been more than 1,280 gunshot homicides and accidental deaths. Slate has counted 1,475 fatal shooting incidents since Newtown, including suicides and police-involved shooting deaths, which The Huffington Post did not include in its tally.

The dead included grandmothers and a 6 month old. There were police officers and a Texas prosecutor. There was a Bodega worker in Queens, N.Y., and a gas station attendant in East Orange, N.J.

A high school majorette, a college freshman at Auburn University and a man planning to get his GED in Bradenton, Fla., were killed. One victim became Chicago’s 500th murder of 2012. Another was his town’s 40th. One was found frozen and bloody in an alley – Tacoma, Wash.’s first slaying of 2013. The victim, a mother, was planning to move with her daughters to Manhattan.

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That is more than Ireland, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand,
and Canada have combined for an entire year. Bottom line it is the guns.

[Recursion]

1. Bottom line it is the guns.

Bottom line it is the guns.

Surprisingly enough, no; guns are half of it.



If you look at that, we're off both ends of the linear regression. We have way more guns than other countries, and way more gun homicides than the other countries' data say we "should" even with the number of guns we have. Do a linear regression and ratchet us down to the bottom 25% or even 10% of gun ownership and we still have the highest gun violence per capita.

Gun homicides are outliers, even in the US. If we assume that the percent of guns used in homicides stays the same under a reduction of the number of guns (in reality, that percentage would almost certainly go up), we're still stuck with the fact that while can we reduce the number of gun homicides (and this is absolutely a good thing), we can't even by getting to gun ownership levels like other nations have get out of being the country with the highest rate of gun violence by a long shot.

[Botany]

2. What a graph .... thanx for posting

It is the guns. End of story.

[Recursion]

4. Well, no, that's what I'm saying. Guns are half of it

I just edited my first post to explain it a little more. Do the linear regression on those data points, and even if we get to the level of gun ownership that other countries have, we still have way more gun homicides than other countries do. Guns are half of it; we're outliers both in terms of how many guns we own and how many gun owners use them to kill people.

[ananda]

3. Bottom line it is the guns.

QFT

[Recursion]

5. Well, no. They're half of it

That's what that chart says. We have more guns per capita than other countries and more murders per gun than other countries. Even if we ratchet down to UK levels of gun ownership, those data suggest we would still have the highest gun violence rate in the industrialized world, by far.

[Botany]

6. It is the guns and if we have the highest rate of gun violence in the industrialized world ...

... then we should not make it so easy for people to get guns.

To deny that the proliferation of guns in America does not lead
to a proliferation of gun deaths in America is hard argument to
make. After a mass shooting in Australia they step forward and
made real changes and since then their murder rate has dropped
and they have had zero mass shootings.

BTW I own 2 shotguns with different barrels and choke tubes
(for different types of game or skeet), a .22 bolt action rifle w/a
6 shot magazine, and 30-30 rifle.