AZ Republic: Arizona's gun-death rate among the worst in U.S.

[RamboLiberal]

From murders to suicides, Arizona is consistently among the most deadly states in the nation for gun violence, federal records show.

Over a nine-year span, the state's rate of gun deaths of all types ranked seventh in the United States and sixth for gun-involved slayings, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of death reports compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rankings are based on data from 1999 to 2007, the most recent statistics available from the CDC.

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Arizona reported more than 3,000 murders with guns over a nine-year span (1999-2007), according to CDC data. That amounts to six gun murders per 100,000 residents. The national rate was about four.

Arizona's total gun-death rate - a figure that includes murders, suicides, accidents, police shootings and other unclassified killings - was nearly 16 per 100,000. The national rate was about 10.



Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/2011/01/27/20110127arizona-gun-death-rate-nations-worst-sev.html#ixzz1CHcF1Gat

[CreekDog]

1. Gun advocates will not believe it

because it's a statistic that conflicts with their personal philosophy.

also, it's just minutes before one of them will say this statistic is false, but will cite a number from the same dataset as evidence of an argument they will make to the contrary about gun deaths.

just a matter of time and predictable, like night follows day.

[Name removed]

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[lawodevolution]

8. here are some facts, nations with High gun ownership rates have 5 times lower murder rate

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x339915

[lawodevolution]

5. california murder rate data inside, hope this is not inconvenient for you

2007 36,553,213 3,555.6 522.6 3,033.0 6.2 24.7 193.0 298.8 648.4 1,784.4 600.2

just highlighted their murder rate

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cacrime.htm

[CreekDog]

9. and what does one state's murder rate show?

:hi:

[lawodevolution]

11. nothing but

New Hampshire murder rate: 0.8 per 100,000
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nhcrime.htm

Vermont murder rate: 1.1 per 100,000
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/vtcrime.htm

both states have less gun restriction than texas.

[CreekDog]

14. how about grouping states?

instead of cherrypicking them?

are you willing to look at say, top 10 with strictest gun laws? top 10 with loosest gun laws?

top 25?

all 50?

you know, do some averages?

because what you're doing so far is picking out two states with low rates to prove your point and comparing them to one state. that's 3 states out of 50.

if your point is valid, then looking at all 50 will bear it out. are you willing to do that, or are you willing to let me do that?

let's find out if you are a serious person or not when it comes to the statistics you cite.

[lawodevolution]

15. I'm not really cherrypicking, there is a trend in the whole northeast area

that looks like this




I also did the top 10 bottom 10 safest and found a trend you won't like seeing, want to push further into this?

[CreekDog]

17. You refuse to look at 50 states, YES YOU ARE cherrypicking --oh and your diagram is wrong:

you said New Hampshire and Vermont are more wealthy, wrong:

per capita income 2008
Massachusetts $51.2K
New York $48.7K
New Hampshire $43.6K
Vermont $38.6K

The states of Vermont and New Hampshire have less wealth per capita than New York and Massachusetts.

Let me know when you want to stop playing games and look at the entire 50 state dataset for the statistics you post.

When you refuse to look at states randomly, or completely, then you are cherrypicking.

Everybody here sees the game you are playing.

[lepus]

18. get rid of the top one percenters and I imagine the income rates will match much better.

[CreekDog]

19. throwing out statistics you don't like?

:rofl:

[lepus]

22. No, just considering that the richest one percent in NY and Mass

are quite a bit richer than the richest one percent in Maine and Vermont or for that matter, most any state except possibly California.

Manhattan's upper east side had an average per capita income of $90,000 in 2000 and we are not even getting to the uber rich. The rest of New York City had an average per capita income of about $20,000 in comparison. NY state average is about $40,000.

David Koch of NYC was worth about 17 billion dollars in 2007. He had more personal wealth than the poorest 1.5 million people in NYC put together. Of the top 400 richest people in the world, 72 of them live in New York.

While Vermont and Maine have their rich folk, they do not have anything like the super rich of New York and Massachusetts.

No I am not throwing out statistics I don't like, I'm just pointing out that raw statistics can be very misleading.

Remove the one percenters and NY compares a lot closer to Maine for average income.

[CreekDog]

27. because you don't like a gun control argument, we have to throw out numbers that you don't like

don't pretend it's anything different.

the poster made a statement about who had more to "rob" and he/she's statistically wrong.

and if you come in to a discussion that's supposed to be facts and numbers based and you say, well the numbers are just wrong and you'll tell us how to make the number right --you must be joking.

except in this forum.

[lepus]

28. Like the one percenters of either state go gang banging

or do not live in relative isolation from the rest of the population with their own security forces.

New York may have more total wealth per capita, but in truth, a lot of it is concentrated heavily in a small percentage of it's people. The disparity of wealth, which is likely greater than in any other state is due to certain industries having their financial base in New York. This has to be taken into account when considering the states per capita income.

[beevul]

23. How about looking at the problem where the problem actually exists.

How about looking at the problem where the problem actually exists. In cities.

Rather than using the high population of some states to gloss over the truth of those places, and the low population of other states to magnify the truth of theirs.


Doing it on a state vs state basis ignores the fact that the problems exist generally in cities rather than rurtal areas.

It also magnifies low murder numbers into a "high rates" in low population states, while diluting murder numbers into "low rates" in high population states.

Let start with places that have very restrictive gun control laws, such as DC and chicago.

[clffrdjk]

20. So......

So you agree that the op's post is worthless when placed on the national scale.

[PavePusher]

21. Keep in mind that we are also astride one of the busiest drug and people smuggling routes...

into the U.S. That is going to have an upwards effect on the crime rate. I doubt that Michigan or Montana have that same issue, despite also being mostly rural border states.

[Euromutt]

24. No. We'll just point out that looking only at gun deaths gives an incomplete picture

Let's say we have two states/countries/jurisdictions: Xylophonia with loose gun laws and a murder rate of 3.0/100,000 population; and Yankeedoodledandia with stringent gun laws and a murder rate of 5.0/100,000.

In Xylophonia, 2/3 of murders are committed using firearms, yielding a gun murder rate of 2.0; in Yankeedoodledandia, 1/5 of murders are committed using a firearm, giving a gun murder rate of 1.0.

You can focus on the gun murder rate alone, and claim that guns must be a threat to public health and safety because the gun murder rate in X is double that in Y. But by doing so, you're willfully ignoring the fact that the overall murder rate in Y is 140% that of X.

Look, the body of criminological evidence indicates that, where firearms are more readily available to private citizens, a larger percentage of homicides and suicides will be carried out using firearms, as to opposed all other means (beatings, knifings, hanging, jumping in front of trains, etc.). There is, however, very little evidence that the availability of firearms affects the homicide and suicide rates overall, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Both rates are, for example, far higher (three to four times as high, in fact) in Russia than they are in the United States, in spite of Russian laws on private firearm ownership being significantly tighter. Suicide rates in many western European countries are higher than in the U.S. and while homicide rates are much lower in those countries, available historical evidence indicates that this was already the case prior to those countries adopting gun control measures (mostly shortly after the first world war).

So when you point out that one place with less restrictive gun laws has more gun deaths, the standard pro-RKBAer's response will be "yeah, so? what are the overall suicide and homicide rates?"

[Name removed]

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[TheCowsCameHome]

4. But, but, but....that can't be true.

Can it?

[lawodevolution]

6. over the same time period in california 1999-2007, murder rates were never below 6.0 but were as

high as 6.9

1999 33,145,121 3,805.0 627.2 3,177.8 6.0 28.2 181.1 411.7 675.3 1,994.2 508.3
2000 33,871,648 3,739.7 621.6 3,118.2 6.1 28.9 177.9 408.7 656.3 1,924.5 537.4
2001 34,600,463 3,893.2 615.2 3,278.0 6.4 28.8 186.7 393.3 671.3 2,016.6 590.1
2002 35,001,986 3,956.6 595.4 3,361.2 6.8 29.1 185.6 373.8 681.2 2,044.7 635.3
2003 35,462,712 4,006.0 579.6 3,426.4 6.7 28.2 179.8 364.8 683.2 2,062.7 680.5
2004 35,842,038 3,970.8 527.8 3,423.9 6.7 26.8 172.3 322.0 686.1 2,033.1 704.8
2005 36,154,147 3,846.2 526.0 3,320.6 6.9 26.0 176.1 317.3 692.9 1,915.3 712.3
2006 36,457,549 3,743.4 532.5 3,170.9 6.8 25.3 194.7 305.7 676.0 1,829.1 665.7
2007 36,553,213 3,555.6 522.6 3,033.0 6.2 24.7 193.0 298.8 648.4 1,784.4 600.2

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cacrime.htm

[slackmaster]

7. Arizona has more than its share of gang violence thanks to the War On (some) Drugs

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101333926

The suicide rate is obviously higher than the national average as well.

[DissedByBush]

10. Includes police shootings?

We need to disarm the police!

[onehandle]

12. Guns are innocent kittens on the back of fluffy bunnies. nt

[lawodevolution]

16. Dildos are innocent kittens on the back of fluffy bunnies

condoms are innocent kittens on the back of fluffy bunnies
etc

for every object people fear, and are ignorant of there is a bigot to try to ban them.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

29. Kittens use dildos on the backs of innocent bunnies

:rofl:

[beevul]

13. And yet...

And yet, if we look at this a different way - that is to say - if we look at the problem where it actually exists, rather than diluting the view of problem with rural populations where the problem generally doesn't exist...


The cities with the strictest gun control seem to rank right at the top of places with the most gun murders.

Telling that both that, and the fact that organized obfusction of that reality appears to be taking place.

[Euromutt]

25. "Overall, violent-crime rates in Arizona are not far from rates for the U.S. as a whole..."

It's right there in the article, folks. Yes, we can probably take it as read that higher availability of firearms is closely correlated to use of firearms in a higher percentage of homicides and suicides. But it doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with how high violent crime levels are overall. The fact that you stand a higher chance of being shot in one place doesn't make you less safe than the place where you stand an equally high chance of being beaten, knifed or strangled to death.

[friendly_iconoclast]

30. +1. It's not as if you're *deader* when killed with a gun v. other means.

A slight detail often overlooked.

[mvccd1000]

26. Speaking of cherry-picking data:

This was also in the article:

But only two of the states that Brady rates as having relatively weak gun-control laws are in the top 10 for homicides with guns. Meanwhile, two of its states with relatively strong laws also appear in the top 10.

So in spite of the headline and premise of the article, 2 states with strong gun laws and 2 states with weak gun laws are both in the top 10?

Seems that the entire point of the article is to point out that Arizona is in the same category as two strongly-regulated states. Why, then, would some here feel that Arizona should join them in passing more laws?

[jpak]

31. And that doesn't include the deaths from AZ guns smuggled into Mexico

yup

[jpak]

32. and that doesn't include the deaths from AZ guns smuggled into Mexico

yup