Scott Alexander has a long article with a lot of graphs about to what extent the high US homicide rate relative to other First World countries could be explained by its liberal gun laws.
I have a much shorter article with what are perhaps two of the most relevant graphs.
Guns vs. Gun Murder Rates in the US states.
Blacks vs. Gun Murder Rates in the US states.
I have excluded Washington D.C., an extreme outlier with the highest percentage of Blacks (50.7%), the most gun related murders (16.5/100,000), and the lowest rate of official gun ownership (3.6%).
Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
I do think its reasonable to argue that at some very low level of gun ownership you will begin to see substantial decreases in the homicide rate relative to what it would otherwise be if only because it is true that having a gun makes killing someone quite a lot easier. But to see that you will need to see draconian restrictions of the sort you have in Japan or the United Kingdom, where it is next to impossible for a normal civilian to acquire firearms of any sort.
| Gun Ownership | Murders/100k | Gun Murders/100k | Blacks(%) | |
| Alabama | 51.70% | 4.2 | 2.8 | 26.38% |
| Alaska | 57.80% | 4.4 | 2.7 | 4.27% |
| Arizona | 31.10% | 5.5 | 3.6 | 4.16% |
| Arkansas | 55.30% | 4.5 | 3.2 | 15.76% |
| California | 21.30% | 4.9 | 3.4 | 6.67% |
| Colorado | 34.70% | 2.3 | 1.3 | 4.28% |
| Connecticut | 16.70% | 3.7 | 2.7 | 10.34% |
| Delaware | 25.50% | 5.3 | 4.2 | 20.95% |
| Florida | 24.50% | 5 | 3.9 | 15.91% |
| Georgia | 40.30% | 5.3 | 3.8 | 30.02% |
| Hawaii | 6.70% | 1.8 | 0.5 | 3.08% |
| Idaho | 55.30% | 1.3 | 0.8 | 0.95% |
| Illinois | 20.20% | 3.5 | 2.8 | 14.88% |
| Indiana | 39.10% | 3.1 | 2.2 | 9.07% |
| Iowa | 42.90% | 1.2 | 0.7 | 2.68% |
| Kansas | 42.10% | 3.5 | 2.2 | 6.15% |
| Kentucky | 47.70% | 4.5 | 2.7 | 7.71% |
| Louisiana | 44.10% | 9.6 | 7.7 | 31.98% |
| Maine | 40.50% | 1.8 | 0.8 | 1.03% |
| Maryland | 21.30% | 7.3 | 5.1 | 29.44% |
| Massachusetts | 12.60% | 3.2 | 1.8 | 7.02% |
| Michigan | 38.40% | 5.6 | 4.2 | 14.24% |
| Minnesota | 41.70% | 1.7 | 1 | 4.57% |
| Mississippi | 55.30% | 5.6 | 4 | 37.30% |
| Missouri | 41.70% | 7 | 5.4 | 11.49% |
| Montana | 57.70% | 2.1 | 1.2 | 0.67% |
| Nebraska | 38.60% | 2.8 | 1.8 | 4.50% |
| Nevada | 33.80% | 5.9 | 3.1 | 8.10% |
| New Hampshire | 30.00% | 1 | 0.4 | 1.22% |
| New Jersey | 12.30% | 4.1 | 2.8 | 14.46% |
| New Mexico | 34.80% | 5.7 | 3.3 | 2.97% |
| New York | 18% | 4.4 | 2.7 | 15.18% |
| North Carolina | 41.30% | 4.7 | 3 | 21.60% |
| North Dakota | 50.70% | 1.3 | 0.6 | 1.08% |
| Ohio | 32.40% | 4 | 2.7 | 12.04% |
| Oklahoma | 42.90% | 5 | 3 | 7.96% |
| Oregon | 39.80% | 2 | 0.9 | 2.01% |
| Pennsylvania | 34.70% | 5.1 | 3.6 | 10.79% |
| Rhode Island | 12.80% | 2.8 | 1.5 | 6.36% |
| South Carolina | 42.30% | 6.1 | 4.5 | 28.48% |
| South Dakota | 56.60% | 1.7 | 1 | 1.14% |
| Tennessee | 43.90% | 5.6 | 3.5 | 16.78% |
| Texas | 35.90% | 5 | 3.2 | 11.91% |
| Utah | 43.90% | 1.9 | 0.8 | 1.27% |
| Vermont | 42.00% | 1.1 | 0.3 | 0.87% |
| Virginia | 35.10% | 4.6 | 3.1 | 19.91% |
| Washington | 33.10% | 2.2 | 1.4 | 3.74% |
| West Virginia | 55.40% | 3 | 1.5 | 3.58% |
| Wisconsin | 44.40% | 2.7 | 1.7 | 6.07% |
| Wyoming | 59.70% | 1.4 | 0.9 | 1.29% |
| District of Columbia | 3.60% | 21.8 | 16.5 | 50.7% |
Since blacks contributes the majority of most types of crimes, it’s not surprise to see this result.
I have always been an enthusiastic supporter of the Second Amendment (NRA endowment member). But blacks need to be disarmed. They lack the impulse control to handle modern semi-automatic firearms (maybe they could have muzzle-loading wheellocks). I know that runs afoul of the Constitution on several grounds, but that is an argument for a constitutional amendment, not against the desirable public policy of disarming blacks.
Anatoly, thanks. I’m a pro-Second Amendment guy, and many of us believe that most unlawful gun violence can be situationally located in poorly managed domestic quarrels, especially separations and divorces, and geographically located in perhaps 1000 or so urban political wards with a predominantly black population.
I’ve lived at my current address in a middling-income neighborhood for twenty-some years. If gross statistics are any guide, there are hundreds of firearms within a ten-minute walk of my front door. I’ve never heard a gunshot here. There was a suicide by shotgun back in the 1990s.
The “Gun Nut America” caricature portrayed by power-hungry statists is rubbish.
unsurprising but useful information, for which thanks. In fact domestic Blacks (and other non-White invasives) are being groomed by the hate-on-YT Jewish MSM to function as an eventual Army of Extermination against the entire White population of North America. Already and everyday, hundreds of Whites are robbed, raped, face-smashed, and murdered by anomic Negroes…with nary a peep in the Jew media. To do this efficiently – at such time as the Whites have been variously bred-out, immigrated, and bred-down to an actual minority facing a murderous amalgam of ethnoids run by lethally-hostile Jews – the Whites have to be disarmed. Thus “gun-control”, all of whose principal wirepullers are open-borders Jew-globalist plutocrats and politicians: Soros, Bloomberg, Schumer, Feinstein, etc.
Incidentally, the “IInd Amendment” – which will be re-interpreted into a “well-regulated militia” gun-grab when one more communist gets on the SC, in addition to the 4 Jews already there – is not what “protects” our right to keep and bear arms. Self-defense against violent criminals and a violent State is a Natural Right, which can, ultimately, only be defended by the guns themselves and a willingness to use them. Meanwhile, keep it up, Bathhouse Barry. Every time you open your mouth (and shed a glycerin tear) about “gun control”, another million guns leave the shelves
Chicago has stringent gun laws making it almost impossible for average people to legally own a handgun. Yet in 2015 2995 were shot, 443 fatally. It’s almost an entirely black affair with the category Hispanic coming in a distant second and white being nearly negligible. Numbers can be gotten at website heyjackass.com. The stats for Illinois can be misleading since handgun ownership is higher outside gun-restrictive Chicago but yet has a much lower homicide rate. Much of the shooting takes place in a handful of zip codes with, you guessed it, mostly black residents. Homicides by other means such as stabbing, less in number, also follows the same pattern. Stats should always be broken down by race so as to clarify exactly what is happening and where. Chicago has developed an efficient gunshot treatment system whereby Saturday night shooting victims are quickly transported to a number of emergency rooms specially equipped and staffed for just that purpose. If we had the medical capability of that of the 1950’s the homicide rate would be way higher.
It’s not clear why someone willing to risk a 40 year sentence for homicide would feel compelled to obey any gun laws. Prohibition and the war on drugs didn’t do much except create various mafias and black markets for their products and enlarge the justice-prison business. After all these decades of the drug war drugs are stronger and cheaper than ever before. Like the crusading bluenoses that forced Prohibition on everyone else the gun-ban types will create an entirely new set of evils.
The second graph correlation is still fairly weak, and seems mostly influenced by a large group of states in the sub-4% black that have very low murder rates. After that the murder rate jumps higher with more blacks, but essentially flatlines.
Only the Fourteenth Amendment, which Democrats argued for generations was ratified illegally. So repeal, or rather annul, that.
Commonwealth of Virginia statute, 1832: “No free Negro or mulatto shall be suffered to keep or carry any firelock of any kind…”
How ’bout it, Barry?
Even the safest states are still not as safe as the lets say 80M Germany or 130M Japan which in my opinion is a strong argument for the “draconian restrictions” because you can see that white people should have a murder rate less than 1 given the right circumstances.
I think instead that gun ownership should be linked to citizenship and both should be linked to mental competence. It’s not being black per se that should disqualify you from exercising constitutional rights; it’s being of low intelligence, which just so happens to be a bigger problem among blacks than among other racial groups. If you’re too dumb to be executed, you’re too dumb to vote or own guns.
Another thing that might help would be to restore the militia. The US government in its early days used to require gun ownership among citizens, as well as mandating militia training. This was not the same as a draft, in that the government couldn’t compel you to fight its wars outside the country, but there were definitely obligations tied to the rights to citizenship. But for some reason the rights of gun ownership have been decoupled from the obligations of joining the militia.
Racist codswallop.
Does no one want to investigate how close black% is to poverty levels or whether blacks in poverty areas commit more crimes than whites?.
Or indeed whether blacks are the murderers or the victims?
And even if blacks are both, does that invalidate the need for gun control.
The truth is that whites in nice areas can go through life barely seeing a Policeman or being threatened. They can pay for their education as drug dealers (cannabis, cocaine) without being threatened by a cop. And then can graduate with a career and a clean record.
Blacks in tougher areas just don’t have those options.
It is the bizarre drug laws, gun laws, and the way the Police enforce them that are the primary problems.
Shut up.
I’d accept your qualification. To get a valid firearms license, one should pass a test of mental competence, impulse control and future time orientation, plus basic firearms knowledge and safety. There should be similar tests (literacy) for voting (and I’ll add property requirements to that). This would have the effect of screening out larger numbers of blacks than whiites, but so be it.
But what about illegal weapons in the black “community?” For that you’d need a state of de facto martial law–stop and frisk, plus unannounced residence searches. All definitely contrary to the 4th Amendment. But maybe you could tie them to EBT card eligibility or something like that. You probably also need an expedited criminal justice system–almost summary justice and punishment, modeled along military lines. You wouldn’t need to actually target the black community, but the effects would be greater there.
From your lips to God’s ears. Yes, there should be militia membership and training for all able-bodied male citizens able to pass the requirements to own guns and vote (see my other post). Service would be limited to defense of the territory of the United States, along the lines of present-day Switzerland.
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one!”
The central issue is this: why should law-abiding, peaceful citizens be forced to surrender their weapons simply because other people don’t use them responsibly?
I see what you’re saying. Restricting gun rights to whites would just be vastly easier to enforce: if the guy looks black, he shouldn’t have a gun. You don’t need to demand to see papers or anything of that sort. The only problem is that, while I’m an HBD realist, I still think racism is dumb and I don’t see why an intelligent and law-abiding individual should be prevented from exercising rights of citizenship simply because of his dark skin color, while a stupid violent person should get to use a gun just because he’s white. But if the alternative is martial law for everybody, then I say no thank you.
What gives me hope is that black crime, while I think always somewhat above the white crime rate, was much much lower before the welfare state kicked into high gear in the 1960s. Welfare is the real poison that has damaged the black community and its reputation. We need to return to the time when a life of petty crime didn’t pay the way it does now. Repeal of drug prohibition would also make the drug trade much less lucrative and violent.
I also think that “no taxation without representation” entails that, if you haven’t paid taxes in the last year, you don’t get to vote this year. 😀
The point of the 2nd Amendment is not to make firearms ownership some sort of government granted privilege circumscribed to mitigate danger. The point of the 2nd Amendment is to enable citizens to be a lethal danger to the government at any and all times.
The key word being “citizen”. Should everybody get citizenship, or should citizenship be conditional on possessing qualities of self-reliance and independence on which a free republic depends?
Japanese in the US, I know their suicide rate is likely high (as in Japan) but what is their rate of committing murder in the US?
Germans in the US, what is their rate of committing murder? Lets chose a comparable couple of countries and compare. Swiss men all have machine guns in the house but their murder rate is comparable to Austria and Germany. The ethnic basis of Switzerland and Austria (and to a lesser extent Germany) is very similar. All these countries are very prosperous. Ethnically (subracially) similar countries have murder rates (and economies) that are very similar, even though their average citizens’ access to firearms is very different so I conclude race is the main factor.
However, Americans are not all Swiss ((alpinids if you are interested) by any means, so the white murder rate would be expected to be higher in the US (apart from places that are mainly German) guns or not.
It is a funny thing but blacks rarely commit suicide, Austrians catch the bus all the time. Richard Lynn’s book Personality and national character (1971) was quite fascinating on this subject.
See my comments on the militia. The Second Amendment presumed that states and localities would continue to field local self-defense forces. Membership in the militia meant the militiaman had to be able to arrive already armed and with some training. Such a militia definitely posed a threat to centralized tyranny–it’s hard to see individual gun owners posing any threat at all to a government, although I sometimes wonder about a state National Guard that defied federalization and continued to follow the orders of a state governor.
Like you, I’m aware that any licensing system could be used to disarm the populace, but the stupendous levels of violent black criminality, coupled with changes in U.S. demographics, are going to make the Second Amendment increasingly difficult to defend. My own preference is a white ethnostate with a robust self-defense capability, coupled with widespread gun ownership and use for sporting and recreational purposes, but I’m open to other suggestions.
Look at the numbers, with 3 exceptions, Alaska, Arizona, and Montana, every state with less than 5% Black population has a gun murder rate of under 1%.
Your “draconian restrictions” won’t work here in America.
As I told Scott, this was pretty much covered here:
Guns & Violence, Again…
and
200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start): Section: Guns, violence, and the Dylann Roof rampage
According to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Gun deaths per 100k:
Switzerland 3.08 (homicide 0.23, suicide 2.68)
UK: 0.23 (homicide 0.06, suicide 0.15)
Not quite true in the UK. You can still keep a shotgun (not pump action) at home. But it needs to be kept in a locked steel cabinet. Farmers, pest controllers, hunters etc can keep bolt action rifles.
The last mass shooting was in 2010 – a guy who was issued a license for a .22 rifle killed a dozen people.
You’re a nobody making comments on a blog under a nom de plume; ergo “your own preference” adds up to a milk bucket under a bull.
3 exceptions is infinitely more than no exceptions.
Eee-yeahhh-no, not really. Blogger Paul Kersey has been on top of this very issue for several years. Among his findings: Even during the days of Jim Crow, blacks, while they had lower crime rates comparable to what they have now, did in fact still have significantly higher rates of crime than whites. In 19th century Philadelphia, for example, freed blacks had higher rates of crime than the local white populace. So in other words, it doesn’t really matter the historical era. Past, present, etc. and blacks still lead the pack in total number of murders and other violent crimes.
If you were to repeal all drug laws today, blacks would still lead all races in total numbers of violent crimes committed per year, just as they pretty much nearly always have done.
Also, lets not forget an entirely new generation of violent crimes committed by blacks: The just cause syndrome. Its not rooted in poverty nor tied to drug laws. It’s based on a pretty clear mindset: Go after “racist” white people, just cause they’re white and they have it coming. No amount of drug laws will ever change that inner mindset. Also, blacks mostly tend to attack their own kind and often over petty grievances, most of which have little directly to do with drugs or poverty.
Basically its a little late in the game to naively think that if all the drug laws were gone away and somehow petty crime didn’t pay, well then presto…less violent crime among blacks. Because, lets be real, it’s not whites who are committing the majority of violent crime. If blacks were more peaceful and not consistently leading the pack in total numbers of violent crimes committed per year, this conversation wouldn’t be occurring.
As race and IQ are very closely related and violent crimes tend to be committed by those of lower IQ, and the average IQ for blacks is about 85-88, while the average IQ for whites is around 100, then….drug legalization really isn’t gonna make that much a dent in the crime statistics in the long haul.
We has pickle, we duz, and no one really wants to discuss the problem let alone what might the solutions be.
Right now it’s Saturday morning in Chicago. Since Friday morning there’s been four homicides and sixteen wounded. All black, what else. The weekend has just begun so there’ll be more, no doubt. Lot of my tax money being wasted on medical costs and rehab, police, judges, social workers, the entire package; the meter just keeps running. The media is just a large propaganda apparatus that presents this as “gun violence” in an attempt to detach the perpetrators from their actions. There’s a lot of bystanders and associates hanging around with the intended targets who unfortunately also end up getting shot. However, most of the targets are gangbangers themselves who might have shot someone else previously and are being retaliated against. They’re no angels.
If you call r^2 = 0.6 a weak correlation you haven’t spent much time around the social sciences.
That gives a correlation coefficient r = 0.77 which the book Analyzing Social Science Data: 50 Key Problems in Data Analysis describes (r between 0.7 and 0.89) as “very strong.”
If you are concerned about the flatlining try including DC in the plot and see what happens 😉
r^2 = 0.6 indicates that 60% of the variance in the gun murder data by state is explained by the single variable “% black population.” I find that shocking (even knowing the relative race crime statistics!). I was amazed Scott Alexander posted that, but it made more sense when I saw how he presented it–after an analysis showing a gun murder correlation with “Southerness” and with minimal comment. It was interesting he showed r^2 for %black but not southerness. Any idea why he got r^2 = 0.544 (r = 0.74)?
If you are dead you’re dead and whether you get offed by being stabbed or catch the bus by train hardly matters
Whether or not people with guns are more likely to commit homicide, I think if people can’t kill themselves with a gun they will find another method, like the Germans and Japanese do. In the final analysis the Swiss civilians have access to military firearms but don’t have a high overall homicide rate though they have a notably high suicide rate. I think the Swiss have an inherently low propensity to commit homicide, but a strong tendency to commit suicide.
The difference mattered to you!
The ready availability of a means of self-enforcing the inalienable right to suicide is one important reason gun ownership should be unrestricted. (For such purpose, the mentally ill may need guns the most.)
One quibble, in both Japan and the UK it is quite possible for normal people to legally own guns. Not handguns, but your article says ‘any guns’. Both shotguns and rifles are legal to own in Japan and the UK.
Obvious errors like this make the whole article suspect.
Some informative stats:
http://www.vpc.org/studies/blackhomicide12.pdf
You get a slightly higher R^2 (0.659) if you take the square root of the black population first.
With a couple of assumptions, I get an R^2 of 0.7 assuming that black people are 17.9/2.92 times (misusing Syon’s data) more likely to murder with a gun.
In practice there is an inalienable right to commit homicide if you follow it with suicide. And blacks, who have a higher rate of mental illness, have surprisingly low rates of suicide.
Firearms are a poor method. It is the easiest thing in the world to shoot yourself in the head attempting suicide and be left alive and a vegetable or blind. Not just a .22. People have done it with shotguns. And they often don’t want to kill themselves once they have what might be considered a good reason as a result of the initial attempt.
Dumb-ass Blacks just don’t have the mental horsepower to keep things on the down low.
They have a failure of nerve after an unsuccessful attempt. How does that bear on whether they should have been allowed to make the attempt?
“you will need to see draconian restrictions of the sort you have in … the United Kingdom, where it is next to impossible for a normal civilian to acquire firearms of any sort.” Bollocks. Why do people keep repeating this sort of tripe?
If someone wants to catch the bus they can put their neck on a railway line, and in Germany be sure they will not be kept waiting too long after the train is due.
Re. people blinded in unsuccessful firearms suicide attempts. Konrad Lorenz in the Waning of Humaneness said that people tend to lose interest in killing themselves after becoming blind in the attempt . Maybe their life has more meaning after they have a severe disability like blindness to cope with. Firearms are risky, one might miss and find life meaningful as a severely handicapped person.
yeah sure michael lets look at those things> what does poverty have to do with murder shall i take you on a tour of the world where dire poverty has no corelation to high murder or would that be racist?or we could look at black violence all around the world whether in china the netherlands or kenya its always the same genetic story blacks are ultra violent. shall we only look at poor whites in america and compare murder rates no that wont work because bottom line is you dont believe blacks have agency well youre right their lower IQ low future time orientation etc make it very hard for them to live up to the western standard of civilization maybe you should have thought of that before you loosed this bio terror on the world, what will eventually happen will be horrific and you will blame those who did what had to be done but it will be people like yourself who are really responsible.
why dont blacks have these options because they live around blacks and your solution is to make us all live like that we have a better solution a more final one it maybe neednt have come to that but you had to experiment you have left whites no choice but to fight or die and they are beginning to realize they must decide now. see you on the ramparts comrade
somewhat above its eight times the white rate!Im formerly sympathetic to your libertarian values thing is they can never work in a multicultural society the equality you want can only be had in separate but equal countries. let each group do their own thing uphold the standards they wish and be left alone. unequal abilities will always lead to unequal outcomes in multi culti societies which leads to cultural destruction and political war in separate countries built by and for the different species of human they can compete against peers and even possibly find workarounds to compete against other races not implementable in a mixed society. it also has the advantage of actually preserving other cultures rather than destroying them while calling it multiculturalism.
That is absolutely correct wrt UK. I lived there.