Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 46 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
Another thing from that CNN piece on the Heller case is this:
There were 143 gun-related murders in Washington last year, compared with 135 in 1976, when the handgun ban was enacted.
That made me cringe, because now we will have people citing that as if it paints a meaningful picture. It doesn’t, for obvious reasons.
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[…] Mark Chu-Carrol likes to say that the worst math is no math. John Cole brings us an example from CNN. I posted a comment on their article, but it’ll probably get bigger exposure here. (Assuming CNN’s moderators approve it at all.) This was the offending quote: There were 143 gun-related murders in Washington last year, compared with 135 in 1976, when the handgun ban was enacted. […]
Shinobi
I think that there is something that happens to people when they become journalists wherein the part of their brain that may have ever had even the most basic grasp of statistics dies and is replaced by desperate needs for headlines.
It hurts my statistician’s heart.
t jasper parnell
OT John Yoo is getting hammered by the Democrats on Cspan right now. He is a gibbering fool.
SpotWeld
Assuming that the DC population trended upwards over those three decades, wouldn’t that represent a per captia drop?
(And then you have the whole problem of proving correlation.)
Face
That’s easy. 8 more murders in 22 years. A handgun ban has caused more murders, therefore it sucks and the Court is right. Scalia is a life-saver, literally.
Statz is phun.
ed
one can’t help but wonder how many of the guns used in those crimes were purchased in places (i.e., MD and VA) where they are not banned.
The Other Steve
That handgun ban was always meaningless. I don’t know why people care.
John Cole
Well, there are just a whole host of things you would want to look at. Population, relationship to overall crime rates, and so on and so forth- I could rattle off a dozen things you would want to look at to make those numbers have any meaning. As it is, they are just two meaningless numbers.
SpotWeld
As it is, they are just two meaningless numbers.
Agreed, the relationship to gun control and crime is always going to be contentious.
It’ll be intersting to see how the effects of this ruling plays out. ($5 says John Lott is already drafing a manuscript about it.)
The Other Steve
And Mary Rosh will have good things to say about said manuscript.
Dennis - SGMM
Just guessing but, I’d imagine that the number of deaths in D.C. due to parachute failure remained the same as well.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
MobiusKlein
other points to consider
1) How many of each stat were actual handgun related murders
2) How about not cherry picking two years, since there is random fluctuation. (moving average, etc.)
3) Compare to national trends for similar years
4) Per-capita?
5) what about gun crimes in general, not just ones that end in death.
6) Was there a difference in accidental firearm death & injuries?
Dennis - SGMM
MobiusKlein Says:
You’re obviously an elitist and you live in an ivory tower, too! Statistics only have meaning when they’re interpreted in isolation by someone with an axe to grind.
Pasota
srv
John, that was those 30 guys released from Gitmo.
srv
Metropolitan Area Residents
1980: 3,478,000
1990: 4,223,000
2000: 4,923,153
Percent change, 1990–2000: 16.5%
U.S. rank in 1980: 8th (MSA)
U.S. rank in 1990: 8th (MSA)
U.S. rank in 2000: 8th (MSA)
City Residents
1980: 638,333
1990: 607,000
2000: 572,059
2003 estimate: 563,384
Percent change, 1990–2000: -5.7%
dnA
It paints a meaningful picture, and the picture is this:
It doesn’t matter what restrictions DC puts on gun ownership when Virginia has none, or will enforce none, and is the single biggest source of illegal firearms for the entire Eastern Seaboard.
srv
Homicide graph
I make no claims on the accuracy.
Zifnab
Isn’t New York suing Virginia over this?
dnA
Yes, and the NRA released an issue of their newsletter with Bloomberg as an octopus, an image reminiscent of anti-semitic and Nazi propaganda.
I think New York City is actually a much better example for determining whether or not a gun ban is effective, since they aren’t sitting adjacent to the biggest illegal gun market on this side of the country.
Dennis - SGMM
You’d think that being the site of the worst shooting rampage in the history of the country would make them consider tightening up their laws and enforcement.
Brachiator
I don’t think it matters one way or another. I’ve seen some credible evidence that alcohol related deaths declined during Prohibition. This does not prevent Prohibition from being a stupid idea and an unnecessary restriction of individual liberties by the government.
Martin
But it was an asian kid who did it, that’s why they’re trying to make asians illegal instead. Harder to conceal and the white kids might actually be able to get into college again.
The Other Steve
I don’t care what the numbers are, the DC handgun ban was stupid and meaningless.
dnA
Well the guy who sold guns online to Seung-Hui Cho and the Illinois shooter, both of whom had histories of mental illness, is now actively working to make it legal to carry concealed weapons on college campuses.
He just wants college kids to be safe.
bootlegger
And $10 says it’s as bad as all his other “research”. Nobody will publish this guy in a peer-reviewed journal and it’s not because of his politics. His peers, like me, know that his research is gibberish.
bootlegger
Interestingly, Scalia concluded with a note that this ruling should have no effect on other gun prohibitions and he specifically mentions schools.
dnA
The real question is how many conservatives will no question the legitimacy of the 5-4 for ruling the way they did with the GITMO case. I believe back then, 5-4 meant that the decision shouldn’t really count.
ET
One of the reasons DC was big on keeping this is because Virginia laws are such the it seems like a 2 year old could buy a weapon and because many of the weapons ended up in DC. So the “logic” follows – less chances of buying with DC out of the mix would hopefully mean less guns in DC. Obviously not totally logical but there it is. This ruling obviously won’t affect all those people who would illegally buy a gun regardless of the law – ’cause if they are buying it illegally they are doing so for a reason.
Dennis - SGMM
The decision came as a relief to me. I was planning to rob every bank in D.C. but I didn’t want to carry a handgun because that would be illegal.
myiq2xu
It seems marksmanship in DC has improved slightly since 1976.
When I joined the Army in 1978 there were 3 guys in my basic training unit that were from DC. All three had scars from being shot.
Zifnab
I’m sure the popularity of guns-for-everyone shows and fairs wasn’t helped by the incident. But you aren’t going to change the gun-culture in Virginia overnight, no matter how many people get shot.
But gun violence is the sort of thing that eventually solves itself. Like MADD pushing hard against drunk driving, its really just a matter of time before people get sick enough of the violence that they mobilize.
myiq2xu
I should add: They were the only ones with those scars.
myiq2xu
Like the ending to Reservoir Dogs?
Cris
This reminds me of the graph that Lowtax posted in a GBS thread about gun laws. It had no legend, no units, just two axes with a jagged line drawn through the field. As expected, several people jumped on it to accuse him of bias on one side or other.
Dennis - SGMM
Haven’t spent much time in Va. so I have a question; does the Virginia gun culture feel threatened by any move to regulate gun sales? Or is the trade so lucrative that any attempt to tighten the law is met with a well-funded “They’re trying to take away our guns” campaign?
Tom65
According to the NRA, DC’s violent crime rate should be about nil by this time next week.
No?
dnA
Obviously there are many conservatives who oppose the ban on constitutional principle, but what irritates me is the number who oppose it because they fantasize that a confrontation between them someone breaking into their home will kind of resemble the end sequence of Birth of A Nation.
Stevenovitch
Are you implying that it wouldn’t?
scarshapedstar
Homicide numbers have really exploded since 1776, when there was no gun control anywhere. QED.
Chuck Butcher
I’ve pretty much noticed that in my little very rural community the War on Drugs has made it nearly impossible to spend more than 10 minutes trying to find an illegal drug. I love to watch the very people whose heads exploded over FISA get in an uproar over this ruling. Pretty sacred cow based set of ethics don’t ya think?
Oooooh it goes bang, evil evil. You get your knickers in a knot about a thing and ignore the real problems. How very Bush-like to propose to me that your perception of security trumps a right. Oh yeah, piss and whine about guns while you ignore the War on Drugs, dislocation of wealth, plutocratic stomping of the under class, institutionalized ghettos, incarceration rates, drop out rates, oh just a couple of things that relate to a failed society.
Guns are like drugs in the sense that if you want one you can get one, it may be hot or sold illegally, but you can get one. Blaming VA for DC’s problems is on par with blaming Iraq for 9/11 or “hate us for our freedoms.” DC is a clusterfuck for its own reasons (you could look at the clusterfuck at its center) and guns have never been unavailable in DC, only a problem for law abiding citizens.
John
Assuming that the DC population trended upwards over those three decades, wouldn’t that represent a per captia drop?
(And then you have the whole problem of proving correlation.)
The DC population has not trended upwards over those three decades.
DC population 1970 – 756,510
DC population 1980 – 638,333
DC population 1990 – 606,900
DC population 2000 – 572,059
DC population 2007 – 588,292
Basically, population trended sharply downwards until 2000, and then headed back slowly back up again. But it’s still considerably smaller than it was in 1976.
bartkid
>in 1976
Hey, isn’t that the year of the Oil Embargo?
Guns don’t kill people, high gasoline prices do!
dnA
Can you clean the straw up off the floor now please?
Brachiator
The stomping of the underclass was pretty much completed during the first 6 months of the Bush Administration, which then proceeded to decimate the middle class. But by getting the middle class to cling to their guns and the false promise of tax cuts, they were lulled into supporting Bush. Until the current recession started biting them in the ass.
And who cares about drop-out rates when the sitting president is one of the most ignorant dolts to ever serve as a chief executive anywhere, anytime, in the known universe.
You are only half-right here. So called “law abiding citizens” don’t have any problems getting guns. Many of them already have guns. And you don’t have any answer for the “law abiding citizens” with legal firearms who decide to murder spouses, co-workers or family members (Deputy Arrested After Wife Is Fatally Shot).
Oh, yeah. The previously law abiding deputy shot his wife in the jaw while their son looked on.
Glocksman
Strange, as I have yet to hear of the Brady Campaign or any other gun control group propose disarming the police in order to prevent them from killing their spouses.
There are examples you can use, but that particular one was an epic fail.