Gun control laws, gun ownership, and gun violence -- some stats

Want some solid statistics to back up the intuitive assumption that fewer guns means fewer deaths?    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a Center for Injury Prevention and Control.    Data from there has been analyzed by the Violence Policy Center and come up with some correlations that seem pretty important for the efforts to get sensible gun control laws passed.

In other words, it's some ammunition to counter the lobbyists from the NRA.   Here are some facts, based on data from 2011, the most recent year for which such data is available:

1.   States with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation.

2.   States with the strongest gun violence prevention laws and lower rates of gun ownership have the lowest overall gun death rates.

3.   The five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were:   Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana.    Each of those states has very lax gun control laws and higher than average rate of gun ownership.

4.  The five states with the lowest per capita gun death rates were:  Rhode Island, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.   Each of these states has strong gun control laws and a lower than average rate of gun ownership.

5.  The U.S. nationwide gun death rate was 10.38 per 100,000 -- with a high of 18.9 for Louisiana and a low of 3.14 for Rhode Island.   Compare that to other industrialized nations and we dwarf them all.   In 2011, the U.K. had a rate of 0.20 per 100,000 and Australia had 0.86.

The conclusion drawn by the VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann is:  “Gun violence is preventable, and states can pass effective laws that will dramatically reduce gun death and injury. . . .  Our analysis also shows that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and easy access to guns pay a severe price with gun death rates far above the national average.” 

Try to tell that to a politician running for office.   Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said yesterday that, if people had been allowed to carry guns into the theater where the mass shooting occurred last week, the killer could have been stopped.   That's the mentality that reflects the problem.   They say the only solution to gun violence is more guns in more places.

If repeated mass shootings do not move our legislators to action, will a few statistics?   Probably not.    I have become extremely pessimistic and cynical about this.

Ralph

Thanks to Leslie Salzillo of Daily Kos for posting this information from the Violence Policy Center release.