Crime vs Gun Ownership
Violent crime rate per 100,000 divided by % of Households with Loaded Firearm
Categories:
| Rank | Region | Violent crime rate per 100,000 | ÷ | % of Households with Loaded Firearm | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Massachusetts | 431.50 | ÷ | 1.00 | 431.50 |
| 2 | New Jersey | 329.30 | ÷ | 1.20 | 274.42 |
| 3 | New York | 414.10 | ÷ | 1.80 | 230.06 |
| 4 | Hawaii | 272.80 | ÷ | 1.20 | 227.33 |
| 5 | Maryland | 641.90 | ÷ | 3.60 | 178.31 |
| 6 | Delaware | 689.20 | ÷ | 4.60 | 149.83 |
| 7 | Connecticut | 256.00 | ÷ | 1.80 | 142.22 |
| 8 | Iowa | 294.70 | ÷ | 2.10 | 140.33 |
| 9 | Michigan | 536.00 | ÷ | 4.00 | 134.00 |
| 10 | Nevada | 750.60 | ÷ | 5.90 | 127.22 |
| 11 | Rhode Island | 227.30 | ÷ | 1.80 | 126.28 |
| 12 | Ohio | 343.20 | ÷ | 2.90 | 118.34 |
| 13 | Florida | 722.60 | ÷ | 6.50 | 111.17 |
| 14 | Minnesota | 288.73 | ÷ | 2.70 | 106.94 |
| 15 | Pennsylvania | 416.50 | ÷ | 4.00 | 104.13 |
| 16 | Wisconsin | 290.90 | ÷ | 2.80 | 103.89 |
| 17 | Nebraska | 302.40 | ÷ | 3.20 | 94.50 |
| 18 | South Carolina | 788.30 | ÷ | 8.90 | 88.57 |
| 19 | New Mexico | 664.20 | ÷ | 7.50 | 88.56 |
| 20 | Colorado | 347.80 | ÷ | 4.00 | 86.95 |
| 21 | Kansas | 452.70 | ÷ | 5.50 | 82.31 |
| 22 | Tennessee | 753.30 | ÷ | 9.70 | 77.66 |
| 23 | Louisiana | 729.50 | ÷ | 10.00 | 72.95 |
| 24 | Missouri | 504.90 | ÷ | 7.10 | 71.11 |
| 25 | Arizona | 482.70 | ÷ | 7.10 | 67.99 |
| 26 | Washington | 333.10 | ÷ | 5.00 | 66.62 |
| 27 | Maine | 118.00 | ÷ | 1.80 | 65.56 |
| 28 | Texas | 510.60 | ÷ | 8.10 | 63.04 |
| 29 | Alaska | 661.20 | ÷ | 10.70 | 61.79 |
| 30 | North Carolina | 466.40 | ÷ | 7.70 | 60.57 |
| 31 | North Dakota | 142.40 | ÷ | 2.40 | 59.33 |
| 32 | Oklahoma | 499.60 | ÷ | 8.90 | 56.13 |
| 33 | Utah | 234.80 | ÷ | 4.30 | 54.60 |
| 34 | New Hampshire | 137.30 | ÷ | 2.80 | 49.04 |
| 35 | Georgia | 493.20 | ÷ | 10.30 | 47.88 |
| 36 | Oregon | 287.60 | ÷ | 6.10 | 47.15 |
| 37 | Arkansas | 529.40 | ÷ | 11.60 | 45.64 |
| 38 | South Dakota | 169.20 | ÷ | 3.80 | 44.53 |
| 39 | West Virginia | 275.20 | ÷ | 6.40 | 43.00 |
| 40 | Virginia | 269.70 | ÷ | 6.30 | 42.81 |
| 41 | Indiana | 333.60 | ÷ | 7.80 | 42.77 |
| 42 | Vermont | 124.30 | ÷ | 3.20 | 38.84 |
| 43 | Alabama | 448.00 | ÷ | 13.40 | 33.43 |
| 44 | Kentucky | 295.00 | ÷ | 9.60 | 30.73 |
| 45 | Idaho | 239.40 | ÷ | 9.10 | 26.31 |
| 46 | Mississippi | 291.30 | ÷ | 11.10 | 26.24 |
| 47 | Montana | 287.50 | ÷ | 11.10 | 25.90 |
| 48 | Wyoming | 239.30 | ÷ | 9.40 | 25.46 |
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Comments
hm, the states known for gun ownership have way less crime. Fancy that.
You're seriously misreading the data.
There is a positive correlation between the amount of guns per household and violent crimes.
i.e. More guns=more crimes (or visa versa). Crunch the numbers instead of just looking at pretty pictures next time.
While it does appear that in some states more loaded guns equals more crimes, as I went through many states the loaded gun percentage tended to increase much faster than crimes committed, and indeed in some states the crimes committed were low and the loaded gun percentage was high. Although it is a very pretty picture =D!
The chart is dividing when it should be correlating. Thus it is misleading the easily mislead.
I just spent the last month pouring over on this very supject and it has been proven that it is just the opposite. The higher the legal gun ownership is the lower the violent crime rate. In counties that allow concealed weapons violent crime dropped an average of 3% per year after concealed weapons were allowed. In washington D.C. in the first year alone after the conceal weapons banned was lifted violent crime dropped 19%.
Great!
Now try comparing the USA to another country. No point in comparing one gun/crime-loving state against another. How about starting with Sweden or Japan?
Don't get it. I just wanted to see the effect of gun-ownership on crime-rate. apparently more guns is less crime. Why would other countries matter? Chances are it is similar. (FYI England has an almost non-existent gun ownership percentage, yet their rate of violent crime FAR outdoes the US percentage wise)
"(FYI England has an almost non-existent gun ownership percentage, yet their rate of violent crime FAR outdoes the US percentage wise)"
Proof?
You have to be kidding. The US is on par with Brazil in terms of violent crime.
but if you compare the uk population to crime rate to ours in the us then they out pace us on most crime except for murders and rape
Don't compare England with us. Most of the original settlers are of English decent. Plus you miss the point, we have way more violent crimes than other Westernized countries.
Compare our country to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and other Western European countries.
Dude, the gun ownership in Brazil is really low. So, there is no correlation. I'm not saying gun ownership makes a country save but it doesn't make a country more dangerous either. Oh, btw, in these Scandinavian countries that most anti-firearm people mention have a higher gun-ownership rate than other West-European countries that have a higher violent crime rate.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Euro...
Staples71, it seems like you're reading into this mash-up your pre-conceptions instead of the actual results. I notice several states that have a high level of gun ownership and a fairly high level of violent crime as well (e.g., South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, New Mexico).
The conclusion you can take away from this is that crime and gun ownership are not directly correlated. So the mashup unfortunately doesn't prove much.
Take Wisconsin and Mississippi for example. Same rate of violent crime, but Mississippi has about 4 times higher rate of gun ownership.
Oregon and Florida have about the same rate of gun ownership, yet Florida has sky-rocketing levels of violent crime compared to Oregon.
Clearly this is not the whole picture.
"Clearly this is not the whole picture."
Here is more of the picture:
Wisconson
White %88.9
Black %5.7
Mississippi
White %61.4
Black %36.3
----------------
Oregon
White %86.6
Black %1.6
Florida
White %78.0
Black %14.6
what the heck does that even have to do w/ ANYTHING?
Another racist ass. Wow they just come out the woodwork. It has more to do with class, money and other variables. You can take any race and give them the same amount of money and they would turn out, in many cases, almost the same. It has nothing to do with race!
There are more blacks and latinos in the bottom half of our society, hence the high crime rates. That is just a fact!
Pearson r = ~ .4
If we try to describe the relationship as if it were a simple linear model, about 16% of the variation in "Violent crime rate per 100,000 population" in a state can be predicted by knowing "% of Households with Loaded Firearm" in the state. Note that using this model, the relationship is positive; as the percent of households with loaded firearms increases the violent crime rate per 100,000 increases.
These data do NOT permit predictions about the characteristics of who owns the loaded firearms or who commits the crimes.
Yeah it does. People who keep loaded firearms around are douchebags.
hmmm...did not see the data where this particular association was established...my oversight.
Note that in the original mashup, not all states are included. I am assuming the dates of data collection and the definitions (including, perhaps, the definition of douchbag) are are, in fact comparable, but this is only an assumption.
I think it's actually a labeling error. Criminals and people who keep loaded guns around are two distinct subsets of douchebaggery. A Venn diagram might be more helpful than a map.
what's also missing is that most incidents of violent crime do not involve legally-owned/registered weapons. If you could add in the number of illegal weapons that are actually used in these incidents, or just use the number of violent crimes committed by the registered owner of the weapon, maybe then would this be worthwhile. Without those factors, this is inconsequential.
I certainly agree with your conclusions, however it might be useful to recall that the data presented refer to states, crimes and households with loaded firearms.
In my posting I wanted to make it clear that no data are presented that would allow a conclusion (any conclusion) to be drawn regarding the incidence of crimes and characteristics of the individuals who commit them.
Strange argument. It's kind of like blaming dinner plates and silverware for making people fat.
The problem is more about culture than hardware. As long as Americans tolerate violent crime, it will exist. If we did not tolerate it, violent offenders would spend much more time in prison, the media wouldn't be so obsessed with violent acts, and there would be few, if any, violent video games, motion pictures, etc. As a culture, America has become numb to violent crime. It is now 'normal'.
By the way, Admiral Yamamoto, the fleet admiral of Imperial Japan, feared invading America because 'there is a rifle behind every blade of grass'.
Gun ownership by responsible human beings is a deterrent, not encouragement.
Strange argument. It's kind of like blaming dinner plates and silverware for making people fat.
The problem is more about culture than hardware. As long as Americans tolerate violent crime, it will exist. If we did not tolerate it, violent offenders would spend much more time in prison, the media wouldn't be so obsessed with violent acts, and there would be few, if any, violent video games, motion pictures, etc. As a culture, America has become numb to violent crime. It is now 'normal'.
By the way, Admiral Yamamoto, the fleet admiral of Imperial Japan, feared invading America because 'there is a rifle behind every blade of grass'.
Gun ownership by responsible human beings is a deterrent, not encouragement.
What I find interesting is that high gun ownership rates do not correlate to proportionally higher violent crime rates. States with 10% gun ownership do not have 10x crime rates compared to states with 1% gun ownership.
I certainly agree that culture and other factors significantly affect violent crime rates, but gun ownership does not appear to be one of those factors.
Another study that I see cited often states that (my paraphrasing) "higher gun ownership correlates to higher murder rates." Well duh! If I owned a gun, and someone broke into my house, tried to rape my wife, etc, using a gun to stop the perpetrator would certainly be one of the available options...
In what state does shooting a felon on your property constitute murder???
The chart shows violent crime rate goes up with the number of guns owned per household, with two states that are the exception, Montana and Mississippi. 48 states show correlation, except two. What's up with that? I don't know, but the preponderance of the evidence shows a correlation.
Let's separate legal, lawful gun ownership by law abiding citizens from illegal guns owned by criminals and see where the crime rate relative to gun ownership goes. Subtract gang banger gun crimes and illegal gun owner crimes from the totals and watch how far it drops. In New York City, where I was born and raised, where it's virtually impossible for anyone to receive a gun permit, there are shootings almost every day. Same in Boston. The gun crime statistics are severely bloated by these shootings. But who takes the brunt of the fallout with more and more gun control laws because of these statistics? The law abiding citizens who merely want to own a gun for personal protection, target shooting, etc. I have a license to carry a concealed firearm here in Massachusetts where I now live, but I don't dare do it because of the convoluted gun-carry law here. I'll never agree with the more guns-more crime crowd because I know better. In the military I was stationed in Louisiana, a high gun ownership state, for 33 months and the crime rate was a hell of a lot lower there than N.Y. or Ma. It's funny how gun owners never want everyone to own one, but gun haters don't want anyone to own one.
You can take any data and manipulate the interpretation to prove any point. You can take the data an say that blacks do more crime on blacks with guns, so we should control blacks, not guns. Or the less densely populated west has less violent crime that the more densely populated east. So let's move some of the eastern population to the west and balance the rates.
The chart shows violent crime rate goes up with the number of guns owned per household, with two states that are the exception, Montana and Mississippi. 48 states show correlation, except two. What's up with that? I don't know, but the preponderance of the evidence shows a correlation.
Actually, that's not true. The overall correlation between violent crime and gun ownership for these 48 states is 0.41 which is not a strong correlation (mind you for population statistics one would never expect very high correlations such as 0.7). If you drop Montana and Mississippi out of the data the correlation increases only to 0.48. Wyoming and Idaho are near the top for gun ownership yet in the 10 lowest for violent crime rate. Massachusett's stands out as the lowest ownership but is 29 of 48 for violent crime.
This would only suggest that gun ownership and (all) violent crime are not strongly correlated.
This does not evaluate any potential correlations between violent crime with a gun, homicide, or suicide and gun ownership, so one should not extrapolate. Regardless of correlations, there remains the problem of causation. Do those who live in high homicide regions seek to protect themselves with guns or do more guns around make people more likely to commit homicide? It would seem that gun ownership does not induce people to commit more violent crime, but those that do commit violent crime may be more likely to use guns in these states (not addressed in these figues, of course). The only convincing data I have seen for this is in regards to suicide (if I truly intended to kill myself and had a gun handy, I would certainly choose it over a kitchen knife due to it's likely effectiveness and ease, and would likely be more successful).
Rather than bicker about whether or not people should be allowed to own guns why not focus on why, culturally, we American commit so much violent crime? And secondly, why not try to improve the accuracy of NICS instead of impairing gun ownership for everyone? Can't we all agree that felons, those with a history of domestic violence, and those with psychiatric disorders ought to be limited in their purchase of guns?
Too skewed. and the interpretation is irrelevant as the correlation will be skewed to urban or areas with poor economic zones. Funny I never see the stats on legal vs illegal gun crimes. Coincidence? I thnk not. Save us the rhetoric and please get better data with a better presentation. Although I do appreciate the attempt and the idea, its mis-executed.
There simply isn't a strong correlation between percentage of gun ownership and violent crime - one way or the other. There are a whole array of cultural factors that complicate the issue.
CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION. THANK YOU.
glass splash backs for kitchens
Sorry but the statistics quoted are not referenced, I se no cites from whence they come, so they are useless.
2ndly you have no accurate way of determining what percentage of households keep LOADED guns handy. There is just no way of determining this figure with any accuracy, just as:
You really don't know what percentage of households have a gun of any kind
what you have is what people report, and as far as guns go, people in gun law oppressive states are far less likely to report firearms ownership, much less loaded firearms...
people in politically correct states like NY, NJ, CONN, MASS, are more likely to under report firearms ownership, and use than Texans, Alaskans, etc.
Firearms owners are generally reluctant to admit anything to anyone who calls, doing a "Survery"
States with practically no firearms law, like NH, Vermont, etc have very low murder rates
California, Illinois and DC are missing... DC has draconian legislation and stratospheric murder rates. No loaded guns in DC!!! Legally...
What a bunch of hooie as a report...
Racial breakdowns per state are not irrelevant, obviously the FBI finds them very relevant, collecting the statistics available(a lot more reliable than what we are presented here), assiduously.
There are 7 to 8 time the murder rates in the Black community, and 3 times the murder rates in the Hispanic community, t6han in the "White European Community".
That's just a fact and unfortunate for all groups, especially the mostly law abiding citizens in the Black and Hispanic communities.
But by racial breakdown, US murder rates are not significantly different to European rates...
Boy are the figures here on this mashup weak...
I find no evidence from FBI reports that they survey numbers of loaded firearms per household, so I suspect this report is a fraud
Statehealthfacts.org is a privately funded organization with no way to check their figures.
They list no studies of firearms deaths by state by percentage of loaded guns per state.
Fail
Dear people pondering if all of us that own guns are bad, we ARE not. I have concerns about firing on someone to save my life, and more concerns about someone in the court system seeing my action as murder and going to prison for it. The end point will be, if I'm forced to take a life I do so with sadness and only under dire circumstances but at least we may continue to live without the fear of this person coming after us. yes there are police but by the time they can come, you are a statistic. I've been at gun point and I'm still here but I refuse to be a victim anymore. Disarm the criminals and the rest of us gun owners will retire to target shooting. It is a sport you know.
Interesting that there is no simple answer. We have higher violent crime is US and that is a fact.
Banning or providing more is not going to change much other than for staticians
Bobby
If you take just the Violent Crime Rate and just the Gun Ownership numbers, plot them in an Excel spreadsheet as X and Y coordinates, then set it to draw a "best fit" linear relationship, the math is that higher Gun Ownership numbers correlate with higher Violent Crime Rate numbers. This is a hard fact.
Causation? NO. However you CANNOT conclude that right rates of gun ownership correlate with low Violent Crime rates.
What you should be looking at is the age of the populace. Young adults commit most violent crimes. The largest segment of the population is now 50 and older. Look at areas that have high numbers of young people and the incidence of violent crimes will increase irrespective of gun ownership.
For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation's top 15 causes of death though gun ownership in the US is at an all time high.
You are correct in that you cannot correlate gun ownership with low Violent Crime rates. Nor can you correlate low gun ownership with low crime rates. Gun bans, as with Prohibition, don't work.
First off, I am a gun enthusiast, and I support gun ownership as outlined by the 2nd Amendment. However, I believe in being truthful in representing data. The data set portrayed on the map misleads the viewer in thinking that there is a positive correlation between gun. if you take their very same data and plot it in a scatter plot, you will clearly see that there is neither positive nor negative correlation of data. Does anyone really think that the complicated equation that defines the crime rate is impacted by one variable (Gun ownership)? Really? That is like saying rain fall is impacted exclusively by barometric pressure alone. Any meteorologist would tell you that weather prediction involves the interdependence of countless variables that each impacts the outcome.
Steve
A 2010 study you should read: www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp.
In general, it shows that legal gun ownership tended to reduce violent crime. However the reduction amount depends on several factors. It is the least slanted report I have read to date, being neither pro-gun nor anti-gun.
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