Gun Fiction vs. Gun Facts: What Gun Control Supporters Don't Know

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Gun Fiction vs. Gun Facts: What Gun Control Supporters Don't Know

On April 25 in Washington, D.C., supporters of gun control held a "Stop the NRA Rally and March." Designed to counter what organizers feel is the outsized influence of the National Rifle Association and other pro-Second Amendment groups, the march was widely recognized as a bust, with a stunningly low turnout.

But it wasn't just a disappointment in terms of sheer numbers. The protesters who did show up had an amazingly weak grasp of basic trends related to the number of mass shootings, the effectiveness of assault-weapon bans, and the use of firearms in violent crime.

Hopefully they will get a chance to read the Justice Department's newest report outlining the dramatic drop in gun violence over the last two decades.

Reason TV's Amanda Winkler and Joshua Swain attended the rally. Here's what they found.

About 1 minute.

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Comments

[DaveSs]

So, how badly did they take the facts?

These videos are no fun if they don't show the uninformed engaging in spontaneous meltdowns.

[Jingles]

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[surfgeorge]

My experience is that facts have no effect whatsoever on such people.

Mostly just a glazed-over-eyes look and then they ignore you.

I once asked a group of women at a "Women Against Guns" table if any of them had read the works of award-winning criminologist Gary Kleck, and they looked at me and each other with blank stares. But they knew enough to tell me about the causation of violence and gun crime to substantiate the ending of gun ownership by civilian citizens.

[sam the man]

I personally find people who seek to end gun ownership by civilian citizens as more dangerous than mass shooters.

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[Live Free or Diet]

My experience is that facts have no effect whatsoever on such people.

My experience is the facts anger them. "You shouldn't listen to anything the NRA says!"
They get even angrier when I tell them I'm using the FBI's UCR data and other data the government publishes in the Statistical Abstract of the United States. (The journalism class I took in college had that as the one required book. "Don't write a story without that on your desk!")

[Harvard]

Tulpa isn't going to like this.

[GregMax]

I am a no compromise on gun-rights person. I would, though, question the idea that the drop in gun violence in the last two decades is related to gun ownership.
Roe v Wade was in 1973 after which wholesale abortions began. The question I have is what is the effect, beginning 16-20 later (1989 - 2003+), of the reduced number of "unwanted" children on crime statistics.

[DaveSs]

Banning leaded gasoline and lead paint is also bandied about as a reason for the decline.

One thing we know for certain: It wasn't because of tougher gun control. The AWB and Brady Background Checks were the only major laws passed in the 90s. AWB was of course totally useless and background checks didn't really become operational until the end of 1998, well after the decline had already began.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

I agree that correlation is not causation. But what I don't think can be denied is that the Gun Control advocates' predictions of blood in the streets following this loosening of anti-gun laws or that have never materialized.

[Teve Torbes]

You should start listening/reading freakanomics podcast/blog. The economist, Steven Levitt, made waves with that exact correlation. Abortion may have reduced crime rates.

[Acosmist]

Nope. He walked that one back, because he was wrong about it.

[#HOLO YOLO]

When/where did he do that?

[Adamsmith1776]

The facts are irrelevant. This is all about feelings. I feel bad that there was a school shooting, and therefore we must take away the rights of the innocent to own guns because if there were no guns, there could be no shootings, and we could all live with rainbow-maned unicorns in a magic land by the sea, and I would feel much better.

[Too_Big_to_Fail]

Plus, guns are specifically made to kill children.

[fish]

This is all about feelings.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings
Trying to forget my feelings of love
Teardrops rolling down on my face
Trying to forget my feelings of love

Feelings, for all my life I'll feel it
I wish I've never met you, girl
You'll never come again
Feeling, woo-o-o feeling
Woo-o-o, feel you again in my arms

Feelings, feelings like I've never lost you
And feelings like I'll never have you again in my heart

Feelings, for all my life I'll feel it
I wish I've never met you, girl; you'll never come again

Feelings, feelings like I've never lost you
And feelings like I'll never have you again in my life

Feelings, woo-o-o feeling it,
woo-o-o, feeling again in my arms
Feelings

[InlineSkate]

"I think massacres are more frequent"

This is what happens when people assume that more coverage = more incidents.

[wolfpackarmy]

Too short. Those must've been the only people there.

[UnCivilServant]

Yeah, those were the only people who showed up.

Ten anti-gun groups try to protests in DC, manage to scrounge up less than 100 people, press included.

One pro-gun group tries to protest in Albany, breaks protest park with over 10K and runs out of room for more protesters.

[UnCivilServant]

Crap! I messed up by end bold tag.

I'm sorry people.

[UCrawford]

"What gun control supporters don't know"

Their ass from a hole in the ground?

You're talking about people who do not care about facts or results (because the facts pretty clearly wreck their case), they care about arguing the issue on an uninformed emotional level because of how guns make them "feel". There's a description for people like that...idiots.

[hey now]

What a fool believes, he sees

[Nashdiesel]

Last I checked the firearm homicide rate in the US was a lot higher than most first world countries and I think this is the stat that gun control people like to point to. In the US gun homicide (excluding suicide) is around 3 per 100,000. Compared that to most of Western Europe where it's around 0.3 per 100,000. By that measure, you are 10 times more likely to get shot in the US than you are in Western Europe.

[RPK]

Ten times more likely doesn't impress me when we're talking about 3 per 100,000. The number gets even lower when you exclude justifiable homicide.

[Nashdiesel]

That occurred to me but I was curious if that was actually included in those stats. The definition of "homicide" includes "deliberate" and "unlawful" which I think excludes self-defense.

10 times is 10 times. Note the 0.3 rate is a generous figure. The gun homicide rate in the UK is 0.04. It's pretty clear that the less guns lying around the less likely you're going to get shot dead. What is notable is that the Swiss rate is at 0.5 despite guns being all over the place. If anyone actually cares about the delta, that's probably a good comparison to start looking at.

[DaveSs]

I'd actually say singling out firearms when discussing crime is really not all that useful. People use the tools they have available.

I think its also important to take into account regional information. Utah and New Jersey after all are two entirely different places despite both being highly urbanized. (Utah really is highly urbanized...practically no one lives out in the desert). Needless to say Utah is much safer than New Jersey.

Even within a state the variations can be quite large:

Chicago is about 25% of the Illinois population but accounts for around 75% of the murder and violent crime. If you exclude Chicago from the rest of Illinois, most of Illinois is really not all that different from Europe.

[Nashdiesel]

That's true I think we can apply a number of factors. Cultural clashes are probably a big one. Comparing the US to a culturally homogenized Island Nation like Japan probably isn't very meaningful.

In terms of generic murder rates the US is also much higher than West Europe, regardless of the method. The US rate is around 4.8. Conversely Switzerland is 0.7. The UK is at 1.1. The US is a violent country compared to the rest of the first world, but I don't think banning guns (or attempting to) actually solves that. It is notable that the proliferation of guns does have an impact. Violent crime rates appear unaffected by gun control, but gun homicide rates do appear to drop, at least in first world countries that aren't the United States.

[DaveSs]

Its IMO a combination of homogeneity and climate.

The more homogeneous areas of the US tend to be where there is lower criminal activity.

Climate I think also seems to be a factor. Where the temps are warmest, there do you find more crime.

We see this every year in the Chicago area. July/August/September are the #1 months for violent crime and murder. Last year the peak criminal activity extended well into November owing to the warmer temps last fall.

This particular year February/March/April were much cooler than average and the crime rates reflect that. The recent warmth though has brought the hoodlums out of doors.

[[e-mail]]

I have to disagree. The most violent city in the nation is Detroit, and it's definitely not a warm area of the country.

[ant1sthenes]

I would be more interesting in what you would see if you broke the U.S. down into states and compared those states to European countries. Are we generally a more violent nation, or are there just some shitholes that are fucking up our stats?

[Nashdiesel]

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or.....-and-state

Louisiana is the highest at 11. Hawaii the lowest at 1.2.

It's probably fallacy to compare this in the context of gun control laws because except for Hawaii and I guess Alaska it's pretty easy to simply buy a gun in state A and use it in state B.

Notably Vermont is at 1.3 and they have incredibly lax gun control laws. Still, compared to the Western European countries almost all the states are notably worse. Even if you single out Hawaii it still has a higher murder rate than almost anywhere in the EU.

[DaveSs]

From what I understand its cities over 150,000 in population that are the main drivers of our murder rate.

[DaveSs]

As opposed to any particular state's policies.

[Tejicano]

One thing to understand about those numbers - each country adds things up differently.

In the US we count every death which was willfully caused by another.

The UK only counts those acts which, after the trial and sentencing, were ruled as murder. So murders in the UK which get pleaded down or charged as whatever they call "manslaughter" are not counted in their statistics.

[Gindjurra]

Exactly. If UK police fatally shoot someone, it's not considered a gun-related death. In the US, such a death is included in the overall gun-related death statistics.

[Bender Bending Rodriguez]

You are also more likely to be beaten to death in the US than you are in Western Europe. Is this owing to some paucity of hands and feet among European miscreants?

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"Don't know"?

Or, "refuse to acknowledge"?

[John Galt]

Hopefully they will get a chance to read the Justice Department's newest report outlining the dramatic drop in gun violence over the last two decades.

Okay. So Reason is expecting the mentally ill/ mentally deficient/ immorally biased/self described "liberal" to come to a reasonable conclusion after reviewing the facts?

Yeah, that's going to happen for sure!

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