It's kind of obvious to the civilised world, but some americans (NRA) still struggle with the concepts of statistics.
For every age group of at least 5 years minimum age, people living in the high-gun states were more than 2.5 times more likely than those in the low-gun states to become homicide victims.
Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 1988–1997
Comments
(11:49:01 AM) mental: http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/2022
(10:41:06 PM) peter: correlation isn't enough to show causation. Maybe people living in high-homicide areas are more likely to keep a gun (that they never use) for security.
(10:42:09 PM) njh: the paper says that and talks about delayed time studies
(10:43:51 PM) peter: I'm not saying that that's likely, i just think that one shouldn't use such a sarcastic lead-in when the blog entry gives only correlation with no further evidence. (I hadn't noticed that the source was a clickable link until just now.)
(10:45:30 PM) peter: The "even after controlling for poverty, urbanization, unemployment, alcohol consumption, and nonlethal violent crime" part is helpful.
(10:45:55 PM) peter: The Conclusions paragraph does caution that "our study cannot determine causation".
(10:46:30 PM) njh: Nothing can determine causation. :)