There"s No Such Thing As An "American" Homicide Rate

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In September, the FBI released new homicide data, and the overall US homicide rate rose for the second year to an eight-year high. 

According to the report, the nationwide homicide rate in the US in 2016 was 5.3 per 100,000, up from 2015"s rate of 4.9. 

The homicide rate in 2014 - 4.4 per 100,000 - had been a 51-year low, and comparable to rates not seen since the 1950s. 

Homicide rates still remain well below where they were in the 1980s and 1990s, when homicide rates sometimes exceeded 9 per 100,000. 

When it comes to making any serious analysis, however, nationwide homicide rates for a place as large as the United States are next to useless. When we look at numbers on a state-by-state basis, we find that homicide rates vary from 1.3 per 100,000 in New Hampshire to 11.8 per 100,000 in Louisiana. 

To offer some additional context, I"ve included rates from Canadian provinces (using Canada"s 2015 stats) side by side with US states:

Presented as a map: 

There are clear regional differences in many cases. States in the far north and far northeast of the United States report very low homicide rates while certain homicide "hotspots" apparently in Missouri, Maryland, Illinois, and the deep South are driving up US rates. 

These details emphasize the mistake of speaking of the nationwide US homicide rate as if it were in anyway descriptive of any single trend or legislative reality in the US. 

We often hear about homicides are rampant in "America" - presumably caused by high levels of private gun ownership - but any serious look at the numbers forces us to refine our question and instead ask why some parts of the US have some of the lowest homicide rates on earth, while the situation in other areas is considerably different. 

What Are the Important Factors in Homicides? 

Some places largely free of gun restrictions - like the Dakotas, Utah, Idaho, Minnesota, Vermont, and New Hampshire - have very low homicide rates. But other places with similar or more restrictive laws - such as Missouri, California, and most of Latin America - have much higher rates. Obviously, homicide rates are not simply a function of gun laws. 

Even researchers on the political left are increasingly coming to terms with the fact that homicide rates are not simply a matter of passing prohibitionist laws. 

One of the most recent examples of this is new research described by Leah Libresco at the Washington Times. Libresco noted that few, if any, of the gun bans being floated by policymakers is likely to be effective. Libresco notes: 

…my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence...

 

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths...

 

…no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos. … [S]ilencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless...

 

By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.

What Libresco did conclude, was that a host of societal issues are driving much of what we hear about in terms of so-called gun violence. Mental illness, suicide, gang violence, and domestic violence are all important factors that drive gun violence. The problem, Libresco admits, is that simply prohibiting certain types of guns doesn"t really address these issues. 

(For similar articles, see Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic and Justin Cronin at The New York Times.)

Other factors we"ve covered here at mises.org include sky-high incarceration rates in the United States, and how the history, residential mobility, and cultural heterogeneity of the Americas make the US and Latin America quite different from Europe and East Asia in terms of homicide and violence. 

To understand the current trends, then, we have to look beyond a few headlines about rare mass shootings and look at larger demographics and societal trends. A focus on legislation, by contrast, tends to substitute wishful thinking for an understanding of the the complex reality.

 

Two Americas

Authored by Michael Owen,

No amount of statistics or facts will sway either side in the gun control debate, because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems.

The facts of those complex problems are uncomfortable and nobody really wants to come to grips with them.

For example, we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths.

Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries.

The tough questions are those like, why do we have these two Americas?

But that’s an uncomfortable discussion to have. So instead those on the left favor simple minded restrictions that target first world America, with its high gun ownership but very low murder rate, but don’t address the root causes of third world America’s violence at all. Meanwhile those on the right correctly feel their civil rights are constantly threatened, so they are constantly in a state of “better stock up before they finally ban it” and the guns and ammo fly off the shelves. The left’s constant gun control rhetoric is the greatest thing ever for arms manufacturers.

Meanwhile, over the past 40 years, while the number of guns in private hands has doubled, the murder rate has dropped by half. The left are constantly prattling about “assault weapons” which are almost never used to commit murders (about 1% of gun murders; all rifles combined are around 3%). More murders are committed with baseball bats than “assault rifles”; the vast majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns, but it’s easier to sell restrictions that target “assault weapons”, even though such restrictions, even if 100% effective, would make no detectable change in the murder rate (especially because of substitution effects). They favor ridiculous measures such as bans on “high capacity magazines”, as if magazines weren’t cheap and easily swapped out in a fraction of a second.

The uncomfortable fact is that roughly 80% of the US homicide rate is associated with the drug trade, and the drug trade is violent because the drug war reserves it for violent criminals.

We have a system in place where the government subsidizes poverty in urban areas, imposes economic blight in those same areas through heavy taxes and regulations, renders the residents permanently unemployable via the “criminal justice” (sic) system, and creates a lucrative black market in drugs by restricting supply (not to mention increasing demand as people are desperate to escape their circumstances by getting high), meaning the only game in town is often entering the drug trade. The drug trade is violent because those in it have no access to courts to settle disputes. Powerful industries lobby to keep the drug war going; the top spenders are law enforcement unions, the prison industry, big alcohol, tobacco, and pharma.

Guns are not the proximate cause of gun violence in the US. Childlike magical thinking and simple “fixes” to complex problems will not work. But it is comfortable, and self-righteousness feels so good. So I expect it to continue indefinitely.

The Last Frontier For Gun Control: Washington Court Rules In Favor Of Seattle's "Gun Violence" Tax

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

Two years ago, the president of the Seattle City Council offered a rather ludicrous proposition. He wanted Seattle to place a new tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition within the city limits. Ammo would cost an additional 2-5 cents per round, and a firearm would cost an extra $25.

But what was even more absurd than the tax itself, is what the money would be going toward. The tax was supposed to pay for gun violence prevention programs and research.

The way City Council President Tim Burgess explained it, this “gun violence” tax would help offset the costs the city pays to treat gunshot victims. Essentially, it was a tax levied on responsible law abiding gun owners, to pay for the actions of violent criminals.

Despite how utterly stupid that sounds, the proposal passed.

However, it didn’t have the desired effect. To the surprise of no one who actually understands the relationship between private firearm ownership and crime rates, the violent crime rate in Seattle has dramatically increased since the tax was put in place. It also brought in only a small fraction of the revenue that the city council was expecting. In short, the tax was a total failure.

So it’s no surprise that the tax has faced a lawsuit over the fact that Washington has a law that prevents municipalities from regulating firearms. Unfortunately, the Washington Supreme Court recently ruled against the lawsuit on the grounds that taxes aren’t the same as regulations, and cities are well within their right to levy sales taxes.

Regardless of whether the court’s decision was right or wrong, it certainly sets a dangerous precedent. As an article from Breitbart recently pointed out, it opens a new avenue for gun control activists to hamper the Second Amendment.

On August 10 Washington’s high court sided with the City of Seattle, which adopted a “gun violence tax” in a strategy to slither around the state preemption law that placed exclusive authority for regulating firearms in the hands of the State Legislature. And this new scheme could be coming to any city that has an anti-gun rights Mayor and City Council.

In Seattle’s case, the tax is $25 on the sale of each firearm, plus two to five cents for each round of ammunition sold. This threat takes on even more sinister dimensions when one considers the potential for cities to simply up the fee. Seattle started with $25 per gun, but what if they want to raise that to $100, $500 or even $1,000?

It opens the door wide to making gun ownership prohibitively expensive for average citizens. Essentially, Washington’s Supreme Court just handed the gun prohibition lobby and its allies in government a new strategy: If they can’t ban or regulate gun ownership out of existence, they will simply tax it into oblivion.

I think deep down we all know that this is probably the real intent behind Seattle’s gun tax.

The left has tried many times to regulate privately owned firearms out of existence, and in America they have failed far more often than they have succeeded. They’re always looking for a new underhanded approach to gun control and this is it. Firearm and ammunition taxes aren’t about reducing gun violence and saving lives. They’re about exploiting a legal loophole to make firearms too expensive for ordinary people to own.

2016 Chicago Homicides Even Higher Than Originally Reported

2016 was a record breaking year for the city of Chicago, unfortunately just not in any positive ways.  Throughout 2016 we noted several grim milestones that plagued the Windy City: the deadliest month in 23 years, the deadliest day in 13 years, 4,300 people shot...the list goes on and on.  And, as we noted a couple of weeks ago, when it was all said and done Chicago was thought to have recorded around 762 murders in 2016 (see "Chicago Violence Worst In 20 Years: "Not Seen This Level Of Disrespect For Police Ever"").  To put those numbers into perspective, Chicago recorded over 20% more murders in 2016 than New York and Los Angeles combined, despite having a fraction of the population.

And as bad as all those figures are, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, the actual number of homicides recorded in Chicago in 2016 were even higher than the official police data would suggest.  The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that the Medical Examiner"s office tallies “homicides” while the official police data tracks “murders," which exclude intentional killings that are deemed "justified" (e.g. police shootings).  So while the official police data suggests there were 762 murders in 2016 the county numbers reflect 812 homicides including all of the "justified" killings.

The record-setting violence in Chicago is even worse than announced as new evidence shows the city suffered 50 more homicides last year than the numbers publicly reported in the past week.

The city posted a decades-high homicide count of 812 in 2016, per the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. That’s 15% greater than the 762 murders reported by the city"s police department.

The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that the county tallies “homicides” while the police number counts “murders.” Murders are defined as violent acts subject to criminal prosecution. Homicides, according to the medical examiner, include instances “when the death of a person comes at the hand of another person. This does not imply that all homicides are murders that would be subject to criminal prosecution.”

The city police count is also lower because it excludes violent, intentional deaths if the act is deemed justified, including police killings of residents.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of Chicago"s homicides came a result of gunshot wounds while ~80% of the victims in Cook County were African American.

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for victims of homicide in Chicago with 725 decedents being felled by at least one gunshot wound.

African Americans also bore the brunt of the violence in Cook County, which includes Chicago. They accounted for 710 of the county-wide total of 915 (88% of which occurred in the city). Men comprised 90% of the homicide victims in the county.

On a positive note, after a violent opening weekend to the year (see "3 Killed, 27 Wounded As Chicago Opens 2017 With A String Of Murders"), shootings and murders over the past week seem to be much lower than the run-rate for most of December.  Per HeyJackAss!:

And while we would like to hope the recent data points to a less violent 2017, the collapse in shootings seems to be perfectly correlated with a 5-day period of frigid temperatures that likely kept Chicago"s violent youth indoors for a few days.

Here's Why Liberals Are Suddenly Embracing The 2nd Amendment

Submitted by Shaun Bradley via TheAntiMedia.org,

Bureaucrats in California are ringing in the new year by doubling down on their failed policies to stop gun violence. As of January 1st, six new bills are being phased in that close the so-called ‘bullet-button’ loophole and require background checks to buy ammunition. Another policy would have banned magazines that hold over ten rounds, but in a surprise move, the magazine restriction was repealed on December 29th, just ahead of the deadline. Although California has always been a poster child for the progressive agenda, support for these extreme measures seems to have faded — especially since the result of the presidential election.

These new standards were signed by Governor Jerry Brown in the wake of the San Bernardino attack last December, and in many ways, they mimic the registry created in Connecticut after Sandy Hook. Even though the changes solidify California’s status as the most draconian state when it comes to gun rights, public opinion may be at a turning point.

The reality of a Trump administration has shocked many Californians into a newfound appreciation for the 2nd Amendment. Since November, there has been a record number firearms sold in the Golden State — and many of those buying them are liberals. Hopefully, instead of being blinded by identity politics, this can be a moment for both parties to realize gun ownership is a necessary check on centralized power. The 2nd Amendment has long been a point of contention between the left and the right, but perhaps a year like 2016 is what was needed to find some common ground.

Regardless of one’s beliefs, when the president has far-reaching, violative power, concerns of authoritarianism will inevitably come from both sides of the political spectrum. An armed populace, though, has much less to fear from the whims of a dictator, whether they are a fascist or a socialist.

Yet if the original magazine ban hadn’t been repealed, thousands of innocent people would have been turned into felons overnight. Those who don’t comply with the numerous other new stipulations are still at risk.

For this reason, those who oppose the drug war should empathize with gun owners who find themselves in the crosshairs of the State. People who have experimented safely with marijuana or psychedelics understand that when used responsibly, they can be important tools in improving quality of life. That’s why it’s infuriating to see politicians who have never experienced the benefits of these substances make laws that put people in jail for simply possessing a plant.

But why isn’t there the same anger when politicians who have never been in a fight or shot a gun (yet are protected by armed bodyguards) create laws criminalizing individuals’ choices on how they defend themselves? The drug war uses law enforcement on non-violent people to enforce arbitrary victimless crimes, but it is just as immoral when law-abiding gun owners are targeted by the State at the behest of a fearful public.

This targeting amounts to the collectivization of millions of people, the vast majority of whom will never harm anyone. In the same way, the majority of cannabis or psychedelic users do not harm others — let alone themselves — proving blanket bans unreasonably violate the rights of non-violent individuals.

Further, instances where firearms are used in self-defense are almost never covered by the press —  but lives saved by guns should carry significant weight in the discussion. Taking away legal firearms only limits options for those who become victims when the police aren’t close enough to intervene. Obviously, not everyone has the desire to carry a firearm, just as there are many people who have no interest in using drugs, but entrusting government as the mediator of what is reasonable and ethical is a fatal mistake that has been highlighted throughout history.

The well-known tactics of doublespeak and problem-reaction-solution have been deployed on the public to link society’s perception of gun ownership to criminality. Terms like bullet-button, high-capacity, automatic rifle, and ghost gun are all manipulative words that have been used to confuse those who aren’t assimilated into American gun culture. With little personal experience on which to base their opinions, many liberals unquestionably accept the State’s assertions that guns are to blame — accusations that inevitably follow these tragic scenarios.

Unfortunately, the government has a poor track record of addressing the root cause of the issue and not just a symptom of the disease. There is no amount of laws that can be written to solve the underlying societal problems driving the violence, and like it or not, the weapons of millions of Americans are here to stay. When crucial information from the media is being intentionally omitted, the result can be just as deceptive as an outright lie.

Even the infamous false claim that there were 355 mass shootings in 2015 made its rounds and was regurgitated on major networks. But deliberate wording was used to skew the data and guide the public’s reaction. Out of those 355 incidents, only a handful resulted in any loss of life, even though the audience associated mass shootings with the few mass murders they had seen broadcast non-stop.

The source of the data is a site called Mass Shooting Tracker, and their calculations are vastly different than most would assume. The organization clearly states how they define mass shootings on their web page:

“The current FBI definition of mass murder, commonly accepted by the media as a proxy for ‘mass gun violence,’ is three or more people murdered in one event. We believe this does not capture the whole picture. Many people may survive a shooting based on luck alone…Our definition is this: a mass shooting is an incident where four or more people are shot in a single shooting spree. This may include the gunman himself, or police shootings of civilians around the gunman.”

The statistics echoed throughout the mainstream media to convince the public that we’re in the midst of a mass shooting epidemic — and that assault rifles are largely to blame — has been a spectacle. Even something as simple as the number of gun deaths is consistently inflated by the rate of suicides, which are often included in tallies. The gun control position would at least have some integrity if they went after the weapons that are used in 68% of all murders — handguns. But instead of standing on the values they preach, gun control advocates turn to emotional manipulation that undermines logic to target rifles, which account for only 3% of all murders. FBI reports have consistently shown an overall decrease in violent crime, but only cities that have instituted the strictest gun control, like Chicago, have fallen victim to unprecedented turmoil — turmoil that, if state gun laws worked, would be avoided.

The democratic nature of the United States is only valuable if it remains representative of all opinions without marginalizing the rights of the minority. The rise of the Calexit movement has created a unique opportunity to open up the debate on the issue of state rights, which until now has mostly been associated with right-wing parts of the country.

Hopefully, the perfect storm of political upheaval and government overreach can bring people together behind individual freedom. The new laws being implemented in California exemplify a failed solution to a complex problem. If 2016 did one thing, it highlighted the differences in values and vision that separate the ideologies of the nation. In the pursuit of diversity, the differences in ideas have been placed on the back burner, but if progress that is more than skin deep is going to be made, then all views — even the unpleasant ones — need to be heard.