2010 Gun Laws vs. Gun Homicide Rates Correlation Table

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Some of you may know, but I normally put out this chart every year to track the correlation between the strictness of state gun laws and the rate of gun homicides. The 2010 FBI Uniform Crime Reports were just released, allowing me to create last year's table. Last year actually showed a very very slight negative correlation (meaning that the states with more lenient gun laws tended to have lower a lower gun homicide rate).

The chart is organized from left to right according to the Brady Campaign's state gun control rankings. California, the state with strictest laws is to the left; Utah the the state with the most lenient laws is to the right.

GHR2010.gif
*Florida does not report crime statistics to the FBI and is omitted.

Sources:
FBI Uniform Crime Reports (for # of gun homicides per state)
US Cenus (for state populations to calculate gun homicide rate)
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (state gun control law rankings)

The raw data is available upon request.
 
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Thanks for the information and effort.

I am curious why you listed the states in the order you did, from left to right.

Why not order them from highest to lowest, or the reverse, so one could get a quick idea of how many states are better or worse than one's residence?
 
A few years ago, I ran across the Brady grades for various states, I changed the letter grades to ##, A=4, B=3, etc.
Then I googled crime statistics and regressed crime on grade. There was a not statistically significant correlation. That is, the lower the Brady grade, the lower the crime.
 
Good question----I betcha over here in Kali we average 1.5 police shootings a day (state wide). And I would further venture to guess that half of those occur right here in the greater Los Angeles area......
 
Great post... thank you. I wonder how much the data would change in the southern states if crimes related to illegal Mexican drugs were omitted.
 
Mike1234567 said:
Great post... thank you. I wonder how much the data would change in the southern states if crimes related to illegal Mexican drugs were omitted.
Click to expand...
I also wonder how much the data would change overall if crime related to the illegal trade of drugs was omitted.
 
J-Bar,

The states are listed according to the Brady Campaign's ranking of how strict state gun laws are. California being home to the strictest gun laws in the nation, Utah the most lenient.

The chart is organized so we can compare the relationship between strict gun laws and gun murder rates. Clearly, strict gun laws do not result in less gun murders.

I edited the first post to clarify the chart's organization.
 
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I would really be interested in the correllation (if any) between the gun crime rate and the percentage of residents in each state that lived in large cities.
I would postulate that large cities are concentrated crime areas, and the more large cities a state has (as a percentage of it's population), the higher the overall crime rate will be.

Washington DC is the ultimate example--it is essentially one city. DC has strict gun control laws and a high crime rate--but as we all know, correllation is not necessarily causation. I say it is the population density that is the key, but that's just a hypothesis.

Whether a state has strict or lenient gun laws is probably irrelevant, because criminals (by definition) are not overly concerned with what laws say.
 
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Anybody wanna edit in a line of best fit? Although with those values being all over the place like that I doubt you could find a reasonable slope that well reflects the data. With Louisiana's shocking statistic there it might would even be a positive slope..
Or is that blue line the line of best fit?
 
El Mariachi said:
Wowch, what's up with Loozy-anna?......
Click to expand...

What's up with Louisiana is black people shooting each other nearly every day in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

It's a combination of high crime welfare ghettos and drug related crime.

Last year New Orleans was very happy that they only had 68 shooting deaths by mid-March. Apparently this was a big drop from the previous year... :uhoh:
 
12gaugeTim,

The blue line is the line of best fit, and it has a downward slope. Without Louisiana, the slope would be even more negative, suggesting that states with strict gun laws tended to have a higher gun murder rate.
 
cbrgator said:
12gaugeTim,

The blue line is the line of best fit, and it has a downward slope. Without Louisiana, the slope would be even more negative, suggesting that states with strict gun laws tended to have a higher gun murder rate.
Click to expand...
I agree, it does seem likely that states that have higher gun murder rates would try to have stricter gun laws.

Sent from Tapatalk
 
I wonder why the Brady rankings have Colorado towards the left hand side? Is that because of the City of Denver's silly restrictions?
 
It seems to me it really relates to rural states having lower crime rates and they also tend to have lenient gun laws.
 
Just curious, but how do they figure Utah as the state with the most lenient laws? Off the top of my head, I'd say that at least Alaska, Vermont, Arizona, and Idaho are more lenient... Anyone know the reasoning?
 
IMO the homicide rate in Mo. has increased in part due to an increase in gang activity throughout the state. Gangs are no long content to reside in urban areas but are now sending members out into smaller cities with populations of 10,000 or less to set up shop. It's no longer just a "big city" problem.
 
Wow, that Louisiana sure is a huge anomaly in the statistics. The overall trend is that the gun law heavy states have high homicide rates.
 
Once again we learn that despite the false old canard that "letting people have guns decreases crime" and the false old canard that "restricting guns decreases crime," there really is almost no statistical effect at all of gun laws on crime.
 
There is essentially no correlation shown here. To determine the impact of tightening or relaxing gun controls, you need to do a lot more than compare gun homicides across states. John Lott's excellent book "More Guns, Less Crime" shows the difficulties involved and the level of intricate statistical study needed.

That said, your graph is valuable in showing that there is no simple relationship between gun crime and controls. In fact, your graph implies no relationship at all, though I do believe there are relationships, but it is necessary to dig deeper (as John Lott did) to find them.
 
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