Saturday, March 03, 2018
Fact Checking Anti-Gun Statistics
I read a few lefty sites everyday. One is GoodShit by Fred Lapides. He is certainly on the left but has a wide array of interests, many of which coincide with mine.
What hit me today was a paragraph from an article he linked to about guns. The title of the article was: The best available evidence suggests NRA-backed gun policies are making crime worse.
Here is the paragraph:
There is moderate evidence, for instance, that “stand your ground” laws, which remove the requirement for gun owners to attempt to retreat from a situation before using lethal force, increase total rates of homicide. A 2013 study, for instance, found that states passing such laws saw 6 percent to 11 percent increases in their total homicide rate. Another study found that Florida experienced a significant 24 percent increase in total homicides and 32 percent increase in firearm homicides following enactment of the stand-your-ground law in 2005. (Emphasis added).
That didn't sound right. So I checked. Here are the stats I used from something called the disaster center. I tried to double check them from the FBI stats on crime but Florida wasn't in the murder stats by state there. Just not there at all.
But using the disaster center numbers, from 2000 through 2005, when Florida had the old self defense law (run away if you can safely do so), the on average murder rate was 5.4 per 100,000. The rate did jump up in 2006 through 2009 although change in the law regarding self defense was certainly one of a thousand factors in that rise in crime. But for the years 2011 through 2016 the average was 5.13 per 100,000 and for the whole period 2006 through 2016 the average was 5.52 per 100,000.
Math is not my strong point but I don't think that's a 24% increase. I think that's a 2.2% increase and statistically meaningless.
So how can we have an honest conversation about gun violence if the left won't be honest about numbers we can check?
Labels: Florida Murder Rate; Stand Your Ground
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:54 AM 
