Lies, DL, Stats

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics:

Now this is an interesting chart:



At the link, the fellow talks about where his numbers come from, in case anyone wants to take a closer look.

I'd like to see some sense of the movement of the states to "shall-issue" concealed carry permits. Then we can tie that trend line not just to "How Many Guns Do People Own?", but also "How Many People Are Carrying Guns in Public?" I suspect you'd see some correlation with the downward slope.

[UPDATE: Ack! I see that was actually worked in already -- it's in the dim grey bars in the background, rather than a trend line. It looks like there is no obvious correlation, unless there is a 'critical mass' of concealed carry states that served as a tipping point for the trend. In such a case, criminals could easily move efforts at first, but at some point there would be no more places to go except the few hard-control states. There, criminals would be in direct competition with each other, so there would be some sort of ecology at work limiting the total harm done. Alternatively, of course, there could simply be no correlation at all; it could be that concealed carry rates have no appreciable effect on gun deaths, as counterintuitive as that would be for both the gun rights and gun control crowds.]

H/t: Gwa45.