The Most Common Dishonest Ploy in the Gun Control Debate

The phrase where, if you ever see it, you know someone is trying to trick you

There is one dishonest trick I seen constantly in the gun debate — one that seems like everyone should be wise to it by now, but I keep seeing it still. It is the phrase “gun deaths.” You can see it here from Gavin Newsom recently.

Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom

Here is an image the @NRA and the @GOP are hoping you won't see. Turns out, smart gun laws work...

Now, I know you expect him to be slimy, but I still can’t believe people keep using this useless nonsense as if it’s supposed to make a point. The chart he shows you is absolutely garbage because it tells you nothing useful. Let me explain why.

Now, I have no idea what that gun law strength score is on. Apparently Florida has decently strong gun laws or something, but let’s just accept that at face value. The important thing is what they’re comparing it to a chart of gun deaths (per 100,000 people) by state.

Now here is the thing I wish everyone knew: gun deaths = gun suicides.

The majority of gun deaths are suicides. So the gun deaths chart is mainly a chart of how common a gun is used in a suicide. So all that Newsom chart told you is that there is a correlation between gun laws and choice of a gun as a suicide weapon.

What it doesn’t tell you, is whether it affects the overall suicide rate or the overall homicide rate (which is usually the focus of gun control debates). For that, you need to do a comparison to the overall homicide rate or suicide rate.

This is another thing that infuriates me. You’ll see comparison to other states or other countries “gun deaths” — or if slightly more honest “gun homicides” — but that doesn’t tell you anything. If gun laws prevent people from using a gun as a homicide weapon or gun as a suicide weapons but just as many people are killed with knives or rope, that’s not a victory. No one goes, “Oh. Good. He was only beaten to death. He wasn’t shot.” That’s why, to actually see if gun laws might be useful, you need to look at overall homicide rate for all types of homicides. Here’s one such chart:

Now it’s not so clear a picture, is it? You have states with strict gun laws and high murder rate (Illinois) and states with little gun restrictions and few murders (New Hampshire) — and pretty much everything in between. There seems to be almost no correlation between gun laws and murder rate.

What about overall suicide rate? Seems almost dishonest to worry about that since the gun control people pretty much never talk about it — unless you call them out on the “gun deaths” slight of hand (“What? You don’t care about suicides?” Well, you guys don’t. You only talk about AR-15s and school shootings and pretend your bad charts talk about that). But here is suicide rate by state:

I feel like you have a stronger correlation between gun laws and overall suicide rate, but it seems more like a regional problem than a gun law problem. Interestingly, Illinois, which is high on the murder rate, is very low on suicide.

But looking at just the state as a whole isn’t the most useful thing to do — especially when talking about murder — as we know most murders by state are usually restricted to a few cities. So here is a chart of homicide rates by county:

Most counties are lax gun laws, low murder rates, with most states having a hotspot or two. I’m curious about that big murder county in Alaska — what’s going on there? And it’s starting to look like the deep south has a murder problem.

But I digress. My main point is that gun deaths means gun suicides and that it’s a useless stat that people only bring up to trick you. And my other point is that if people wanted to make a useful comparison, you need to look at overall murder rates.

Oh, and I have a final point: When arguing about gun rights, all these stats are completely pointless because firearm ownership is a right and rights don’t go away because someone has some numbers or charts they think proves it’s bad.