I've already mentioned that
the federal funding for gun violence research has been cut since the facts have an "anti-gun" bias and
the Tiahrt Amendment protects the illegal firearms trade, which means that the debate has been running on
literal science fiction
(not to mention the work of Lott and Kleck which is figurative science
fiction). "Fat Tony" Scalia produced a judicial "opinion" that was pure
sophistry hiding ignorance of the facts.
The real
point here is that even statistics are suffering in this battle to stack
the deck. Thus, The National Rifle Association likes to argue that
criminals, or people
intent on committing a crime, will obtain guns no matter what the law
says. Among the 5,417 gun homicides in 2012 that the FBI assigns a
circumstance to (3,438 are "unknown circumstances"), a mere 1,324 were
committed in conjunction with another felony. Three times that (3,980)
were committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens. Of that, over half
(1,968) were the result of an argument that escalated fatally out of
control.
To put it another way: otherwise unpremeditated
murders, where people kill out of momentary rage, are the single most
common type of gun homicide in America. More than gangland killings
(822); more than murders committed during robberies (505) and drug deals
(311) combined.
But, are the data which is coming from official sources even accurate in this matter?
Slate magazine tried to find out the facts, but like concrete data as to how many concealed carry permit holders actually go bad and
who REALLY relies on the "get away with murder" laws, anything that has to be turned up needs to be done manually.
The
feature was meant to be a provocation of sorts: We knew that those rows
of figures, each one attached to a name, piling atop one another every
day, made for an arresting visual, one that might trouble even the most
ardent gun-rights supporter.
But as time went by and
the interactive was discussed, questioned, and cited, this provocation
also became a kind of experiment. How many deaths were being reported
on, and how many were falling through the cracks? Why was it that no
single source was collecting this data in real time? In other words, we
wanted to know if an interactive like this can actually be valuable as
something besides a provocation—whether crowdsourcing can produce
real-time data and whether that data is useful and complete. (Hoping
people might use our data for their own research purposes, we made it
available as a downloadable file.)
A year after
Newtown, the 11,400-plus human figures on that list remain a chilling
reminder of the toll guns take on Americans every day. And the answers
to our questions have started to become clear. Some people did use our
data, for both interesting visualizations and public programs
(sometimes, alas, without reading it carefully first). But we’ve also
learned some tough lessons about how hard it is to track death by gun in
America. The overwhelming likelihood is that our interactive missed
more than half of the gun deaths in the past 12 months. The main reason
there is no single source collecting this data in real time is surely
because it is an enormous, daunting task—one that we only made a small
dent in, with the help of devoted volunteers.
The
statistics which are slowly, painstakingly assembled by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention from death certificates, find that about
32,000 people are killed by guns in America each year. Unfortunately,
the CDC's data in addition to possibly being incomplete is not published
in a timely fashion. For example, the most recent year for which
preliminary data is available is 2011 and the CDC's "exact" number was
32,163. Slate also found that some gun deaths fell through the cracks.
Additionally, Slate used everyone who was killed by a gun (e.g. Tamerlan
Tsarnaev), which caused an uproar from the right.
Slate also found that:
Suicides, it turns out, are this project’s enormous blind spot. Most
every homicide makes the local paper, even if in large cities these
stories are sometimes relegated to a mere news brief. Accidental
shootings are usually reported upon, as are shootings by law enforcement
and incidents in which civilians kill in self-defense. But suicides are
mostly invisible. And the fact is that suicides make up 60 percent or
more of all deaths by gun in America. In our interactive, misleadingly,
only about 10 percent of recorded deaths were deemed suicides by our
crowdsourced categorizers.
Slate has a companion piece to this
The Missing 20,000 Gun Deaths.
Suicide accounts for the bulk of gun deaths, which is a fact I know
annoys you greatly. On the other hand, the data also shows that owning
a firearm is far more dangerous to the owner.
Ultimately, the lack of information filters down to researchers. Though most scientists Slate
talked to said that they’d always found individual police departments
forthcoming and helpful. There is widespread frustration that data isn’t
systematically available in a more timely manner for people doing the research. “I don’t know why we
don’t have rapid case accounts,” said Harvard’s Cathy Barber. “It’s
crazy that we are using 2010 data.”
The real bottom
line is that we cannot have a serious discussion about this topic
without accurate information. The information which has been fueling
the debate is pretty much wrong whether it is that the Second Amendment
relates to private arms or studies that show more guns is the reason
there is less crime. Indeed, it doesn't help your side of the argument
if the "facts" you provide are bullshit, or just plain non-existent.
It's time the debate started using facts rather than wishful thinking.
