The antis want you to believe that the South’s “weak gun laws” are responsible for higher levels of “gun violence.” Well, not the South. “Some southern states” have “more gun-related violence than others.” See how that works? The antis cherry pick – including some states, excluding other – to promote their agenda. (FBI crime stats put gun-control crazed California at the top of the firearms-related homicide table.) They stat with a premise – “The weaker the gun laws and the higher the rate of gun ownership in a given state, the more deaths from gun violence that state will see” and shoehorn stats to fit. We’ve said it before . . .
Correlation does not equal causation. But you can use correlation to rule out causation, to disprove a relationship. Check out the chart above: gun ownership up, firearms-related homicides down. Way up. Way down.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that rising firearms ownership caused the drop in firearms-related homicides. There are a lot of potential reasons for the drop: economics, culture, concealed carry liberalization, soaring gun ownership, incarceration rates, improved emergency care, the arrival of killer bees into the U.S, drug addicts switching to weed. It could be any or those things, all of those things, some of those things, none of those things, or some thing or things not on the list
The key point: none of the variable on the list caused the rate to firearms-related homicide rate to increase – because it didn’t increase. Firearms ownership may have stopped the firearms-related homicide rate from dropping even faster, but the weight of numbers suggest otherwise. Not proves. Suggests. But that’s not the point, really.
This chart leads us to the conclusion that gun ownership is not a major factor in American firearms-related homicide rates. That idea alone is powerful stuff – a fact that the antis will ignore, marginalize, mischaracterize and manipulate. But the truth is easy to see, for anyone with their eyes – and mind – open.