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The love of guns in the United States has been well documented, as have multiple mass shootings across the country such as those in Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown, and Virginia. The ease of access to guns in American society comes at a shocking cost.
As of September 2016, almost 11,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence. Despite this high death toll, mass shootings in America show no sign of disappearing.
The Stateside obsession with guns can appear baffling to UK observers unfamiliar with its origins. So just how did this gun culture become so deep-rooted in the American psyche?
BBC source: Why Are Americans so Obsessed with Guns?
Wikipedia: Gun politics in the United States
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Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Guns?
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(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:53AM
Exactly how is it "sophistry" to dispute your numbers when you produce blatant falsehoods?
Lets talk about Alabama. Alabama will be our proxy for black people. I've lived there, every white guy who graduated high school seems to move to Huntsville and be a rocket scientist and the rest of the state is a like all black.
According to the U.S. Census [census.gov], the white population in Alabama is 68.5% of the state population in 2010, and estimated to be 69.5% in 2015. "Black or African American" was 26.2% in 2010 and 26.8% in 2015. Thus, roughly 2.5 white people live in Alabama for every black person. And since the Huntsville [wikipedia.org] metropolitan area (I'll be generous and not just count the city, but the entire metro area) is somewhere between 417k in 2010 and 441k in 2014, and the entire population of Alabama according to the Census in 2015 is estimated to be 4.85 MILLION -- that means even if every single person in Huntsville's 400k+ population were white (not true), the rest of Alabama would still have over double the amount of white people compared to black people.
Anyway its 2013 per 100K gun death rate was 18, almost but not quite three times a white state.
Interestingly, you omit what the gun death rate is BY RACE in Alabama. Here are the numbers from 2014 [kff.org] for example. The black rate for gun deaths is 20.5, but the WHITE rate for gun deaths is 15.3. So actually the gun death rate for WHITES was "almost by not quite two times a white state." Oh wait, by the majority of its population, Alabama IS a white state!
Take a look at that last link, actually... you might notice any interesting pattern. Generally speaking, you are correct that gun violence in black communities is higher than white communities. You could have just cited national stats to prove that -- I have no idea why you feel the need to label various states as "white states" and "black states." But ALSO generally speaking, when the overall gun violence rates go up, they go up significantly for BOTH black and white communities. When they go down, they go down for BOTH black and white communities. (Note Massachusetts, where the black gun death rate is 7.3 -- even below that of a white state!! Same with Connecticut! And the white death rates there are proportionally lower than average too.)
How does that fit into your racial narrative? Is just the random proximity to black people enough to cause white people to go crazy and start shooting each other?!
Yes, there are some exceptions to that general trend, but overall it seems what you're actually proving is that some states have OVERALL higher rates of gun violence than others. Why?
Well, here's an article [theatlantic.com] that actually looks at a much broader selection of statistics than you do to try to tease it out. Turns out that some of the best correlations between gun deaths and states exist when you look at poverty level within a state and percentage of working class jobs in the state economy.
Basically, poorer people shoot each other more. The end. You could have skipped your entire rant and weirdly selective stats and just said that. It so happens that black folks (and hispanic folks) tend to be poorer that white folks in general too. Amazing coincidence?? No. Turns out that when you control for socioeconomic status that the vast majority of your supposed race gap in gun violence disappears.
Its not entirely surprising... there is no magic dirt, so transplanting a "X" from "X-land" will naturally tend to get results extremely similar to "X" when they grow in different dirt.
Interestingly, when black children are raised in upper-class white households, turns out they erase most of the supposed "racial gap" in intelligence, educational performance, etc. Huh... maybe changing the "dirt" does matter... maybe what you're talking about are cultural and demographic trends, not actually primarily caused by race itself.
That's not "sophistry and distraction" -- it's an alternative explanation backed up by statistical evidence. Now, I'll grant you that in such studies there are often still smaller gaps that appear between racial groups, but it's interesting that MOST of the discrepancies can be eliminated when you control for various factors (socioeconomic background, educational level and parents' educational level, being the most important). Is the remaining gap the result of racial differences or more minor confounding factors? Statistical evidence can't yet prove one or the other, but what's certain is most of the numbers you're citing are misleading and sometimes completely bogus.
The broader lesson here is that if you choose to see the world through a racist lens, you will find evidence to support your racism. If you open your mind to the possibility that there are other confounding factors though, you might realize there's a lot more going on here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:05AM
By the way, I realized that I forgot to mention an important qualification -- the racial breakdown by state is by race of VICTIM, not perpetrator. I used this as a proxy because I couldn't quickly find data by state that also broke down by race for perpetrators. But we do know from numerous crime statistics [fbi.gov] that intrarace homicides (white kills white, black kills black) are MUCH more common than interrace (white kills black, black kills white) crimes. So it's a reasonable assumption that the pattern in most states for race of offender follows race of victim, at least overall.
I'm sure the omission of such a qualification (even though it's plain from the link I gave in my first post) will have some people here brand my entire argument as "fake news" or something. Oh well. I'm just trying to provide a more complete perspective.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:12AM
Exactly how is it "sophistry" to dispute your numbers when you produce blatant falsehoods?
Standard tactic - accuse your opponents of your own failings. Everything that bot posts is sophistry.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:36AM
Biiiiingo. The holy trinity of the neo-reactionary right is hypocrisy, projection, and ignorance.
This means you, VLM. Uzzard. J-Mo. Kyuubey, if you're still here. Runaway, you too sometimes. You don't fool anyone with their eyes open, and for the benefit of those whose aren't, I'll point it out every--single--*fucking*--time--one of you festering shitgluttons decides to piss in the meme pool.
Mod me down all you like; all it does is expose your own hypocrisy and taint your souls even further.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:47AM
and
You realise that if the intra-race murders were mostly black, and the inter-race murders were mostly blacks murdering whites, then the figures would come out as you say while still matching what VLM said?
Statistics by the victim's race are useless here, you need the statistics by perpetrator.
(And isn't dividing by race of victim racist anyway? Are black lives worth less so you count them separately?)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @09:12AM
Black-on-black crime accounts for about 90% of black victims
White-on-white crime accounts for about 85% of white victims
Your objections are without merit
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:40AM
Taking the big assumption that your figures are correct, and applying them only to the murder rates above, then :
4,850,000 population 69% White 31% Black :
3,346,500 White 1503500 Black
20.05/100000 * 1503500 * .9 = 271 Black Kills Black
20.05/100000 * 1503500 * .1 = 30 White Kills Black
15.3/100000 * 3346500 *.15 = 77 Black kills White
15.3/100000 * 3346500 * .85 = 435 White kills White
465 White killers in total /pop 3346500 *100000
348 Black killers in total / pop 1503500 *100000
=
Blacks are killers at 23 per 100000
Whites are killers at 14 per 100000.
Isn't playing with numbers fun? I wonder what those numbers become if you manage to exclude gun suicides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:05PM
So, you're saying that, based upon your numbers, black-skinned people are 1.6 times as likely to murder someone as white-skinned people?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:25PM
Kill someone, not necessarily murder. Those figures include suicide and lawful kills too.