Lies, Damn Lies and Liberal Statistics

Liberals never let a good tragedy go to waste.  The bigger the better.  The latest shooting in Aurora, Colorado has the gun-grabbers again railing against our liberties while the blue staters confect dubious statistics to make themselves feel better.

First came the liberals' favorite go-to pseudo-conservative, David Frumble.  Mr. Frumble compiled data that showed, among other things, that voting for John McCain caused gun violence, and voting for Barack Obama prevents it.

All his "data" really showed was that where there are more guns, there are more incidents involving them.  More cars = more accidents, more free speech = more people being offended, more unprotected sex = more venereal disease.  Earth shattering, isn't it?

There are many problems with his numbers, which to be fair, he admits don't prove causation (but let's get them out there anyway to feed the frenzy!)

For example, Illinois voted for Obama and Mr. Frumbles claims it has a lower than average gun death  statistic (more on that lie in a minute).  However, if you disaggregate the data, it reveals just the opposite.  Chicago voted overwhelmingly for Obama and it has some of the worst gun violence in the nation.  Crime centers Springfield, Decatur, Peoria and East St Louis also voted heavily for Obama.  The rest of the state went for McCain or for Obama just narrowly, but is almost free of gun violence.  Add in that Chicago has a severe gun ban, while downstate Illinois does not, and you see just how meaningless such liberal twaddle is.

Massachusetts is More Violent than Colorado

But let's get down to the hard numbers.  What liberals conveniently avoid is overall violent crime statistics, because they do not correlate with gun laws or number of guns per capita.

A liberal from Massachusetts snarked that she was glad she lived there and not Colorado. If she was referring to crime rates and gun deaths, she is deluded:

2010 Firearm Murders per 100,000

Colorado: 1.28
Massachusetts: 1.78
New York: 2.64
Illinois: 2.81
US Average:  2.84

2009 Violent Crime Rates per 100,000

Colorado: 340.9
New York: 385.5
Massachusetts: 465.6

Chicago:  1041
US Average:  439.7

While Colorado does have more gun assaults, Massachusetts, Illinois and New York all have more more overall assaults of all categories.  So I guess they feel better being assaulted by bludgeoning and stabbing than with a gun.  

Those states also have more gun murders than Colorado.  

The gun control cities of New York, Boston, Chicago and DC also have overall murder rates higher than Denver...

2011 Murder Rates per 100,000

Denver: 5.4
New York: 6.3
Boston: 10.1
Chicago: 15.9

So these progressive cities may console themselves that even though they have higher murder rates than Denver, at least they have good gun control laws.

So no matter how you slice it, the progressive, enlightened, liberty-emasculating, gun-fearing states of Massachusetts, New York and Illinois are more violent than gun-loving, cowboy Colorado, even in the category of gun violence. The truth hurts, libs.

Examining the empirical evidence and hard statistics from the FBI and the US Census Bureau reveals a weak correlation at best between strict gun laws and lower gun violence, and there are many outliers on both sides.

More importantly, there is no correlation between strict gun laws and overall crime and violence.

Instead of letting someone explain it to you, go investigate for yourself!

FBI - Crime in the US
IL Atty Gen
NY Times - Colorado Gun Laws
Atlantic - America's Most Dangerous Cities
Crime Rates by State
Gun Crime 2010
Wikipedia - US Cities by Crime Rate 2010