Do You Identify with the Hero's and Heroines in today's movies?

I am guessing that the answer to that question depends on who you are.  Recently I have been noticing more than usual that most of the characters, especially the main characters in movies are predominantly white and male.  When there is a female lead, she is white and most of the time blond.  The male leads vary in age, size and attractiveness, while the female leads tend to be young, thin, pretty and predominantly white blonds.

The poor, elderly, minorities, the over weight, physically disabled, mentally disabled, if present on screen at all are either positive supporting characters (typically die if it is a horror movie or Science fiction flick), or they are cast as villains.

This is clearly not an accurate representation of reality, so what is it a representation of?  Perhaps it is a representation of the movie industry trying to satisfy it's customers?  If you look at women, they tend to be overrepresented in both as movie goers and as those who buy the most tickets.

Yet if you look at the representation of characters, especially leading characters, women are highly underrepresented as a group.  This indicates that women are willing to go see movies where they are underrepresented in lead roles, but this is nothing new, minorities and all the other groups I have mentioned also keep going to the movies.  It also indicates that those making movies are not really making movies for their audiences.

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Data source: •Executive Summary

In some cases movie makers do cater to some of their audience, the percent of people under 24 years, who go to the movies, is higher than their percent of the general population, and Hollywood has responded to them by making more movies that would appeal to them, however they seem to have forgotten that 52 percent of their audience is over 25.



When looking at ethnicity, again we find that minorities as a group (Hispanics especially) are over represented with them being 33% of the general population and 40% of the movie going population.  This number is going to increase as the demographics of the country changes over time. 

The numbers of minorities in movies do not reflect this changing reality.  In the charts below you can see a comparison of the percent of either men or women of each race in the actual US population compared with the movie character population (e.g. black men in movies represent 8% of the male population compared to 12.33 percent in the actual US population).  Considering that Hispanics are overrepresented as movie goers, it is interesting that they are the most underrepresented group when it comes to characters in movies.

 Data source: •Executive Summary

 Data source: •Executive Summary

It seems clear that movies are not trying to cater to their movie going demographics, when the only concession that has been made has been to those aged 23 or under, while ignoring women, those aged 24 and over, and minorities.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the reality of those who are making movies.  All the statistics show that those making films are not very representative of the rest of the US.  Women as a group are very underrepresented and the situation has really not changed it seems since 1998, and in some cases the situation has deteriorated for women and minorities in the film industry.

The first chart looks at the proportion of men and women making movies (directors, creators, writers, producers etc)

From: It’s a Man’s (Celluloid)World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2011by Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D.

The following charts look at the percent of women in each film making category, again the field is clearly dominated by men regardless of if you are looking at Movies (as in the first chart),

From: It’s a Man’s (Celluloid)World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2011by Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D.

 Or on TV as in the chart below women are clearly underrepresented in the creation of movies and the stories that are told to us through them.

It was relatively simple to find information regarding gender and movie making, it was a little harder to find information about race and movie making.  I did find the following data

Which shows how who are directing the movies we see, and through whose eye we are all being seen.  This is perhaps why, it is rare that I identify with characters on the screen.  If the movie is well written, the story engaging, the actors compelling and the move is well directed it usually does not matter, I walk out of the movie feeling good about having seen it.  However, it is nice every now and then to feel a connection with the characters on screen, to see yourself represented in a positive manner, or in a varied manner (i.e. not as a limited number of stereotypes), or in some cases, to see yourself represented at all.

Do you see yourself reflected back from the silver screen?  What about from the little screen?  I think in some areas (children's programming) we have made great strides, but in other areas I think we still have more work to do:

Perhaps one day in our post racial society these covers will be blended, and we will have some older, Hispanic, Asian, overweight, disabled and less classically beautiful women :)

The Majority of Violence in the US does not involve Firearms, but the Majority of Murders do

In the previous posts I was just looking at how firearms were involved in murder, I found it hard to see a link between gun laws and firearms, although it was clear that firearms were a big component of violence that ended in murder.  I decided to go see how firearms were involved in violent crime in general, so I looked at the statistics for aggravated assault.

The main things the data suggest are:

1. Violent crime is involves a very small part of the population
2. Murder is a very small part of violent crime
3. Firearms are a small part of violent crime
4. Firearms are a big part of murder
5. If you look really, really hard there might be a link between lower gun violence and tougher gun laws.
6. You are more likely to be killed in/by a car than with a gun of any type

If you look at the chart for weapon type as a percent of total violent crime (totals of aggravated assault and murder, I did not include other stats such as rape, etc), the reason it looks so much like the chart that just looks at aggravated assault, is that most violent crime involves aggravated assault.

So when people attack each other they do so with many weapons and firearms are not the main weapon types used, however, when those attacks end in murder, then most of the time firearms are used.

As for the effect of gun laws on the use of firearms?  I suspect a much more involved study than the ones I do is required to look at that.  I did try something just out of curiosity and I did get a correlation although I am not sure it is a very strong one.

What I did was take all the data I had (FBI - Violent Crime), and sort it by firearm related assaults, total assaults and so on.  Then I looked at the average Brady ratings for the 25 states with the higher crime rates and lower crime rates for that particular sorting.   What I found was that if you sorted by total murder, or by total aggravated assault, there really was no difference in the average Brady rating, however when I sorted by firearm related crime for both murder and aggravated assault, the 25 states with the highest levels of firearm related crime had a lower (laxer gun laws) average Brady rating.  The reverse was true if you looked at knife related aggravated assault, but was similar if you looked at the use of personal weapons used in aggravated assaults (fists, legs etc).

Make what you will of this data :)

One thing to keep in mind, you are much more likely to be killed or injured in/by a car, than by any kind of violence, even that involving firearms.

Thoughts and prayers as always with those who have lost loved ones to violence of any kind.

The NRA and the Video Game Violence Red Herring

According to the NRA, the problem of firearm violence has nothing to do with firearms, and everything to do with everything else.  I can't blame them, it would be problematic for them to say that to curb firearm related violence, guns should be targeted rather than assault weapons, as I am guessing the gun industry sells many more guns than it does assault weapons.

In previous years they often successfully shifted the discussion away from firearms and to Hollywood, or video games.  In the past this was partially successful because at the time the people playing video games were mostly young males (usually introverted). 

Just as the race, age and gender demographics of the country has shifted under the GOPs feet, so has the demographics of video game players shifted under the NRAs feet.  The problem they face is that most adults have now played many of these games, they have played them with their kids and by themselves.  It is now much harder to portray people who play these games as 'the other'.

 I won't post most of the statistics as many before me (10 country comparison suggests little or no link between video games and gun murders, Gaming Audience getting older and slightly more female, Myths about video games and violence (PBS.org)), have done a pretty good job of this.  But it is pretty clear, that most research shows little correlation between video games and violence, with a few exceptions here and there.

For example even as violent crimes have dropped over the years the number of games played, bought and the types of people playing these games have increased dramatically.

(This is not my graph if found it here)

At the same time, there is the inescapable fact that nobody yet (that I know of) had been killed by video games, while many people (regardless of the reason) have been killed by firearms.  

 And yes I will post this graph again, because it is important as most people (and most children) are killed with handguns, not with assault rifles, normal rifles, or anything else.

Actually I agree with the NRA on one point, the answer to the problem is much more complex than just getting rid of guns, guns might be lethal weapons, but someone has to shoot them and if we could figure out how to prevent people from trying to kill others, then everyone NRA included would be happy.

Would it not be amazing if there was a march on DC of all the parents and families in the US who have lost their kids to violence?  All of them holding pictures of their kids (our kids) to remind us of the real magnitude of gun violence and violence in general?  Perhaps we should also add the parents and families of all the kids who have lost their kids to suicide (yes firearms play quite a role here as well).

So we are probably going to get stricter gun laws, but they won't matter because they will target the 'wrong' guns, and they won't remove from circulation all the assault style weapons obtained legally.  This means that kids in the inner cities will continue to die, because the real problems that cause violence in general, and gun violence specifically will not be addressed.

Assault Weapons the Red Herring in the Discussion about Gun Control

 Data often has the annoying habit of being non partisan.  Sometimes it supports your point of view, sometimes it does not.  This is why it is useful to turn to it when you want to make legislation that will affect the lives of many.

I have been going over some data looking at murders, rates of murder, rates of murders that involved firearms, rates of murders that involved firearms per state, and so on.  In my previous post on this issue, I looked at absolute numbers of murders and the only correlations I could find between the numbers of murders related to firearms and total numbers:

1. When the absolute number of murders passes 200, most of these murders are committed with firearms.
2. Most murders in the US involve a firearm 
3. Most firearms used in firearm related murders are guns, not rifles, not assault weapons, just guns.

I really was not able to see other correlations.  I looked at Brady points (how gun friendly a state was) and could not really find any clear cut correlations there.  Reading another blog on a similar topic made me realize that I had ignored population size in looking at the data.  So I looked at the data (www.fbi.gov) again taking into account population size.

 In the graph above I ordered the states by what I am calling 'Brady points', this is the ranking the Brady Campaign (www.bradycampaign.org) gives states according to how strict their gun laws are.  The states with the highest points are at the left of the graph and those with lower points are at the right in order.  I am not sure I can say I see any kind of pattern.

There was a suggestion on another blog that perhaps southern regions with laxer gun laws  had higher rates of gun violence than northern states with stricter gun laws. So then I looked at the rates of both total murders and those related to firearms again ordering the states by region.  Again I am not sure that I can say I see much of a correlation, except that perhaps western states have slightly lower rates than the other regions, while southern states might have slightly higher rates on average (I will look at this more closely later).  

But then I also compared total murder rates with those related to firearms by region and on average it looks like western states have lower overall murder rates, and southern states slightly higher ones, but again will look at this a little more closely in the next few graphs.

The main point I want to make here is that just on this data, I don't see anything really jumping out for me, no nice simple trend.  So I averaged the data per region (I split the West into mountain and pacific as if you look at the Brady points, there is a very big difference between the two regions (west is the combined data for both mountain and pacific)).  So the main thing here is that the NE and the Pacific W, have much stricter gun laws than the other regions by quite a bit.  

One thing the data does show is the importance of controls, sometimes even the best of scientists forget to include them.  If you just look at the NE and the South then it looks like the area with the best gun laws has lower violence and lower gun violence.

 But that logic breaks down if you add 'controls', other states in this case, and )when you do, it is really hard to make that same correlation.  The only correlation I can see is that states with higher Brady Points (stricter gun laws) tend to have lower violence in general, but not necessarily lower gun violence.

So lessons learned?

1.  There is a correlation between guns and violence
2. The target of gun control should be guns, not assault weapons if we really want to cut down on the number of children being killed by weapons.
3. It is hard to find an easy correlation between gun laws and gun violence  (probably because most of them don't target guns)
4. There does not seem to be a correlation between region and gun violence (could probably find one if one looked hard enough)
5. Most people will not be killed by guns (look at the rates) and most people will not be murdered. 
6.  Data tends to be non partisan

I think the last point is perhaps the most important.  Emotions are very useful in the debate about violence and gun control as it is the emotions of people that typically spur them into action.  However, when that action leads to laws then the emotions should give way to unbiased data analysis.  By unbiased, I mean looking at what the data tells us and not what we want the data to say.  Parts of the data presented here is great for those who support gun rights, parts support stricter gun laws.  But the overall data is less partisan, but tells us that we need more information (more research) and fewer guns (not fewer assault rifles).  

I am in favor of stricter gun laws I always note this because I know that it is a bias that I have, and I think it is important for those who look at this data understand where I am coming from.   The way I look at it is that I live my life based on my biases (I don't posses a gun), however if I want to place my biases on others then I better look at the data objectively to see if it backs me up. 

My thoughts go to the families of all gun victims including those at Sandy Hook.

The Importance of Grieving after a Tragedy Like Sandy Hook

In Memory of those lost at Sandy Hook 12/14/12

When I lost my mother recently, I learned an important lesson.  I had been taught how to cope, how to survive, how to move on.  But I had never learned how to grieve, how to stay with the pain, how to deal with a pain that takes a long time to go away, and never really goes away completely.  I am always hesitant to talk about or give advice on how to talk to kids about things like this, I am not a parent, a psychologist a scholar, a teacher or any other adult who has a great deal of experience with kids.

I am also aware that many deal with pain and grief in different ways and that there is no right way to grieve, suffer or deal with the loss of someone close to you.  So I will talk about my experiences as a child and an adult witnessing and dealing with loss and pain.  About my coming to the understanding that facing pain, difficult situations and being honest about what happened is important for me in dealing with loss.   About how when something like this happens we want to just keep doing things to keep ahead of the pain, but what we don't know is that the pain will catch up with us eventually. 

I grew up in Italy a country with possibly more petty crime, but much less violent crime than the US.  Not that there was not violent crime, but that crime was mostly as a result of crime families and often was not directed at the general citizenry.  However, that changed with the start of a series of terrorist attacks, some home grown, some from outside the country.

Two attacks hit close to home, one targeted an the school bus belonging to an American ex patriot school, our school (similar but based on a British curriculum), was also put on high alert.  I recall being worried, but feeling somewhat safe, as the adults around us explained what was going on, what was being done and how we should behave to keep us safe.

The second was an attack at an airport that my family went through often on our trips outside the country, I knew that a friend of mine missed being at the airport during the attack by just minutes, and for years after I would look up and see the bullet holes in the top balcony that for some reason were never repaired.  A constant reminder that the world was not as safe a place as one would like.

The main thing about both those incidents was that even kids were given information about what happened, there was conversation between adults, adults and kids and between kids.  It was scary, but we all knew what happened and we all knew what was going on.

A few years later a young boy was abducted, raped and killed.  I knew that boy, not well but I had interacted with him during a riding school camp that we both participated in earlier that year.  I remember him thinking that the way I half held my hands in my pants pockets was cool.  He was a quiet, introverted, cute and sweet kid.

When he was killed, the school kept everything very quiet for a while, rumors spread, some of them not true, but many of them remarkably true.  Somewhere the decision was made to carry on as usual, rather than to mourn.  So we did, school went on, Christmas went on and us kids had no choice but to go on with it.  I remember being deeply disturbed by something so horrific happening to someone I knew, and the odd normalcy of my daily routine at school.   It felt, off and it felt wrong. 

A similar thing happened to a girl that once again I befriended during one of those spring camps, she was in a different class, so once we got back from camp we did not see each other that much.  Kids, came and went in our school often, many kids there had parents stationed in Rome for just a few years.  So when I did not see her for a while, I assumed that she had left with her family.

What I eventually learned through another student, was that she had died, from something that up until then I never thought you could die from, asthma!  I also learned that her father had died just the year before, I can only imagine what the mother must have been going through. By the time I learned of her death it was too late to attend the funeral, too late to tell her mother how much I had liked and respected her daughter.  Too late to really grieve for the loss of my friend.  

I had a similar feeling more recently during the attacks of September 11, I was in college at that time and again the university went on as normal, there was no official acknowledgement from the university of what happened, no mass grieving, just an odd sense of business as usual.  I had that same odd feeling of disconnect, the feeling that something very tragic had happened, but that we did not have time to stop and grieve, that we just kept on, kept moving on.

When my mother died, I finally understood that for me, to stop and grieve is important.  I need to deal with the pain and the sorrow and just be with it for a while.  Everyone is different, and I don't know if knowing more about these events hurts or helps other kids who are not like me.  I am not the expert.  I am just another voice out there, talking about her own experiences.

This will be my last post on Sandy Hook, and I know there are no graphs and data in this post, these are just my thoughts, my personal view on the situation.  Sometimes, feelings and emotions without data are just as important, as long as we don't make laws, policy and societal movments from them, without going back to the data to make sure our emotions are in the right place.

Gun Rights & Mental Health the big red herrings in the conversation about Sandy Hook

I hope that the loss of these beautiful children, the wonderful adults at Sandy Hook and the mother of the shooter is not in vain.  I hope that what turned a quiet, very intelligent young man who apparently was a vegan because he did not want to harm life, into the person able to kill innocent kids, the adults trying to protect them and even his own mother is understood.  I hope that we become wiser and more caring as a result of this tragedy, and I hope that our resolve to protect children extends to those darker, poorer children that are dying as we speak, in less spectacular but just as heartbreaking ways.

  

Source: daveparker via Wikimedia Commons

I wish I could say that I am optimistic about this, but the tone of the discussions from both liberals and conservatives and all those in between is not giving me much hope.  I think we all want simple answers, so that we can make simple changes and fix this problem.  The reason we have not fixed this is not that we as a nation don't care, that we as a nations don't want action.  The reason we have not fixed this problem is that there is no simple fix. 

By InPhonic Customer Service  via Wikimedia Commons

I have called it a problem, but I have not defined the problem.  In my mind the problem is a very different problem from what I think most in the media and on the internet are discussing.  I suspect that one of the problems we have in talking about these tragedies, is that in some cases we are talking about very different problems, which are really just different aspects of the same problem. 

The problem I am talking about is the loss  of life, children and adults, to violence.  It matters not to me if the loss of life is in the suburbs where violence is not that common, but tends to draw greater emotion from the general public, or if it is in the inner cities where violence is more common, but tends to draw less outrage and emotion outside the communities most affected.

BLACK CHILDREN PLAY OUTSIDE THE IDA B. WELLS HOMES, ONE OF CHICAGO'S OLDEST HOUSING PROJECTS.

Some see the problem as protecting only the 'innocent' children in the suburbs, those whose parents have done no wrong, somehow indicating that the poor parents in the inner cities have done wrong by being poor, and that somehow those children are less 'innocent' I find this rather disturbing.  Others see this as an opportunity to address the problems of the children in the inner cities, by passing gun laws that would perhaps to do more to protect these kids, than any other.

When it comes to gun control, I tend to agree that it would be better to have more, to help protect those children dying out of sight and out of mind, I tend to agree that there are some weapons that really don't need to be sold.

However I have to admit a couple of things.  There are lots of guns in the US, there are lots of people who own guns, very few of them ever kill anyone.  It bothers me that in this discussion they are seen by some as the enemy, their noses being rubbed in this horrific tragedy.  They have more information about the safe use of guns than anyone and should be brought in as partners in this conversation.  As much as I am an advocate for rational gun control, in this case I am not sure even the strictest gun control would have prevented this, it might have mitigated it, if he had not been able to have the particular gun he used, but I am not sure it would have prevented it.

 Now to the other red herring, mental illness and crime.  This conversation has been the most disturbing to me especially as we don't really know if 1) Adam had a mental illness, and 2) if this contributed to this crime.  Something clearly went wrong that day, but can we attribute what happened to any disorder he might have had?  We don't know, and unfortunately we may never know.

A couple of things should be noted,  many people have mental illnesses, most of these people don't go into schools and kill people, most of these people don't harm others period.  Many of these people are more often victims of those who don't have mental illnesses.  To assume that someone with a mental illness is more prone to violence than someone else, is an old prejudice that comes up every time there is one of these horrific crimes.  There are many types of mental illness, many types of personality disorders, and while these tend to create much disruption in the lives of those that have them, and their families, most of these people never harm anyone, and if there is violence, it is often on themselves when they are unable to cope with a world that has a tendency to mistreat them.

The real difference between extroverts and introverts. Source: By RCraig09 (Own work)  via Wikimedia Commons

It also bothers me that another prejudice, the one against those with introverted tendencies, also tends to flare up when one of these things happens.  There is a desire for those who are suspicious of the introverted, to justify their suspicions by saying "See?  I told you there is something wrong with 'those' people".  The truth is there is no indication that being introverted has any correlation to crime, where it has been looked at, an inverse correlation has been found, in the sense that most people arrested for crimes tend to be high on the neurotic and extroverted scales.

Think about it this way, if it were shown that this young man was an extroverted, charismatic  guy like Ted Bundy (an most psychopaths) for example, would we be saying that it was this extroversion that was somehow responsible for his crime?  That his having so many people to talk to, and being so at ease, was the reason that he went nuts?  Of course not, so why do we do that with introversion?  Many of these people are also found to be highly intelligent, yet we don't indicate that somehow their intelligence is what caused them to do this, why not?

I suspect that in these situations we want to look at the person doing this crime as the 'other' someone unlike us, so that we can draft laws that can separate 'those' people from us so that 'we' can be safe.  I think this happens when we look at mental illness in the context of these crimes when most people who commit gun violence are not mentally ill, the focus on the 'Loner', when more extraverts commit crimes in general, and on race and sometimes gender in crime.

I don't think we can solve the problem of gun violence, and the larger issue of violence, until we understand that the people who commit these crimes are not 'other' they are us.  They are us who have been bullied and could not handle it, they are us who have been pushed over the edge and could not handle it, they are us who act on our deepest darkest prejudices, they are us who act on their anger.   Thus no law or societal action that focuses on 'others' will ever protect us as they are not 'other', they are us.  Until we have laws that protect all of us equally, help all of us equally and address all of us no matter how different or similar we seem, we will never solve this problem.

One final thought, the other night I saw a commercial for an upcomming film, filled with many shootings, guns and quite a bit of violence.  I can't help thinking that while it is OK to have some movies with this kind of action, perhaps if fewer of our movie 'heros' were depicted like this:

Pierce Brosnan (Madame Tussauds)

By Jeremy from Leuven, Belgium (Ireland - London Trip) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 And more like this:

Ghandi 60 years walking to meeting

By Vdkdaan (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 Or this:

Mother Teresa

By Evert Odekerken [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

The latter two might not be as sexy, I agree, but they are both examples of people who are real heroes, bringing life to others as well as hope, not with violence, but with peace.  They are not large people, nor are they very strong people, but they were able to affect the lives of many, have their voices heard and be a force for good in the world.

I am not saying that we have to force kids to go see movies about Mother Teresa, or Ghandi, although I think it would be great if they did. I am saying that perhaps the heroes of other movies could use more love, talking and kindness, than guns, and violence when resolving problems.  Rather than often having these qualities mocked in those movies, in our schools and yes, in this discussion about quiet people.

Martin Luther King Jr with medallion By

Phil Stanziola, NYWT&S staff photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

My Final thoughts are that we can reduce violence, we can honor the memories of the people who died at Sandy Hook, and we can do it without taking away guns from all Americans, and without taking away the rights of with mental health issues.  We are already doing it, it won't be simple, it won't be pretty, but it can be done.  The question is are we willing to look at 'all' the children in the US as 'all' our kids?  Are we willing to have an honest discussion about what kind of society we all want to live in?   I sure hope so.
                                 
Food for thought:  Both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. were killed by firearms.

What do hate crime statistics really tell us?

I wanted to create a blog about hate crime statistics, I went through the data on the FBI site (www.fbi.gov), and was getting ready to download and analyze the data when I started looking at the data by location.  At first I saw nothing wrong, but then I noticed something rather odd.  States like Alabama (total hate crimes reported 96) had lower hate crime rates than states like Connecticut (164), or Massachusetts (424).  Some states with historical racially explosive histories, had remarkably low levels of hate crimes while many liberal states had very high levels of hate crimes.

The problem, I think, with the data is that it is obtained by voluntary participation of police departments, thus if a particular police department does not take hate crime seriously, or does not investigate it, then in that area, there will be no hate crimes.  Of course this data could be true, but I have to admit I am having a hard time believing it. The columns in blue are the more liberal leaning states, while the colors in red are the more conservative leaning states.

There are other sources of hate crime statistics this one relies on a survey about victimization,

Data Collection: National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

Status: Active
Frequency: Ongoing from 1973
Latest data available: 2011
NCVS is the Nation's primary source of information on criminal victimization. Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 40,000 households comprising nearly 75,000 persons on the frequency, characteristics and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States. Each household is interviewed twice during the year. The survey enables BJS to estimate the likelihood of victimization by rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, theft, household burglary, and motor vehicle theft for the population as a whole as well as for segments of the population such as women, the elderly, members of various racial groups, city dwellers, or other groups. The NCVS provides the largest national forum for victims to describe the impact of crime and characteristics of violent offenders.

 The problem with this second set of data is that while it gets around the under reporting of hate crimes by the Police, a survey that states that the majority of hate crimes are commited by women (69%) and blacks (89%), is a little hard to find credible (USDOJ.gov).

                           Race of offenders
                      committing hate crimes
                   White       Black        Other

Race              30.5%      89.1%      59.3%

                          Gender of offenders
                         committing hate crimes
Motivation  Male        Female        Both
Race            55.5%       68.8%        35.9*

I am not saying that this data is wrong, I just don't believe it.  For the second set of data, the majority of people interviewed would have been white, with only 12% being black.  When discussing hate crime, it would make more sense to have a 50 - 50 split.  BTW the FBI shows a completely different picture (of course not a complete picture).
(FBI Offender data, FBI Victim data)

Among the single-bias hate crime incidents in 2010, there were 3,949 victims of racially motivated hate crime.  A closer examination of these victim data showed that:

• 70.0 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-black bias.
• 17.7 percent were victims of an anti-white bias.
• 5.1 percent were victims of an anti-Asian/Pacific Islander bias.
• 1.2 percent were victims of an anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native bias.
• 6.0 percent were victims of a bias against a group of individuals in which more than one race was represented (anti-multiple races, group).

In 2010, the races of the 6,008 known hate crime offenders were as follows:

• 58.6 percent were white.
• 18.4 percent were black.
• 8.9 percent were groups made up of individuals of various races (multiple races, group).
• 1.1 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander. 
• 1.0 percent were American Indian/Alaskan Native.
• 12.0 percent were of unknown race.

So for me all this data is meaningless there are clearly problems with both methods of obtaining data, and it also shows the truth about the old statistical saying: rubbish in, rubbish out.   Sometimes you have to take a good look at the data before blindly following it to the incorrect solutions.

Firearms and Murder what does the Data Tell Us?

In the wake of the horrific shooting that occurred in Sandy Hook CT, the argument over gun control has heated up again.  As always the arguments are high on emotion and short on data.  The data when presented is used to promote one side or another and can often be contradictory.  Those on the side of limiting guns say that states with stricter gun laws have fewer gun related homicides and those on the side of keeping them say that if guns were not present people would use other weapons to kill people.

According to the data both sides are right, and both sides are wrong, the story is interesting but much more complicated than either side would like to present. When you look at murders, what is the most used weapon? Based on the data from (source for firearm data: www.fbi.gov), the answer is simple, firearms.

However the answer becomes less simple if you take a closer look at the data.  If you look at state by state data there is not such a clean cut relationship between firearms and Murder.

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State	Total Murders	% Firearms	Other weapons
Hawaii	7	14.29	85.71
Vermont	8	50.00	50.00
North Dakota	12	50.00	50.00
Rhode Island	14	35.71	64.29
South Dakota	15	33.33	66.67
New Hampshire	16	37.50	62.50
Montana	18	38.89	61.11
Maine	25	48.00	52.00
Alaska	29	55.17	44.83
Idaho	32	53.13	46.88
Delaware	41	68.29	31.71
Iowa	44	43.18	56.82
Utah	51	50.98	49.02
Nebraska	65	64.62	35.38
Minnesota	70	61.43	38.57
West Virginia	74	58.11	41.89
Oregon	77	51.95	48.05
District of Columbia	108	71.30	28.70
Kansas	110	66.36	33.64
New Mexico	121	49.59	50.41
Connecticut	128	73.44	26.56
Nevada	129	58.14	41.86
Wisconsin	135	59.26	40.74
Colorado	147	49.66	50.34
Kentucky	150	66.67	33.33
Arkansas	153	71.90	28.10
Washington	161	49.07	50.93
Massachusetts	183	66.67	33.33
Mississippi	187	73.80	26.20
Oklahoma	204	64.22	35.78
Indiana	284	64.44	35.56
Virginia	303	68.65	31.35
South Carolina	319	69.91	30.09
Arizona	339	65.49	34.51
Missouri	364	75.82	24.18
Tennessee	373	65.42	34.58
New Jersey	379	70.98	29.02
Maryland	398	68.34	31.66
Illinois3	452	83.41	16.59
Louisiana	485	82.89	17.11
Ohio	488	70.49	29.51
North Carolina	489	68.51	31.49
Georgia	522	70.88	29.12
Michigan	613	73.41	26.59
Pennsylvania	636	73.90	26.10
New York	774	57.49	42.51
Texas	1089	64.19	35.81
California	1790	68.16	31.84

 In some states the percentage of firearms involved in murder is high, in others it is not, however if you sort the data by number of murders, you can see that when the numbers of murders in a state is high, then most of the murders involve firearms, this is especially true when the number of murders is above 200.  When the numbers of murders are below 100, then the relationship between murders and guns is much lower.

I also looked at the relationship between gun laws (using data from The Brady Campaign), to see if there was a correlation between gun laws, number of murders and the use of firearms and murder.

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State	points	Total Murders	% Firearms
Hawaii	50	7	14.29
Vermont	6	8	50.00
North Dakota	2	12	50.00
Rhode Island	44	14	35.71
South Dakota	4	15	33.33
New Hampshire	6	16	37.50
Montana	2	18	38.89
Maine	7	25	48.00
Alaska	0	29	55.17
Idaho	2	32	53.13
Delaware	13	41	68.29
Iowa	7	44	43.18
Utah	0	51	50.98
Nebraska	5	65	64.62
Minnesota	14	70	61.43
West Virginia	4	74	58.11
Oregon	15	77	51.95
District of Columbia		108	71.30
Kansas	4	110	66.36
New Mexico	4	121	49.59
Connecticut	58	128	73.44
Nevada	5	129	58.14
Wisconsin	3	135	59.26
Colorado	15	147	49.66
Kentucky	2	150	66.67
Arkansas	4	153	71.90
Washington	15	161	49.07
Massachusetts	65	183	66.67
Mississippi	4	187	73.80
Oklahoma	2	204	64.22
Indiana	4	284	64.44
Virginia	12	303	68.65
South Carolina	8	319	69.91
Arizona	0	339	65.49
Missouri	4	364	75.82
Tennessee	8	373	65.42
New Jersey	72	379	70.98
Maryland	45	398	68.34
Illinois3	35	452	83.41
Louisiana	2	485	82.89
Ohio	7	488	70.49
North Carolina	16	489	68.51
Georgia	8	522	70.88
Michigan	25	613	73.41
Pennsylvania	26	636	73.90
New York	62	774	57.49
Texas	4	1089	64.19
California	81	1790	68.16

The numbers in the points column are points given to each state according to how comprehensive their gun laws are, the higher the number the stronger the gun restrictions.  Considering that the two states that have one of the best and worst records on gun control have the highest number of murders and both have high levels of involvement of firearms in murders, and many states with very lax gun laws also have some of the lowest murder rates, it is hard to see any kind of correlation between gun laws and murder rates, or rates of firearms used in murders base on this data.

  A word of caution for those gun enthusiasts that would like to run with this data, crime rates are often highly correlated with population rates, so a better way to tackle this question would be to look at each state individually and see data on guns and violence before and after gun laws are adopted.  Also correlation does not equal causation, so looking at New Jersey for example, New Jersey has one of the best scores on gun control, relatively high murder rates, and a high proportion of those murders involved guns.  The question is, is this despite the good gun laws? Or does this data simply reflect that those gun laws were put in place to tackle a serious problem with gun violence?

The one thing that does seem clear however, is that the more murders there are in a state, the higher the likelyhood that a gun is involved.  The three charts below show this for all the states and then for each state individually, broken down into states with less than 100 murders, states with between 100 and 200 murders and then states with greater than 200 murders.  In the graphs broken down by state the blue columns represent total murders, the red ones, the murders where firearms were involved, and the green one where something other than a firearm was involved.

The numbers were not what I expected, but I thought they were interesting.  In the following blog, we have a look at the crime rates of the US compared to other industrialized countries (America is a violent country).  Again for me what this data tells us it is not that clear cut, America is a much larger country than many other industrialized countries, does not have as substantial social safety nets, health care and ways of dealing with poverty as many other industrialized countries.  So in my mind relative crime rates need to be treated with caution.  But the data is interesting.