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.

-->

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.

-->

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.

Sandy Hook attack compared to Chenpeng Village attack the lethality of guns vs knives

My thoughts and heart go out to all those impacted by the events in Sandy Hook and Chenpeng Village, especially the little ones injured and killed in both places, their loved ones, other kids in those locations and everyone who loved them.

One of the arguments raging on the internet has to do with the role of guns in the events that unfolded on Dec 14th 2012 in Sandy Hook, CT in an elementary school filled with small children on a Friday morning.  I am not sure we can ever remove guns from American society and in this particular case I am not sure that anything short of a complete ban on weapons might have prevented this.

Many say that we should be focusing on mental health issues (we are not sure these played a part here), or on something else as guns need people on the other end do cause any damage.  My personal view is that it is easier to cause harm with a firearm, and it is easier to kill with one.  But that is my personal view.  I don't own guns, I don't particularly like them and I have only ever seen one close up in my life.

I do understand that there are many responsible people who use guns and never harm anyone, just like there are many with mental issues (again not sure this is an issue here) who never harm anyone.  But there is one basic question that can be answered because of a very sad coincidence that something very similar happened on the other side of the planet, the very same day.  Would this attack have been less lethal had a different weapon been used?

In both Sandy Hook and Chenpeng we have a school filled with elementary kids, in both cases we have someone so angry with the world that they enter the school and attack small children.   We even have a very similar number of children who are victims in these attacks 20 in the case of Sandy Hook, and 23 in the case of Chenpeng.  The main difference between the two attacks is that the one in Chenpeng involved a knife and the one in Sandy Hook involved a gun.

The final counts are:

Attack date:                  12/14/12                                                       12/14/12
School:           Sandy Hook Elementary School             Chenpeng Village Primary School
Weapon used:                    Gun                                                             Knife
Children killed:                  20                                                                  0
Children injured:                 0                                                                  22
Adults killed:                       6                                                                   0
Adults injured:                     2                                                                   1
Total killed:                        26                                                                  0
Total injured                        2                                                                  23
Perpetrator mentally ill?:    ? (unknown at present)                               yes
Perpetrator alive:               No                                                                yes

Is the Sandy Hook Tragedy a Result of Increasing crime?

My heart goes out to those affected in any way by the senseless violence (when is there ever sense in violence?), that occurred on 12/14/12 in the city of Sandy Hook, CT.  It also goes out to those in the Chinese school  (http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html) that also underwent the same violence on the same day.  It is interesting to note that while the violence was similar, the children in China were injured, while the children in the US were killed (Knife vs Gun).  That said, the scars left behind will be just as deep in the ones that survived both attacks.

It is a time to grieve collectively for such a horrific loss of life, especially as many of those lost are so young, and in my mind also a time to think of how many others have been lost to violence resulting from them simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, hated for who they are, in a war zone or the many other unjustifiable reasons people lose their lives, or are injured.

But many questions naturally arise after these incidents, could it have been prevented?  Who is to blame?  Why did it happen?  Is it because of too many guns?  What was wrong with the person?  Is there a link to personality disorders?  Is there a link to mental disorders?  What was wrong with the family? Is it a result of increased violence?  Is it a result of the glorification of violence in 'X' society?  What drove them to do this? and so on.

It is my suspicion that the answers to these tragedies can be found in the answers to all of the questions above and to some questions that have not been asked.  I also suspect that there is no single answer that as with everything in life, the answer is more complex than most people have time for, or that they want to admit.  Still in my opinion, until we actually look at the data that can help answer some of these questions, perhaps we can start getting some answers to some of these questions.

One last thought before I start graphing stuff, it also seems to me that here in the US we want to live in a world that is perfectly safe, but some crimes are unpredictable, and unavoidable.  For all we know, if one thing in Mr. Lanza's life had gone differently in the days before the massacre, perhaps he would not have killed his mother, and all those people at the school.  Most of us would never have known he had existed, and would not be debating all the issues that we are debating now.  That said, even if Mr. Lanza had not done this, at some point someone else would have, for very different reasons equally unpredictable.  That is not to say that we can't do our best to make things safer, as I will show below, we have been doing that, just that we can't predict every crime, and we can't live in a world that is 100% safe.

So is the US getting more violent?  Are you more likely to be a victim of crime now, or in 1995 for example.  The answer is a categorical no, victimization rates have been dropping dramatically since the early 90's and this has been true for all crime, but especially for violent crime (source data for all graphs: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4494.

In the graph above, we see that there has been a dramatic decrease in the victimization rate over time (this basically looks at your chances of being victimized over time).  Also interesting to note is that they years 1993 to 2000 were President Clinton's administration, those from 2000 to 2008 were part of President Bush's administration and those from 2008 onwards are President Obama's administration.

 As you will notice the first real increase that we have seen is between 2010 and 2011, until we get more data it is hard to know if this is a trend or a blip.  However looking at these years more closely and comparing them with 2002 gives some interesting data.

 If we break down the victimization numbers (graph above) and rates (graph below) we can see that the trends are different for different types of crime.  For example the assault rates and numbers decreased from 2002 to 2011, however there was an increase from 2010 to 2011.  While for rape, the numbers have decreases slightly from 2002 to 2011, but the rates have dropped and did not increase between 2010 and 2011.  The rate of victimization for domestic violence has gone back to 2002 rates.

 One could argue that the drop in victimization rates is due to a decrease in the number of those that are reporting crimes but the graphs below indicate that this is not the case.  It could however be due to a decrease in the levels of persecution, reassignment to less serious type of crime, or decreased levels of conviction (as reasons other than true decreases in crime).

Of course where you live, and who you are can affect your chances of becoming a victim, a whole blog could be written about that alone, and the data I will show below confirms this.  I have to admit I was a little surprised by some of the data that I found.  I had no idea the victimization rates for Native Americans/Alaskan Natives and those that consider themselves to be multiracial was so high.   This was true for both violent crime,(first graph), or serious violent crime (second graph).

 I was not surprised at the low white victimization rates, nor the relatively higher rates for blacks or Hispanics.  It is also interesting that the group that is presented on TV the most as victims (white women) are also the group least likely to be victimized.  The other surprise here was the high victimization of separated people, compared to other groups with differing marital status.

The other surprise I got was looking at victimization rates over time for different areas of the country.  In 2002 the Midwest had the highest rates of victimization, the West was close behind followed by the Northeast and the South being the safest area.  In 2011, for serious violent crime, the is a tie between the Northeast, the Midwest and the West with the South remaining the safest.  If you look at violent crime in general, the areas remain about the same as they were in 2002 for relative safety, but there is a drop in victimization for all regions.

The big surprise for me came from looking at Urban, Suburban and Rural areas.  That living in the Suburbs was safest, came as no surprise (again those married white women living in the Suburbs can feel that they are safer than the rest of us, because it is true), but that rural areas are now more dangerous than urban areas came as a surprise to me.  This has much to do with the dramatic decrease in rates for urban areas and a much smaller increase in rates between 2010 and 2011, than for rural ares.

I do not think the Sandy Hook Tragedy is directly a result of increasing crime rates in general, the data suggests that victimization rates (crime rates show the same thing), is decreasing over time and has dropped significantly from 1993 to present.

I would also as a liberal in favor of gun control like to blame this on gun control, but as the shooter's mother obtained the guns legally, this crime would not have been stopped by anything short of a complete ban on firearms, which in the US will never happen.

It does not seem to be due to a lack of security on the part of the school, I am impressed with the amazing job the teachers did, trying to keep their kids safe, they clearly had been trained on what to do in this situation and I suspect many more kids would be dead, had they not behaved so admirably.

We will never know if Mr. Lanza had been ill treated as a kid at the school, although making sure that every kid, regardless of how different they are feel welcome and loved in school can hardly be a bad thing, nor can the reduction of bullying (again can't be sure this was at all involved in this situation), be considered a bad thing either.

Now to the mental health aspect, for that I will rely on a quote from a couple of articles on the subject:

(http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/portrait-of-psychopath)
"There is a stereotypical view that serial killers are loners, antisocial, and unable to maintain any relations, but that's mythology," Levin says.
Some psychopaths and serial killers may appear outwardly successful and 'normal'. "Rader, like so many of the others, was extraordinarily ordinary," Levin says. He was married with two children. "He looked beyond suspicion, he was active in the church, a Boy Scout leader and a compliance officer, and that is the secret to the success."
Serial killers often "don't look like sociopaths or deranged killers, because if they looked like monsters, they would be apprehended almost immediately," Levin says.
"Psychopaths wear the mask of sanity," agrees Michael Welner, MD, a forensic psychiatrist and an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. Welner is also an adjunct professor of law at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh.
"Nobody would have called Dennis Rader a psychopath before he got arrested," he says.

and

(http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/294626-overview) It is essential to keep in mind that most people with mental illness are not violent.^[2] A study of psychotic individuals found that those with a mental illness were responsible for only 5% of all violent crimes.^[3] An exception to this rule involves sexual offenders, who had high rates of substance use disorders, paraphilias,^[4] mood disorders, impulse control disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and antisocial personality disorders.^[5] Other exceptions include antisocial personality disorder and substance abuse.^[6]

I find it irresponsible for the media and some in the medical field to make links to mental health issues, when we don't have any credible information on if this young man had one, or if he had a personality disorder (different thing), or if he was just shy (only a disorder if it impacts quality of life), or an introvert (not a disorder nor a personality defect).  The truth is that just because people are different, quiet, introverted or shy (or all of those things), and just because that tends to make extroverts uncomfortable (often leading to teasing and bullying even into adulthood), it does not mean (and there has never been found) that this is any indication that a person will harm others, or themselves.

<a href="http://www.hypersmash.com">www.hypersmash.com</a>

Does the Economy do better under Democrats or Republicans?

It was very frustrating to read the news about the impending fiscal cliff, the negotiations and have so much rhetoric and so little facts. Nobody, it seems, is interested in figuring out what the 'real' problem is and then going about fixing it. Politicians are doing what they do best, spinning information in a way that suits them, the media is doing what it does best presenting the news in a way that will attract more viewers/readers rather than in a 'boring' but factual manner.

I suspect there is a way to present news in a factual manner and get more readers/viewers, but few news outlets have figured out a way to do this consistently. And we the public are also to blame, we 'say' we want facts and answers, but we end up going to MSNBC if we are liberals, Fox news if we are conservatives and CNN if we are independents (mostly moderate conservatives and liberals that find their party has shifted too far right or left for their tastes). So we say one thing, but really what we want is the media to confirm our views, not challenge them so we drift towards the news outlets that do and away from those that don't.

My frustration comes from the fact that this morning I spent quite a bit of time looking for a direct comparison of the plans offered by the two sides, with an objective look at the pros and cons of each, and am still looking. It was however very easy to find articles short in substance, but high on partisan rhetoric. Thus I did what comes naturally when I get frustrated with or suspicious of the information I am getting from the media... I go look for data. At first I had some fun looking at current and projected spending for various government programs vs the projected deficits.. I am not sure I believe the projections for the deficit, but I found the information interesting so here it is (USgovermentspending.com)

In the above graph we are looking at spending (in Billions) for each government program.  When we talk about cuts it makes sense to cut from the programs that will give us more bang for the buck, for example if you cut 1% from a program that gets more money, you are going to get more money back, than if you cut a program that gets substantially less money.  What we tend to do is cut programs that are unpopular rather than programs that could actually survive the cuts a little better. 

In the above scenario, cutting 1% from defense or healthcare, would give you more money back than the entire budget for education.  Do you remember the war on welfare mothers?  Contrary to popular belief welfare is not one of the most expensive programs.   Many were so angry with welfare mothers that there was a strong sentiment to dramatically cut spending to welfare programs.  Well sometimes emotion leads us astray as if you look at the amount spent on those programs specifically directed to families with kids, we see that it is it s tiny component of the budget.

 And while it is true that spending for that program has gone up under Obama, it is hardly the cause of the increased budget.  In addition to that, overall spending on welfare, after initially going up is actually going down now under president Obama.  That increase in spending is arguably necessary during a recession when more people will be needing services provided under those programs (these programs also service the disabled, and veterans).

As a Liberal I tend not to like seeing cuts in pensions, or healthcare but I think that unfortunately, because these look like they will become increasing burdens on the government, that is an area that will have to be looked at for cuts (see below), in addtion to cuts in defense.  I suspect that many of those cuts can come from providers rather than beneficiaries (who are economic drivers, like everyone else, if they can't provide for themselves, they will end up costing the government in other areas such as welfare and healthcare).  Also, and this is another opinion not yet backed up in fact, that healthcare in the US is more expensive than anywhere else, while not necessarily providing better care other than at emergency or highly specialized care.  If we could address this, I think healthcare costs would come down, without decreasing access of people to care, or causing them to go ban

In the above pie chart is the spending as a percent of GDP on various government programs and below is the projected spending in 2017.  Notice how small a percentage education is, so remember than when you get mad about how teachers can't teach and want to cut the education budget!

Finally a look at the deficit over time.  I was curious to see how the deficit changed over time and also how it changed depending on the president and their party affiliation.  There seems to be a general idea that spending and deficits go up under democratic presidents and then go down under republican presidents.

If the above projections and spending is accurate (source for the data used for the following charts: PresidentalDebt.org)
Then the Deficit as a percent of GDP was actually higher when Obama took office than it is now, and it has been dropping.  This is different from actual amount, as the actual amount has been going up, but so has revenue.  Below is a graph looking at deficit as a percent of GDP, by president.  It is interesting to note that the deficit has gone down with every Democratic president except for Obama, and up with every Republican president, yet not as much by Bush than other recent republican presidents until the end of his term.

 So the above graph should make both Liberals and Conservatives happy, liberals can say that republicans tend to drive up the deficit over time, and most Democratic Presidents tend to reduce them, and Conservatives can say that they were right about Obama, he is an out of control spender. 

Not so fast for either side :).  In the graph below is the percent increase of national debt under each administration.  I have to admit I was surprised to see that for all republican presidents, while there was an increase in debt growth during their administrations, they also started to reduce the growth before they left office.  The difference with Democrats is that they tend not to increase the rate of growth of the total debt during their administrations and this is true for all of them from Carter onwards.  This would include Obama, who has drastically decreased the growth rate of the debt, down to below levels of President Bush's first term.  So again Both sides can take some comfort in the data below.

So when you put the it all together what does it look like?  It looks more complicated than at first glance.  The deficits tend to increase during republican administrations overall because even though the rate of spending increase, decreases, there is still an increase in the national debt over time.  While during Democratic administrations there is either a drop in deficits (Clinton era) or at the very least not an increase (Carter and Obama eras).  A positive note for republicans is that Bush actually, until his last year, did not increase the deficit that much, however the recession caused him to increase spending, and delayed the ability of President Obama to do the democrat thing, and to reduce the increase of deficits.

So the data is not as warm and fuzzy to either side as we would like, but it is reality of a sorts and rather bipartisan in blame and praise for handling the economy.  I am not sure why there is a perception that Democratic administrations are spend crazy, it is clearly not true.  I suspect it has to do with the increase in spending for social programs that tends to occur when they come into power.  However as seen above, that kind of spending is a very small piece of the pie.

Flu cases higher in number and earlier

Updated 13 Jan 2013

I have updated the percent positive chart, while it the season has started early, the activity seems to have peaked, and while the peak is a little higher than all the seasons except the pandemic years (2009 - 2010) it does not seem dramatically worse than previous seasons (I am not looking at mortality, just percent positive), and I am not an expert.


The CDC has great info and data relating to the flu, I have posted the links below throughout the blog.

Keep healthy and safe.   

Previous post: 

 The flu season has begun and according to the CDC (various media outlets), it appears that it is off to a earlier start than usual and the strain around this year is said to be nastier than usual.  I can't comment on the nastiness of the strain, I did not seek out that kind of data, but I can look at the data provided by the CDC on their website (http://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/fluportaldashboard.html) on the number of samples tested for the flu.

The data is easy to find, and easy to download, so I played with it a bit to see what the numbers were telling me.  First I compared this seasons percent positive specimens (number of samples positive as a percentage of samples submitted) compared to that of last year.  From 1998 to date, only two seasons (2004 - 2005, and 2010 - 2011) have had higher rates (the rest were practically zero) at this time of year with 2005 - 2006) having rates higher than the rest, but not quite as high as this season.



The 2010 flu season were not normal  as the Pandemic flu strain was also circulating that year and the year before.  If you look at all those years together, it is amazing how in sync the start and finish of the flu season is each year.  Aside from a few years (which included the ones with the pandemic flu), the flu season seems to start and finish remarkably tightly.



On this graph the numbers on the outside represent the week of the year, the lines show percent positive.  As you can see most show peak activity around weeks 5 - 6.  The years of the pandemic flu (2009 and 2010).  Here is another view of the same data.




It is hard to see but the 2009 year has three peaks, the first around the same as the other years peaking around week 6, the second peaking around week 24 and the last one going up at week 38, but finally peaking in the 2010 season at week 42.  While that season was not as bad as initially predicted, it was much worse than any in since 1998 (at least in the US).  In this graph (above) I am showing the percent positive for the same period each year, below I have spread it out so you are looking at the periodicity over time.


Looking at the different strains circulation and this time at number of cases, not percent positive it is really easy to see where the pandemic occurred and to see just how different that year was from any other, and to see that while it was not the catastrophe predicted, it was pretty bad if you compare it to other years.  In the graph above the pink shaded line is the same data as in the graph above, it shows percent positive, the line bars are the different strains circulating and the number positive of each.   Below is the same graph without the pandemic strain and the percent positive.  It is easier to see the way the strains circulate looking at that image.




So we are off to a fast start this season, it will be interesting to see what happens as the year progresses.  For more interesting information and more data click on the link (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/#S2)