"Graphics Matter" — Five Years and Counting

Linoge, who runs the excellent Walls of the City blog, just posted up the latest in his annual "Graphics Matter" series:

• graphics matter, year the fifth (part one, comparing U.S. population, firearms ownership, and firearm-related homicide [a.k.a. "gun deaths"])
• graphics matter, year the fifth, part two (comparing U.S. population, firearms ownership, and firearm-related crime [a.k.a. "gun crime"])

To anyone who's kept track of these things, his conclusions are no surprise. However, unlike the anti-rights crowd, Linoge publishes his numbers and sources, and welcomes people to go over them checking for errors.

Spoiler alert (highlight the text between the brackets to read): [The negative correlation between U.S. gun ownership and "gun death"/"gun crime" is even stronger than in previous "graphics matter" posts, once again utterly disproving the "more guns == more 'gun deaths'" and "more guns == more 'gun crime'" hypotheses.]

Now, personally, I don't buy the statistical arguments against gun ownership to begin with. Rights are rights, and are therefore not subject to popular opinion or statistical references. If they were, they would be privileges, to be revoked at any time if the popular opinion (fickle and arbitrary thing that it is) goes against them — and good luck getting them back once gone.

That said, Linoge once again shows (using delightfully-colored and easily-readable charts and graphs) that the anti-rights folks don't even have the statistical analyses on their side. The science is becoming increasingly settled, and not in their favor.

Previous installments of the "Graphics Matter" series can be found here.