Re: 2nd Term Part VII: You May Like Your Doctor But You Can't Keep Her
As others have noted, you can make statistics show just about anything that you want to. As even the authors of the study linked by 5mn Major admit, there are a lot of factors that go into the cause of violence involving firearms, and I think it's both shortsighted, and a bid disingenuous to focus on just one of them.
I will tell you my first reaction when reading about 5mn Major's list of the 10 worst states. I noted that 7 of them were in the deep south, all sharing borders. Then you had Arizona and New Mexico, and finally Alaska.
My initial reaction was people are getting killed, or robbed using firearms, in the deep south because we're talking about probably the most economically limited area of the country. I'm not talking about isolated counties, or even an isolated state like West Virginia. I'm talking about an entire region of the country where there are a lot of people, and there are a lot of people economically hurting. When you combine that with an easy availability of weapons, which we have everywhere in this country, you're going to have problems. Does that mean that guns are the problem? Not necessarily. As Springsteen once wrote, when you have "a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand", there are going to be issues. Limiting assault weapon sales or creating a waiting period doesn't solve those problems.
I have no idea, and no evidence to back this up. But if you ask me why Arizona and New Mexico have a problem, I finger drugs, drugs coming across from Mexico, the illegal immigration problem, cartel violence and how it all ties together. Again, the availability of guns is a factor, but just one factor, and maybe not all that large.
To me, focusing on the mechanical device, guns, in trying to figure out how to curb violent crime, is a little bit like saying the heavy death toll in motorcycle accidents is caused by motorcycles, when we should be looking at what the major causes are.
