Lies, Damned Lies and Gun Control Statistics

by Doug Newman
Dec. 26, 2012

Popular
America Last: House Bill Provides $26B for Israel, $61B for Ukraine and Zero to Secure U.S. Border
Report: Blinken Sitting On Staff Recommendations to Sanction Israeli Military Units Linked to Killings or Rapes
Bari Weiss' Free Speech Martyr Uri Berliner Wants FBI and Police to Spy on Pro-Palestine Activists
John Hagee Cheers Israel-Iran Battle as 'Gog and Magog War,' Will Lobby Congress Not to Deescalate
Telegram Founder Changed Mind on Setting Up Shop in San Francisco After Being Robbed Leaving Twitter HQ

Mark Twain once lamented that there were “lies, damned lies and statistics”, with the third being the most deceptive at all. I was reminded of this the other evening when examining a “hit piece” that was circulating on Facebook last Friday in the aftermath of the horrific mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

I was feeling a bit wonkish and I thought I would look up some statistics on violence and gun ownership around the world. One study I found was from the 2007 Small Arms Survey that dealt with the number of guns per capita in 177 nations around the world. The other was a 2012 U.N. study on the number of intentional homicides in nations around the world.

While I am not a professional statistician, we can conclude one thing: there simply is no correlation between the murder rates and rates of firearms ownership.

Read More