Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site is an equal opportunity offender. The GOP slammed it during 2012 and 2016 for its election projections. Democrats lobbed some swipes at Silver for saying Republicans would have a good 2014 midterm year. He was right in 2012 and 2014, but wrong in 2016. It happens. We’re all human. Yet, there is one piece on the site that analyzed and cut through the bull with gun violence that is definitely worth a read. Unlike anti-gun liberals who think we need more gun control, more background checks, and heck—even the prohibition of gun ownership in America—the data crunching site had a verdict on the matter: to see gun violence through only mass shootings is to close the eye of reason. For starters, FiveThirtyEight, unlike other outlets, notes: a) mass shootings are rare; b) the people who commit them are “different”; c) they don’t make up the majority of gun crimes; and d) there are other factors regarding gun crimes in America that won’t be fixed by the ineffectual proposals that are currently being peddled by the anti-gun Left.
Concerning homicides, the majority of the victims are male; the overwhelming majority of victims are black. Women are the least likely demographic to be murdered by a gun, unless it’s a mass shooting in which they make up 50 percent of the victims. They also noted that 54 percent of mass shootings “involve domestic or family violence.” The homicide rate has dropped precipitously, though suicides have risen, especially among women. Sorry liberals, but what FiveThirtyEight is making explicitly clear is that there is no silver bullet—and the one you’re pushing: more background checks won’t yield the results you’re hoping for and blow an opportunity to cut down on at least some of these societal ills. I’m thinking about the soaring suicide rate [emphasis mine]:
Here is a chart of state gun ownership rates vs. gun murder rates. Notice near total lack of correlation. pic.twitter.com/GjdqPY5k1e
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 3, 2017
Here is a chart of American gun ownership and American murder rate. Please explain how more guns inevitably means more murder. pic.twitter.com/TVOJZe2BTi
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 3, 2017