Gun Reform

It is clear that there are only two viable options: nobody gets guns, or everyone gets guns. Let's analyse the first option. America is the #1 manufacturer of guns, and arms the rest of the world. Therefore, guns will always be available on the black market, and "nobody gets guns" is no longer viable. So, we must arm everyone.

Now, there are claims that strict gun laws reduce gun deaths. This statement, while true, is confounded by the lack of guns on the streets. Of course, if there are no guns, there won't be gun deaths. Only an idiot would try to disprove that statement. However, we must look at other rates of homicide to conclude if guns are the issue.

Note: Whenever available, the source linked is hosted on Archive.org. At the time of writing, all sources are available at their original URLs.

Note: The colors for some of the graphs have been modified to aid in readability. However, details and statistics of those graphs have been unmodified.

Discussion

I am open to hear any and all of your suggestions or criticism. I am a busy man, so I would greatly appreciate if you took the time to put your feedback over in this issue on GitHub. Of course, you can always DM me on Twitter instead.

Facts & Data

It is a well-known fact that most gun-related homicides occur in areas that have strict gun laws. According to this study by WirePoints.org, the top 10 most violent cities are very liberal.

You can find all data in page 4 of that study. It is reformatted here to be more readable, with the voting map from 2020 according to CNN.

Total homicides; in 2020
Homicides per 100k citizens; in 2020

City	Total homicides	Rank	State map
Chicago, IL	697	1
Philadelphia, PA	516	2
New York, NY	438	3
Houston, TX	435	4
Los Angeles, CA	382	5
Baltimore, MD	335	6
Detroit, MI	309	7
Memphis, TN	288	8
New Orleans, LA	280	9
San Antonio, TX	231	10

City	Homicides per 100K	Rank	State map
New Orleans, LA	74.3	1
St. Louis, MO	68.2	2
Baltimore, MD	58.1	3
Detroit, MI	48.9	4
Memphis, TN	45.9	5
Cleveland, OH	45.7	6
Milwaukee, WI	37.6	7
Atlanta, GA	34.2	8
Kansas City, MO	32.8	9
Philadelphia, PA	32.7	10

Before you claim that whites are the most violent, I implore you to view statistics from the CDC (Supplementary Table 1) and World Population Review.com, which are re-interpreted here for ease of viewing. All data is from the year 2020, looking at homicide rates (not suicide)

Population group	Gun-related homicides per 100k citizens
United States: Black (M+F)	26.90
El Salvador: All cases	26.49
Colombia: All cases	17.74
Philippines: All cases	8.90
Mexico: All cases	6.34
Paraguay: All cases	5.78
Costa Rica: All cases	5.63
United States: Hispanic (M+F)	4.45
Peru: All cases	4.22
Barbados: All cases	3.12
Montenegro: All cases	2.42
United States: White (M+F)	2.15
United States: Asians (M+F)	1.05

Incredibly, the US black population managed to be worse than El Salvador. So, we must ask why are black people so much more violent than the rest of America? This appears to be linked to welfare and the lack of a nuclear family. When I eventually write that part of my 'blog,' I will link it here.

The Improper Solution

Instead of very shallowly 'resolving' the issue by banning guns, we need to instead look at why people are violent. Guns do not kill people, people kill people, a gun is a tool. Violent people will be violent, with or without guns. In 1996, there was a mass shooting in Australia, and the Australian government subsequently banned guns. This was during a massive dip in homicides between 1993 and 2001, but there was a significant spike in 2001-2002.

While there has been an overall downward trend of domestic homicides and those between acquaintances, we cannot attribute this to the banning of guns due to a lack of data from before 1989; 7 years is not enough to find a trend. Moreover, the homicide rate between strangers has remained relatively stagnant, at 0.1-0.2 homicides per 100k.

Source Slide 5, "Incidents of homicide by classification"

Hand vs Assault Weapons

Unfortunately, there is a misconception that assault-style weapons, such as the heavily cited AR-15, is a major factor behind all these crimes. That is simply not true. According to the FBI, hand guns are used in the overwhelming majority of crimes. In fact, next up after all guns is knives, which is used more often than rifles, shot guns and 'other guns' combined. AR-15's and AK-47's are classified as rifles.

Weapon	2018	2019
Firearms: Hand guns	6,683	6,368
Firearms: Rifles	305	364
Firearms: Shot guns	237	200
Firearms: Others	164	45
Knives/Cutting tools	1,542	1,476
Personal (hands, feet, ...)	712	600
Blunt (clubs, hammers, ...)	455	397

^{Note: Cases where guns are not known take up about 30% of all gun cases, but it is not shown here to aid in readability}
A considerable proportion of crimes are committed with knives and other sharp objects, clearly it isn't out of the question for criminals. Again, from the Australian government, it shows that 37% of homicides in 2019-20 is a result of stab wounds. And hey, I thought they banned guns, but it still accounts for 13% of homicides. Curious, isn't it? People will still manage to get a hold of guns, regardless of legality.

Source Slide 11, "Homicide victims by cause of death"

Banning guns will do nothing to solve violent crime. We need to go to the root of the problem: why are people violent? Unfortunately, we have not been studying this and have no data on it. However, we can assume that there are several key signs that the shooting will happen before it does. We should start looking into this issue immediately.