Now that my newest version of my "graphics matter" series is up and running, I get to participate in the yearly, "Address comments/concerns/questions/etc. that were already covered in the post if people had bothered to actually read it."
Yay me.
However, one thing I do want to address as a separate post, primarily because it keeps coming up, is the myth that the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was responsible for the precipitous drop in firearm-related fatalities starting in 1994. Unsurprisingly, this particular myth is currently being championed by none other than the dishonest, lie-prone Baldr Odinson, who would not know "ethical behavior" if it reached up and bit him on his ample arse.
So why is this particular myth exactly that – a fabrication of a particularly pernicious cult? Well, for the full explanation, I will momentarily turn the reigns of this site over to Reputo, who really should get back into the weblogging scene (emphasis is added by me, Part 3 solely had to do with the "Ban on Evil-Looking Firearms" and its expiration and is thus omitted).
What caused the 90s reduction in gun deaths? – Part 1:
What is important here is that the Brady Bill and the AWB had absolutely nothing to do with knifes or blunt objects. So if these are showing the same trends as firearms, then one would be hard pressed to explain the mechanism for the Brady Bill and AWB causing knife and bludgeoning deaths to decrease.
So in summary, when we only look at firearm deaths, it appears that there may be evidence to support the Brady Bill affecting the rate of firearm deaths, however once deaths by other means are looked at it is found that they have similar trends and were not affected by the Brady Bill. So more than likely, the change in firearm, knife, and bludgeoning deaths have a common cause. But let’s not jump to conclusions just yet!
What caused the 90s reduction in gun deaths? – Part 2:
If you notice, the top three methods of homicide – firearms, knifes, suffocation – have almost identically shaped curves. That means whatever is affecting one is affecting all. Anyone care to explain how the Brady Bill or the Assault Weapons Ban prevented people from strangling others? I just can’t do that kind of mental gymnastics. The struck by/against curve is somewhat similar, with the overall basic trend (high near 1990, then decreasing until a leveling off in the last few years).
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The fact that all three curves are tracking so well (and in some cases have nearly identical year over year changes) means that these three methods of homicide are highly correlated. Since homicides account for about 45% of the firearm deaths each year, for the Brady Bill or AWB to have had any effect, there must have been some sort of Knife/pointy Stick Bill or Assault Pillow Ban at the same time to get such good correlation.
What caused the 90s reduction in gun deaths? – Part 4:
The decline in property crime started in 1991, violent crime in 1992, and gun deaths in 1993 (although it was basically flat between 1991 and 1993 for overall gun deaths and homicides). Going back to the original question, the Brady Bill and the AWB were passed in 1994. The Brady Bill had nothing to do with crime in general, the AWB was bundled with a larger crime bill, but the decline in crime had already begun 2 to 4 years before it came into effect. So my question is, what other things in our society might drive people to crime? Since we know that gun availability has been steadily rising and crime in general fell in the 1990s and leveled off in the end, then gun availability cannot be correlated to gun crime.
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To end, I can’t make a firm conclusion of causation about the economy and crime. However the factors I looked at are better correlated than gun availability was (which showed no correlation at all). So from that I would conclude that if one was really serious about decreasing both crime in general, as well as gun deaths, then perhaps you should focus more on policies that would improve the economic situation of people rather than trying to control who has the guns. If you want to believe the article of faith that in order to control crime you have to control who has the guns, then keep on believing. The evidence isn’t there to support you.
Too many people don’t want to hear that crime follows the economic cycles. To some that is admitting defeat in that as long as we have a free market, we will continue to have these economic cycles and crime will ebb and flow. The easy way is to say that guns (or drugs, or the boogeyman) is the primary driver, and if we just control or eliminate that item, then all will be well. Tinman, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…
Even if you do not buy into the theory that economies drive crime, countless other factors could have, and probably did, affect the crime bubble and drop surrounding the early 1990s, and trying to pick out the Brady Act as the single, solitary responsible party for the reduction in firearm-related crime is about as stupid as one can get… unless, of course, you believe that there was a Brady Knife Violence Prevention Act and Brady Water Violence Prevention Act passed simultaneously…
As Reputo mentions in one of those posts, firearm-related homicides account for the majority of firearm-related fatalities in general, so for those who are interested in the cold, hard numbers (like me), from 1981 to 2008, according to the same CDC data I used for my "graphics matter" post series, the rate of non-firearm-related homicides per 100,000 people correlates to the rate of firearm-related homicides per 100,000 with an r-value of 0.683 (to remind you, the rate of firearm-related fatalities correlates to the rate of firearm-ownership with an r-value of -0.585). With a positive correlation that strong, it is fair to say that whatever affected non-firearm-related homicides also affected firearm-related homicides in much the same fashion, and unless there is some aspect of the Brady Bill I am just forgetting at the moment, it would have had absolutely no impact on non-firearm-related homicides whatsoever. In other words, your princess is in another castle, Baldr.
Looking past Reputo’s and my work on the matter, actual PhD folks could not find any evidence that the Brady Act had any significant impact:
Our analyses provide no evidence that implementation of the Brady Act was associated with a reduction in homicide rates. In particular, we find no differences in homicide or firearm homicide rates to adult victims in the 32 treatment states directly subject to the Brady Act provisions compared with the remaining control states.
And, amusingly, those admittedly-disappointed-by-their-findings researchers came to much the same conclusions as Reputo and I:
While it is possible that the Brady Act has thus contributed to the nationwide reduction in gun violence, the evidence is sketchy at best. The fact is that homicide rates already started to decline in 1991, before the Brady Act became law. Various reasons have been offered for this decline - more cops, more prisons, a better economy and an easing of the crack epidemic are all plausible explanations. Since non-gun homicides decreased by about the same proportion as gun homicides during the 1990s, the same factors that led to fewer murders without guns are presumably responsible for much of the reduction in gun murders as well. In any event, the percentage of homicides with guns was 65 percent in 1991 and a virtually identical 66 percent in 1997.
So, no, Baldr; not that your cultish devotion to "gun control" will allow you understand what Reputo and I are talking about, but the "only reason" firearm-related fatalities went down in the 1990s was not the Brady Act, and, in reality, attempting to isolate an "only reason" out of the mess of interrelated things that do affect crimes – and accidents – is a fool’s errand indeed. More firearms does not lead to more firearm-related fatalities, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act had no discernible impact on firearm-related fatalities or firearm-related crimes, and "gun control" is an abject failure by every objective measurement – so say the facts, not that you would have any interest in those.
(As always, the standard disclaimer applies – even if the facts indicated that "gun control" was God’s Gift to Humanity, "gun control" extremists would have no right to infringe upon, limit, restrict, regulate, or otherwise abridge the rights of law-abiding, mature, responsible American citizens. The world simply does not work that way.)
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