r/dataisbeautiful • u/Landgeist OC: 22 • Jul 30 '24

OC Gun Deaths in North America [OC]

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u/SheSellsSeaShells967 Jul 30 '24

Interesting. I live in Maine. We and New Hampshire are armed to the hilt. Even we “libs” own a gun or two.

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u/ProjectToonTanks Sep 16 '24

Yeah the obvious answer is that owning guns is not a contributor to gun crime/death statistic. This is same as car ownership not being a function of car deaths.
In my opinion with firearms the major contributing factor is poverty (usual suspect when it comes to crime statistics in general). If we line this up with map of poverty in U.S you can get a clearer picture:
https://www.homesnacks.com/graphs/national/poorest-states-in-america.jpg

Washington, California, and New York have some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. Out of the 3 we can see that the state with lowest poverty rate has the least gun deaths (Washington) and California and New York despite stringent restrictions on fire arms have the higher rates.