RealClearPolicy's Robert VerBruggen is a statistician.
Today he looks at the question, does gun ownership increase homicide rates? He concludes:
There is no simple relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates as such, either among developed countries or among states in the U.S.
After removing two outliers - South Africa and the U.S. - VerBruggen finds no relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates in 20+ other countries. So then he looked at the results for U.S. states:
I took 2001 gun-ownership numbers from the Washington Post (based on a risk survey) and crossed them with 2001 murder and non negligent manslaughter rates (per 100,000) from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report The result: Jack squat.
I didn't make that up, he writes "Jack squat." VerBruggen has little respect for the scientific objectivity of "public health researchers" who, he believes, cook the data to reach
a priori desired results. He writes:
The field is notorious for its anti-gun bias.
