Year: 2014

Since the Brady Campaign and Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence have released their 2013 scores, it offers an opportunity to examine the effectiveness of their policies. I’ve done similar analysis in previous years, but wanted to take a fresh look at it. My raw data can be found here, sourced from both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2012 for crime data, and the Center for Disease Control’s Death Statistics for 2010 for suicide and gun death data. First, let’s look at violent crime:

At first this looks like it might correlate, but the Coefficient of Determination (r²) for these two sets is 0.00009, which is statistically insignificant. This means you can’t explain the variation in violent crime by the variation in the Brady Score for any state. There is no correlation between a state’s Brady Score and that states violent crime rate. Conclusion? Brady policy is not effective at controlling violent crime.

So what about other crimes? Perhaps it can control murder? And let’s not forget a favorite Brady tactic of including suicides in their statistics to justify their policies. How does that fare?

Even visually you can see there’s absolutely no correlation between Brady score and the murder rate, and the statistical calculations bear that out. The r² value between Brady Score and Murder is 0.004. This is not statistically significant, meaning that the variance in the murder rates between states is not explained by the Brady Score. The Brady folks do a bit better with their nebulous “Gun Death” rate, which is how many people die from gunshot wounds every year, including suicides. The r² value between Brady Score and Gun Deaths are 0.52, which means 52% of the variation in the gun death rate can statistically be determined by the variation in Brady Score. This is statistically significant, and the correlation coefficient (r) is -0.74, which is considered a strong negative correlation (Brady score goes up, gun death goes down). They Brady folks do less well with overall suicide, which has an r² value of 0.41, and an r value of -0.64, which is considered a moderate relationship. This would tend to suggest there is a considerable substitution effect if guns are not as available.

The overall conclusion I think can be reached is that Brady policies have absolutely no effect on violent crime or murder rates, and probably do not greatly affect the availability of firearms to criminals. Brady policy does have a strong effect on the ability of non-criminal citizens to purchase firearms, which is reflected by the correlation between gun deaths (which includes suicides) and Brady Score, and suicide overall. There appears to be a substitution effect of guns are not available, since suicide rates do not correlate as strongly with Brady Score as Gun Death rates. While there is a correlation between state data and suicide rates, international comparisons have found no link between gun prevalence and suicide rates.

Governor Cuomo notes that you’re not welcome in New York. That’s fine by me. I do my best to stay out of New York. I didn’t think there would be any way to make New Jersey seem welcoming in comparison, but Cuomo has accomplished it:

“You have a schism within the Republican Party. … They’re searching to define their soul, that’s what’s going on. Is the Republican party in this state a moderate party or is it an extreme conservative party? That’s what they’re trying to figure out. It’s a mirror of what’s going on in Washington. The gridlock in Washington is less about Democrats and Republicans. It’s more about extreme Republicans versus moderate Republicans.

… You’re seeing that play out in New York. … The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act — it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

If they’re moderate Republicans like in the Senate right now, who control the Senate — moderate Republicans have a place in their state. George Pataki was governor of this state as a moderate Republican; but not what you’re hearing from them on the far right.” – Andrew Cuomo

You heard the man. Get out, and take your tax dollars with you. Come to Pennsylvania, and help us fight so that we don’t have to deal with our own Andrew Cuomos in a few years (she might end up being called Governor Allyson Schwartz, or Kathleen Kane). We need gun loving New Yorkers in the Keystone State. But if you come, come prepared to fight. We have our own ninnies here, and Bloomberg has been digging in our backyard for some time already.