Thank you for taking the time to consider my letter.

I have also sent emails with similar information, but in this case I felt a paper version would best show what I have found. In the debate about gun control there are a lot of numbers and statistics talked about. Crime rates, murder rates, different states, different countries, different years. There are a lot of regulations proposed, bans, magazine limits, background checks, tests, training. In an effort to get something that doesn't require advanced mathematics to understand, I wanted to compare the amount of gun control in each US state with the murder rate in that state. Crime data for each state is collected and published by the FBI and murder rates for each state in 2011 are available1. Measuring the overall gun laws of a state would be difficult for one person, but The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence ranks each state on the basis of their gun control laws. Those rankings are available online as well2. By comparing a state's gun control rank and their murder rate we should be able to see more gun control leading to less murder.
12

CHART 13

Muder Rate (per 100,000)

10 8 6 4 2 0 0 10 20 30
Brady Rank

40

50

60

Looking at the chart, which plots the Brady Rank against the Murder Rate, there is no trend. The points are all over the place. Looking at the numbers themselves3, the 10 states tied at 39th by Brady Rank have murder rates from 2.5 to 7.5 per 100,000. For comparison, the national average is 4.71. The data also shows that California, rated best for gun control, has a murder rate of 4.8, more than double of worst rated Utah's 1.9. In order to have easier numbers to compare I used the murder rate from the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011 to rank each state by murder rate from 1, lowest murder rate, to 50, highest murder rate4.

60 50 40
Murder Rank

CHART 24

30 20 10 0 0 10 20 30
Brady Rank

40

50

60

If gun control works, better gun control should mean less murder. In that case, the Brady Rank and the Murder rank should be similar. This would be seen in the chart as the dots following some sort of line. Ideally, low Brady Rank (indicating good gun laws) would also have low Murder Rank (meaning low murder rate). If that were the case, we would see a line starting in the lower left and sloping upwards to the upper right of the chart. That just isnt what the data shows. Number one Brady state California is 32nd for murder rate. Dead last Brady state Utah is seventh best in the nation for murder rate. The Brady Rank and Murder Rank just don't match up. If gun control works, it should save lives and reduce crime. If anyone can reliably evaluate a state's gun control, The Brady Campaign should be able to. If anyone can provide useful murder rates, the FBI should be able to. Using what should be reliable numbers, a state's gun control doesn't seem to have any relation to murder rate. If it doesn't reduce murder, should we be seriously considering gun control5? I don't know if gun control has worked for other countries or other times, but I think comparing gun control ranks and murder rates shows gun control doesn't work now, here. I thank you for taking the time to read this and consider the numbers. I hope this helps you make a decision on gun control5. _______________________ Ed Crowell ed.crowell.law@gmail.com

Footnotes: 1. FBI Uniform Crime Report data for 2011 murder rates was downloaded on January 5, 2013, from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.2011/tables/table-4 2. Brady Campain state rankings were copied from the Brady Campaign report downloaded January 5, 2013, from http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/stateleg/scorecard/2011/2011_Brady_Campaign_State_Sc orecard_Rankings.pdf 3. The data used for Chart 1 is below (shown in order of best to worst Brady Rank)
State Brady Rank Murder Rate (per 100,000) California 1 4.8 New Jersey 2 4.3 Massachusetts 3 2.8 New York 4 4 Connecticut 5 3.6 Hawaii 6 1.2 Maryland 7 6.8 Rhode Island 8 1.3 Illinois 9 5.6 Pennsylvania 10 5 Michigan 11 6.2 North Carolina 12 5.3 Colorado 15 2.9 Oregon 15 2.1 Washington 15 2.4 Alabama 17 6.3 Minnesota 17 1.4 Delaware 18 4.5 Virginia 19 3.7 Georgia 22 5.6 South Carolina 22 6.8 Tennessee 22 5.8 Iowa 25 1.5 Maine 25 2 Ohio 25 4.4 New Hampshire 27 1.3 Vermont 27 1.3 Nebraska 29 3.6 Nevada 29 5.2 Arkansas 39 5.5 Indiana 39 4.8 Kansas 39 3.8 Mississippi 39 8

Missouri New Mexico South Dakota Texas West Virginia Wyoming Florida Wisconsin Idaho Kentucky Louisiana Montana North Dakota Oklahoma Alaska Arizona Utah

39 39 39 39 39 39 41 41 47 47 47 47 47 47 50 50 50

6.1 7.5 2.5 4.4 4.3 3.2 5.2 2.4 2.3 3.5 11.2 2.8 3.5 5.5 4 6.2 1.9

The Brady Rankings set states scoring the same as tied at the same rank, using the lowest number in the tied series as the rank.

4. The data for Chart 2 is below, in order of lowest to highest Murder Rank (1 is lowest murder rate, 50 is highest).
State Hawaii Rhode Island New Hampshire Vermont Minnesota Iowa Utah Maine Oregon Idaho Washington Wisconsin South Dakota Massachusetts Montana Colorado Wyoming Kentucky North Dakota Connecticut Nebraska Virginia Brady Rank 6 8 27 27 17 25 50 25 15 47 15 41 39 3 47 15 39 47 47 5 29 19 Murder Rank 1 4 4 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 12 13 15 15 16 17 19 19 21 21 22

Kansas New York Alaska New Jersey West Virginia Ohio Texas Delaware California Indiana Pennsylvania Nevada Florida North Carolina Arkansas Oklahoma Illinois Georgia Tennessee Missouri Michigan Arizona Alabama Maryland South Carolina New Mexico Mississippi Louisiana

39 4 50 2 39 25 39 18 1 39 10 29 41 12 39 47 9 22 22 39 11 50 17 7 22 39 39 47

23 25 25 27 27 29 29 30 32 32 33 35 35 36 38 38 40 40 41 42 44 44 45 47 47 48 49 50

The Brady Rankings set states scoring the same as tied at the same rank, using the lowest number in the tied series as the rank. I have done the same for Murder Rank. 5. In the interest of being thorough, I dont actually find the numbers dispositive. My decision is based on the fact that my life has value and I have the right to defend my life from assault. Selfdefense is a right supported even by Ghandi. With the right to self-defense comes a right to the tools to defend myself. There is no reason to deny me the best tools for my family and myself. The best tools for stopping violent criminals are the ones police and military use, which is why they use them. Therefore, I deserve the best tools to defend myself and my family from assault, be it a lone criminal, gang, mob, riot, invading army, or domestic tyranny, now or in the future, real or potential. However, I frequently see numbers used to support gun control so it seemed worthwhile to dispute those numbers in the simplest way I could conceive. If gun control works at all like I see

claimed, there should be at least some effect on murder rates. There is none. There is not even a large enough effect directly on firearms murders to show up in the overall murder rate. I mention this because if gun control even just affected gun murders, given the large percentage of murders committed with guns, it should be apparent in the overall murder rate. Again, it is not.