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This is somewhat of the converse of the question Is Gun Control Effective:

A quote of famous musician and gun advocate Ted Nugent has been making the rounds on the Internet again lately:

Where you have the most armed citizens in America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun control, you have the highest crime rate.

Do larger numbers of legally armed citizens correlate to lower violent crime rates?

I'm not as interested in the converse portion of his quote, as the effectiveness of gun control is covered under the question I linked earlier. Instead, I'm looking for any evidence that an increase in private gun-ownership acts as a deterrent for violent crimes within a given geographic region.

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Beofett
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  • "Most armed" by percentage or absolute numbers? – Stefan Jan 03 '13 at 17:42
  • @Stefan That's a good question, and one that I don't have an answer for, since the original claim is ambiguous. I thought about that prior to posting the question, and decided to leave it out simply to make it easier to provide an answer that addresses the claim (in case one set of statistics was more readily available than the other). – Beofett Jan 03 '13 at 17:45
  • John Lott wrote on this quite a bit back in the late 90's early 00's. Look for his work and check those sources. – Freiheit Jan 03 '13 at 20:51
  • This correlation would in no way provide evidence that the gun ownership act as a deterrent. Because causation does not imply correlation. (for example a third factor such as income-level could affect both the gunownership and the violent crime rates or the violent crime rates could drive up the gun ownership rate) – Kristoffer Nolgren Jan 05 '13 at 19:37
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    @KristofferNolgren You are correct that any correlation between increased gun ownership and decreased crime does not imply causation. However, a clear correlation would lend credence to the theory that there may be a causal relationship, or at least indicate that the quote has *some* basis in reality, rather than a claim made up on the spot. That's what most studies aim to do, after all: either provide support in favor of a theory, or disprove a theory. You can never prove a proper theory right; only strengthen the support for it, or disprove it. – Beofett Jan 05 '13 at 20:54
  • The US has very high gun ownership and [relatively] low gun control, so it only follows that it should have more GUN deaths than a country with low ownership and strict control. But you seem to be asking about the gun as a deterrent to ALL types of violent crime, so I don't see how only focusing on GUN deaths can answer your question. Search homicide rate of countries (homicides committed by any means, not purely gun deaths) and you'll see that even though the US gun homicide rate is many, many, many times that of your average Western European country, its overall homicide rate is *only* aroun –  Jan 05 '13 at 23:07
  • As a side note: there's a good correlation between suicide and gun ownership. – Sklivvz Jan 05 '13 at 23:12
  • Well, I don't believe it's a very good mean of corroboration. It would be better to look at what happens in areas where gun control suddenly changes (due to change of policy for example) and compare that to similar areas where this did not happen. Although I agree that weather the statement is true or not is important on it's own merit. – Kristoffer Nolgren Jan 05 '13 at 23:42
  • ON a side note, I've seen tests that show how an untrained person reacts to the stress that being threatened by a gun imposes. It's very clear that owning a gun won't help most people protect themselves. I couldn't find any credible sources now though. Guns could have preventive effects. – Kristoffer Nolgren Jan 05 '13 at 23:47
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    @KristofferNolgren The point I think you may be losing sight of is that a claim was made by a notable celebrity that is being repeated as an argument against gun control. This question is not about whether or not gun control is effective. This question is because I'm *skeptical* about that specific claim made. Whether or not evidence corroborating that claim is a good means of determining whether or not gun ownership is an effective deterrent is irrelevant. – Beofett Jan 06 '13 at 00:36
  • @Luke please see my previous comment. I am asking about a specific claim made. US gun homicide rate relative to other countries is irrelevant to the claim. – Beofett Jan 06 '13 at 00:40
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    Likewise, do nuclear bombs promote world peace? – siamii Jan 13 '13 at 20:34
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    I am somewhat puzzled that one can find restricting oneself to United States statistics irrelevant when postulating an answer to a question that specifically states "in the US". Given cultural/social differences, I see the data presented as irrelevant; apples and oranges, if you will. Interesting, but irrelevant. I agree that using state boundaries as area definitions is not terribly useful; however, comparisons of major metropolitan areas within the US might be more relevant. Those units have a wider variance available in terms of regulation. However, it remains that you cannot get 'pure' dat –  Mar 02 '13 at 02:22
  • @HollyLama I agree with your first sentence, emphatically. While I'm here, I'd suggest a glance (in general, I'm not targeting Holly in particular) at http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/15607/4301 which is entirely U.S.-centric, though to a slightly different question. It partially addresses whether rates of gun ownership are associated with an increase (or decrease) in violent crime. – Ellie Kesselman Apr 27 '13 at 14:37
  • @siamii That is a wonderful question! It isn't quite analogous, as it is a macro-level question, and this is more of an individual nature. One could argue that nuclear bombs *do* promote world peace though. – Ellie Kesselman Apr 27 '13 at 14:40

2 Answers2

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In order to answer this question, I don't see any reason to restrict ourselves to comparison between states. The variation in gun laws between states are quite small, and the ease of crossing state boundaries make it easy for crime to flow across those borders. Instead lets look at comparison between countries, where there is marked different in gun laws and less likelihood of cross-border crime. Fortunately there is a study by Mark Reid, a machine learning researcher at Australian National University that does exactly that.

Graph of gun deaths versus gun ownership

The graph is for OECD countries, i.e. those with reasonably developed economies. There is a clear correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths. The outlier of Mexico is due to an ongoing drug war

of course gun deaths covers a lot of things other than homicides, including suicide, and it is possible that the prevalence of guns causes people to use a gun for a suicide that they would use something else for if it wasn't available. So let's restrict the analysis to gun homicides.

Gun homicides versus gun ownership

Again Mexico is the exception, but so is the US. It has a much higher level of gun ownership and gun homicide than any of the other countries. So much so that it obscures any trends in the graph. Let's replot without those two countries.

enter image description here

Now the trend is much less pronounced, but still detectable (especially if you consider Israel a special case, given its ongoing conflict). Without Israel there are certainly few countries with low gun ownership and high gun homicide. And it's probably worth restating that the US has rates of both gun ownership and gun homicide more than double any other country on that chart.

EDIT: I haven't been able to make a chart, but the figures for all homicides (more than just gun-related) follow a similar pattern to gun-related homicides. The US has double the homicide rate of the next highest country in the OECD, and four times the rate of most (with the strange exception of Luxembourg, whose homicide rate is very slightly higher than half the US).

EDIT:Several people commented that the questions was asking about violent crime, not just homicide. I found what look like reasonable figures for assaults at Nationmaster Encyclopedia . Plotting those against gun ownership gives this graph:

Assaults v Guns

The US is the data point at the top centre of the chart.

Now it appears that high gun ownership is not correlated with high levels of assault. But that wasn't the claim. The claim was that high gun ownership reduced levels of violent crime. This graph certainly indicates there is no inverse correlation between gun ownership and assaults.

DJClayworth
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  • I think this is great info, and I appreciate you taking the time to post it. However, my concern is that the claim involves specific data grouping that winds up being lumped into the aggregate values you list. The crux of the claim is that states the have lots of citizens legally armed will have lower overall crime than states that have less gun owners, and combining the data across all states precludes determining the accuracy of this claim (i.e. if areas with low gun ownership have higher incidents of gun crime, you cannot tell from this data). – Beofett Jan 04 '13 at 17:18
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    I believe the key claim is "Do larger numbers of legally armed citizens correlate to lower violent crime rates?". Looking at state data is one way to answer it, but in my opinion not the best, for reasons I give in the answer. – DJClayworth Jan 04 '13 at 17:21
  • Just saw your edit, and I'm not sure I agree that the variation in laws between states are quite small. However, after reading the discussion in the article you linked, I came across [this link](https://twitter.com/lreyzin/status/281106705746632704) which seems to provide the appropriate state-by-state breakdown. Thanks again! – Beofett Jan 04 '13 at 17:23
  • You've mentioned it, and I would agree that a chart of all homicides to gun ownership would be interesting. – Brian M. Hunt Jan 04 '13 at 17:52
  • The article gives instructions, but I don't have time now. I don't believe it would change things much. The US has a much higher homicide rate than other OECD countries. – DJClayworth Jan 04 '13 at 18:20
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    -1 as this equates violent crime to gun death which is not accurate at all, and even all homicides is not a totally accurate measure. – Ryathal Jan 04 '13 at 18:35
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    “trend is still detectable” – I’d like to see a correlation coefficient and a regression for that. In fact, I think it’ll be hard to argue that there’s much more than noise in there. The only thing we might conclude is that with increased number of handguns the *variance* of gun homicides increases (that itself would already be interesting, and indeed expected – at least by me). – Konrad Rudolph Jan 04 '13 at 22:59
  • Great information and presentation, but the question was about "Violent Crime". I personally am more interested in "Gun Related Deaths" but that is a different question. Shouldn't we remain focused on the definition of violent crime for this question? – AgilePro Jan 09 '13 at 02:44
  • How do we know the gun deaths/homicides aren't the criminals being shot? – Chloe Jan 12 '13 at 21:51
  • I really question the veracity of these charts because in looking at the countries involved, it is quite obvious that the different countries use different definitions for determining what is a gun-homicide. Additionally, the selection of countries for inclusion is questionable also. – Dunk Jan 13 '13 at 18:57
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    @Dunk Do you have evidence to back up the idea that the definitions are different? – DJClayworth Jan 14 '13 at 16:31
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    As other have said, the focus of this answer on 'gun deaths' means that the conclusions are irrelevant to the question asked. It's like correlating 'sword deaths' to the number of swords in a nation; it biases the results. The important question is how gun ownership relates to violent crime rates.... only your last chart had anything like that, and it was inconclusive. – Ask About Monica Apr 04 '13 at 19:58
  • Make a graph please. Otherwise it's interesting analysis. – Wertilq Apr 05 '13 at 06:20
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    This analysis is poor because you are picking up a bunch of other socioeconomic variables when comparing countries (income disparity? education levels? etc) A better analysis would be between different cities/regions within the US. – MrFox Aug 15 '13 at 15:04
  • One problem I see is that the graphs are guns per 100 people, not gun *owners* (or people with guns in the household) per 100. [Less than half of Americans](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/) own or have a gun in the household. – Laurel Feb 19 '18 at 18:48
  • @Laurel Guns per 100 people is pretty respected measure of gun ownership. And the differences in gun ownership are even more significant. [Less than 1% of people in the UK own guns.](http://www.bbc.com/news/10220974) – DJClayworth Feb 19 '18 at 20:00
  • @MrFox It's really hard to argue that the effects are due to socioeconomic differences between the US and Canada, Ireland, Netherlands and Japan when the gun homicide rate is more than twice theirs. – DJClayworth Feb 19 '18 at 20:03
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UPDATE 4/4/2013:

The claim is somewhat supported by graphing the US Census Bureau's 2006 Violent Crimes Data and the "Gun Rights Index" calculated here:

Scatter Diagram

But, statistically, the correlation is very weak.

Here is the data I used, scraped from the cited sites: 

data = {
{Alabama, 425, 6.8},
{Alaska, 688, 8.0},
{Arizona, 501, 9.3},
{Arkansas, 552, 6.2},
{California, 533, 4.9},
{Colorado, 392, 7.7},
{Connecticut, 281, 5.1},
{Delaware, 682, 6.3},
{Florida, 712, 6.5},
{Georgia, 471, 7.1},
{Hawaii, 281, 2.6},
{Idaho, 247, 8.7},
{Illinois, 542, 3.0},
{Indiana, 315, 6.8},
{Iowa, 284, 5.8},
{Kansas, 425, 7.4},
{Kentucky, 263, 7.4},
{Louisiana, 698, 6.9},
{Maine, 116, 7.4}, 
{Maryland, 679, 5.1},
{Massachusetts, 447, 3.7},
{Michigan, 562, 6.3},
{Minnesota, 312, 6.1},
{Missouri, 546, 7.4},
{Montana, 254, 8.7},
{Nebraska, 282, 7.4},
{Nevada, 742, 7.4},
{New Hampshire, 139, 7.4},
{New Jersey, 352, 4.1},
{New Mexico, 643, 7.4},
{New York, 435, 4.6},
{North Carolina, 476, 6.9},
{North Dakota, 128, 6.2},
{Ohio, 350, 7.4},
{Oklahoma, 497, 6.2},
{Oregon, 280, 7.4},
{Pennsylvania, 439, 7.4},
{Rhode Island, 284, 4.6},
{South Carolina, 766, 6.3},
{South Dakota, 171, 8.7},
{Tennessee, 760, 8.1},
{Texas, 516, 6.8},
{Utah, 224, 7.5},
{Vermont, 137, 8.0},
{Virginia, 282, 6.9},
{Washington, 346, 6.7},
{West Virginia, 280, 7.4},
{Wisconsin, 284, 6.2},
{Wyoming, 240, 8.7}
}

This is really a comment on @RedGrittyBrick's answer, but I do not know how to put graphics in a comment...

The claim is not supported by the data provided by @RedGrittyBrick (which are incomplete -- note FL's lack of gun crime data, which is a pretty important data point)...

Here's the plot of "Gun Murders / 1M Population" vs "Gun Ownership %":

gunmurders_vs_own

And the linear model parameter table:

enter image description here

This is totally back-of-the-envelope stuff, I haven't checked the sources, I don't assert a logical connection between "% gun ownership" and weaker gun laws, I'm dubious about the logical connection between "gun murders" and all gun crime, I shudder at the use of "The Guardian" as a primary source, etc.

Edit by RedGrittyBrick (I've now deleted my "Answer")

The data came from US Liberals, The Guardian, ipl for kids but primary data sources were claimed to be

Larry OBrien
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    Same problem as the other answer; you're focusing on 'gun deaths' or 'gun crime', which was not the question. – Ask About Monica Apr 04 '13 at 20:00
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    I updated the answer to use Census Bureau data on "violent crime," which is directly from the question. I tried to use the same wording I had used previously, to avoid editorializing. But since I'm not a talk-show host or trying to justify my own research, I think that it's obvious that, one way or the other, the thesis has little explanatory power. – Larry OBrien Apr 05 '13 at 19:55
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    Interesting. Thanks. It looks like maybe this argument doesn't have a whole lot of power for either side of the debate. – Ask About Monica Apr 05 '13 at 22:39