Gun Control in the U.S.A., Does it Matter?

Darwhin Gomez

A Nation is Born

Second Amendment in practice today.

State Laws

Gun Deaths Average Rate 2005-2022

Does number of gun laws influence gun death rate in states?


Call:
lm(formula = avg_rate ~ lawtotal, data = my_guns)

Residuals:
    Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
-6.8856 -2.5092 -0.2593  2.8787  7.9737 

Coefficients:
            Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept) 17.35202    0.73565  23.587  < 2e-16 ***
lawtotal    -0.13293    0.01832  -7.258 2.97e-09 ***
---
Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

Residual standard error: 3.626 on 48 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.5232,    Adjusted R-squared:  0.5133 
F-statistic: 52.67 on 1 and 48 DF,  p-value: 2.966e-09

Gun Ownership, Death Rate


Call:
lm(formula = avg_rate ~ gunOwnershipPercentage, data = my_guns, 
    method = "lm")

Residuals:
    Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
-4.9817 -1.6412 -0.0695  1.7062  6.3866 

Coefficients:
                       Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)            -0.76685    1.48967  -0.515    0.609    
gunOwnershipPercentage  0.32403    0.03239  10.004  2.5e-13 ***
---
Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

Residual standard error: 2.989 on 48 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.6759,    Adjusted R-squared:  0.6691 
F-statistic: 100.1 on 1 and 48 DF,  p-value: 2.497e-13

Combined approach


Call:
lm(formula = avg_rate ~ lawtotal + gunOwnershipPercentage, data = my_guns)

Residuals:
    Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
-4.8465 -1.6051 -0.0654  1.6168  6.4532 

Coefficients:
                       Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)             0.74536    3.55704   0.210    0.835    
lawtotal               -0.01378    0.02939  -0.469    0.641    
gunOwnershipPercentage  0.29874    0.06304   4.739 2.02e-05 ***
---
Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

Residual standard error: 3.014 on 47 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.6774,    Adjusted R-squared:  0.6636 
F-statistic: 49.34 on 2 and 47 DF,  p-value: 2.847e-12

Thoughts

  • The average gun death rate tends to increase as that gun ownership as a percentage of population increases.

  • State with more laws regulating guns experience lower average gun death rate

  • We see states with higher gun law counts have smaller a smaller gun ownership percentage.

  • Using Ownership to predict average gun death rates accounts for 68% of variance in our combined data set, adding total laws to the model did not improve the models performance.

  • By limiting the number of people who own guns we can significantly reduce the average number of gun deaths.

  • Thank You!