Thursday, July 1, 2010

The Most Armed States

The Daily Beast posted this survey, which details The Most Armed States. The survey is based on NICS background checks per 100,000 residents, which does not represent the total number of firearms sold within the state, as they make clear in the article. The fact that Texas does make the top 20 and Connecticut does, makes me wonder if the data has been accurately analyzed. Like so many statistical analyses this clearly appears to be an exercise in finding a way to represent data that is associated with much ambiguity.

1 comment:

Jim said...

Something that might be missing from the explanatory part of the article is the pseudo-monetary role that firearms play in some subcultures in the US.

Just like there's a used cars market and a lifecycle that cars go through (new -> used -> junkyard), there's a pretty substantial used guns market. There's a lot of "investment" and trade in firearms, as well.

Some of this churn will skew some of the NCIS statistics and also hide some of the purchases, as well.