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Age-Adjusted Firearms Death Stats

Arkady

Arkady

President
In another thread, below, Julie pointed out that liberal states tend to have lower age-adjusted firearm death rates than conservative states. Some conservative seized on the "age-adjusted" caveat as if, somehow, this explained away the result -- as if the CDC had simply gamed the numbers by [Unwelcome language removed]-factoring red state results upwards and blue state results downwards to get a desired result (rather than doing the age adjustments for the obvious reasons, to allow for an apples-to-apples comparisons among demographically dissimilar groups).

Setting aside the customary right-wing recourse to bizarre conspiracy theories to explain away inconvenient statistical facts, just stop and think things through. What are the likely impacts of doing these age adjustments on the stats? Well, obviously, it will mean that states that have a larger share of their population in the "peak gun violence" age groups will have their rates adjusted downwards, while those with a smaller share in that demographic will have their rates adjusted upwards. Since liberal states tend to have lower birth rates and higher life expectancy, the overall impact of age adjustments will be to make the comparison a little less ugly, from the perspective of a red state, than would be an un-age-adjusted comparison, since on average the conservative states will have their numbers adjusted downward more than the liberal states.

This should be immediately and glaringly obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with American society.... at least anyone who isn't so innumerate as to be unable to think through the implications of those demographics. But, since obviously some people were unfamiliar with American society, or innumerate, it's easy enough to confirm my prediction. Table 19, here, includes both the rate and the age adjusted rate:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf

Here's the net impact for each state Julie listed (increase or decrease in rate from age-adjustment in parentheses):

The 10 states with the highest firearm age-adjusted death rates were:
1. Alaska (-0.2)
2. Louisiana (+0.1)
3. Mississippi (+0.2)
4. Alabama (-0.2)
5. Arkansas (-0.1)
6. Wyoming (-0.8)
7. Montana (-0.2)
8. Oklahoma (+0.1)
9. New Mexico (-0.1)
10. Tennessee (-0.5)

The 10 states with the lowest firearm age-adjusted death rates were:
1. Hawaii (-0.1)
2. Massachusetts (-0.1)
3. New York (-0.2)
4. Connecticut (-0.1)
5. Rhode Island 0
6. New Jersey 0
7. New Hampshire (-0.6)
8. Minnesota (-0.3)
9. California (-0.2)
10. Iowa (-0.2)

So, the first list had their numbers lowered by an average of over twice as much as the second group.... meaning the red-state/blue-state comparison would be even starker based on non-age-adjusted numbers.

Here's what the ten worst and ten best lists look like using the non-age-adjusted figures:

Worst
AK
LA
AL
MS
WY
MT
AR
OK
TN
SC

There's a little shuffling, and NM comes out to be replaced by South Carolina, but otherwise it's the same group of states. In fact, the list looks a little more damning to the conservatives, since SC is more consistently conservative than NM.

Best
HI
MA
NY
CT
RI
NJ
NH
CA
MN
IA

California and Minnesota swap places, but otherwise it's an identical list to the age-adjusted one.

There are two take-aways here:

(1) There are some conservatives here who are so bad with numbers or ignorant of sociology that they'll push an argument that actually runs directly against their own interests, such as insisting on doing a non-age-adjusted comparison that any informed person would expect to make their position look even weaker.

(2) The conspiracy theories notwithstanding, age adjustments are made by the government for stats like this not because doing so games the numbers for the liberals (on the contrary, they detract slightly from the strength of the liberal case), but because it makes intellectual sense to do so.
 
For anyone who doesn't want to waste their time reading that wall of text, the gist is that states with higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of gun deaths.

In related news, Arkady is undertaking a study to determine what color the White House is...let's all wish him luck, ok?
 
Arkady said:
In another thread, below, Julie pointed out that liberal states tend to have lower age-adjusted firearm death rates than conservative states. Some conservative seized on the "age-adjusted" caveat as if, somehow, this explained away the result -- as if the CDC had simply gamed the numbers by [Unwelcome language removed]-factoring red state results upwards and blue state results downwards to get a desired result (rather than doing the age adjustments for the obvious reasons, to allow for an apples-to-apples comparisons among demographically dissimilar groups).

Setting aside the customary right-wing recourse to bizarre conspiracy theories to explain away inconvenient statistical facts, just stop and think things through. What are the likely impacts of doing these age adjustments on the stats? Well, obviously, it will mean that states that have a larger share of their population in the "peak gun violence" age groups will have their rates adjusted downwards, while those with a smaller share in that demographic will have their rates adjusted upwards. Since liberal states tend to have lower birth rates and higher life expectancy, the overall impact of age adjustments will be to make the comparison a little less ugly, from the perspective of a red state, than would be an un-age-adjusted comparison, since on average the conservative states will have their numbers adjusted downward more than the liberal states.

This should be immediately and glaringly obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with American society.... at least anyone who isn't so innumerate as to be unable to think through the implications of those demographics. But, since obviously some people were unfamiliar with American society, or innumerate, it's easy enough to confirm my prediction. Table 19, here, includes both the rate and the age adjusted rate:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf

Here's the net impact for each state Julie listed (increase or decrease in rate from age-adjustment in parentheses):

The 10 states with the highest firearm age-adjusted death rates were:
1. Alaska (-0.2)
2. Louisiana (+0.1)
3. Mississippi (+0.2)
4. Alabama (-0.2)
5. Arkansas (-0.1)
6. Wyoming (-0.8)
7. Montana (-0.2)
8. Oklahoma (+0.1)
9. New Mexico (-0.1)
10. Tennessee (-0.5)

The 10 states with the lowest firearm age-adjusted death rates were:
1. Hawaii (-0.1)
2. Massachusetts (-0.1)
3. New York (-0.2)
4. Connecticut (-0.1)
5. Rhode Island 0
6. New Jersey 0
7. New Hampshire (-0.6)
8. Minnesota (-0.3)
9. California (-0.2)
10. Iowa (-0.2)

So, the first list had their numbers lowered by an average of over twice as much as the second group.... meaning the red-state/blue-state comparison would be even starker based on non-age-adjusted numbers.

Here's what the ten worst and ten best lists look like using the non-age-adjusted figures:

Worst
AK
LA
AL
MS
WY
MT
AR
OK
TN
SC

There's a little shuffling, and NM comes out to be replaced by South Carolina, but otherwise it's the same group of states. In fact, the list looks a little more damning to the conservatives, since SC is more consistently conservative than NM.

Best
HI
MA
NY
CT
RI
NJ
NH
CA
MN
IA

California and Minnesota swap places, but otherwise it's an identical list to the age-adjusted one.

There are two take-aways here:

(1) There are some conservatives here who are so bad with numbers or ignorant of sociology that they'll push an argument that actually runs directly against their own interests, such as insisting on doing a non-age-adjusted comparison that any informed person would expect to make their position look even weaker.

(2) The conspiracy theories notwithstanding, age adjustments are made by the government for stats like this not because doing so games the numbers for the liberals (on the contrary, they detract slightly from the strength of the liberal case), but because it makes intellectual sense to do so.
Click to expand...


LOL!

you missed the point entirely!!!!

AGAIN!
 
Another interesting gun stat shows that the vast majority of gun deaths by White males is self-inflicted (suicides/accidents), while the majority of Black male gun deaths come from homicide.

That begs the question, why are Black males much more proficient in firearms than Whitey?

REF:

Among white men ages 35 to 64, the death rate by firearm increased over 29 percent since 1990 (after being corrected for population growth), and a staggering 89.2 percent of those deaths were self-inflicted.

The same issue is not nearly as prevalent in black or Hispanic males, who are significantly more likely to be victims of firearm homicides. In 2012, of the black men ages 15 to 44 killed by guns, 88.7 percent of the deaths were ruled homicides (which excludes unintentional deaths as well as death by legal intervention)
Click to expand...

http://www.vocativ.com/usa/guns/suicides-outnumber-homicides-comes-gun-violence/
 
Max R. said:
Why isn't Chicago, Detroit, LA and other high crime, strict gun control cities controlling crime?
Click to expand...
I've discussed this repeatedly. First, what makes you think gun control isn't making a difference in those places? The question is whether they'd be even worse without gun control. But, beyond that, as I mentioned, common sense tells you that gun control becomes less effective the smaller its footprint. It's fairly effective at a national level (where border controls mean you really can reduce gun prevalence). It's less effective at a state level (where restrictions on buying and possession can have an impact, but there are no border controls to keep guns from wandering over from elsewhere). It's even less effective at a municipal level. And it probably has no impact at all at the level of a particular campus or building (unless you have metal detectors and other ways to actually check people for weapons). I would fully expect that if you have a city with tight gun control, within a half hour drive of a state with loose gun control (as with Chicago in relation to Indiana), you're going to see very little benefit from that gun control.
 
Arkady said:
In another thread, below, Julie pointed out that liberal states tend to have lower age-adjusted firearm death rates than conservative states. Some conservative seized on the "age-adjusted" caveat...
Click to expand...
Seized? Who did that? Questioned? I know I did in a comment about how statistics are often cherry-picked by political partisans to fit their agenda.

The example being Julie's use of a CDC map focusing upon gun deaths to the exclusion of all other deaths, which anyone who actually clicked on a state would see. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/Firearm.htm

Example; Alabama (chosen simply because it was listed first)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/AL_2014.pdf

There's a lot of death statistics listed there. Firearm deaths were 831, but it doesn't break down how many of those were suicides, homicides or accidents. It does list suicides (724), homicides (405) and accidents (2283, 5th leading cause of death).

Note that the top 10 leading causes of death don't even list firearms nor homicides. Suicide does make it the list as number 10. The top 3 killers are Heart Disease (12,036 deaths), cancer (10,276 deaths) and Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases (3,015 deaths). A total of 25,237 deaths in a single year in a single state, yet the anti-gun mob chooses to focus on the 831 "gun deaths" which, following statistics, over half are suicides. Tell me what is wrong with this picture?
 
Max R. said:
Seized? Who did that?
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be a disallowed call-out of another poster? The thread is there. You can see who seized on the age adjustment.

Note that the top 10 leading causes of death don't even list firearms nor homicides. Suicide does make it the list as number 10. The top 3 killers are Heart Disease (12,036 deaths), cancer (10,276 deaths) and Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases (3,015 deaths). A total of 25,237 deaths in a single year in a single state, yet the anti-gun mob chooses to focus on the 831 "gun deaths" which, following statistics, over half are suicides. Tell me what is wrong with this picture?
Click to expand...

I understand the desire to throw the kitchen sink into this argument to distract from the main point. But I'm not going along with that. If you want to discuss, say, policy ideas for lowering chronic lower respiratory disease deaths, the top posting is free. In the meantime, the discussion here was focused on firearms deaths. Judging by such deaths being much higher in conservative states, even after adjusting for age, it suggests that liberal policies can help. It would take more work to show if gun control, in particular, is likely to help, since it's so hard to quantify gun control, much less to control for other policy factors. But, at the very least, we can say it's the pattern of data we'd expect to see if the gun controllers were right.
 
Arkady said:
Wouldn't that be a disallowed call-out of another poster? ...
Click to expand...
No. You made an accusation. All you have to do is provide a post quote of someone doing it. Good Lord, aren't you a [Unwelcome language removed] lawyer? If so, you'd know better. If not, your mistake is understood.
 
Arkady said:
I've discussed this repeatedly. First, what makes you think gun control isn't making a difference in those places? The question is whether they'd be even worse without gun control. But, beyond that, as I mentioned, common sense tells you that gun control becomes less effective the smaller its footprint. It's fairly effective at a national level (where border controls mean you really can reduce gun prevalence). It's less effective at a state level (where restrictions on buying and possession can have an impact, but there are no border controls to keep guns from wandering over from elsewhere). It's even less effective at a municipal level. And it probably has no impact at all at the level of a particular campus or building (unless you have metal detectors and other ways to actually check people for weapons). I would fully expect that if you have a city with tight gun control, within a half hour drive of a state with loose gun control (as with Chicago in relation to Indiana), you're going to see very little benefit from that gun control.
Click to expand...
There are 10,000 gun homicides a year in this country. I can live with that; no problem.
 
Max R. said:
No. You made an accusation.
Click to expand...

I made an accusation you could very easily confirm on your own. But, I'll go ahead and risk being reprimanded for calling out the other poster, if you like. After Julie posted the stats, the Thinker seized on the "age adjusted" qualifer, here:

https://www.politicaljack.com/threads/states-with-highest-gun-death-rates.88254/

"What do you mean by 'age adjusted'?"

A few posts lower, Drumcollie, another conservative, replied "so her logic fits." Setting aside Drumcollie's customary sub-literacy, the clear implication of that comment was that the gun violence statistics only fit with Julie's logic if you first adjust the stats for age. That, of course, was untrue. In fact, it was exactly the opposite of the truth, since the fit between Julie's logic and the statistics is actually even better when you use the non-age-adjusted statistics, as anyone with even a lick of good sense would have expected immediately, and as I later confirmed with the actual raw stats.

Later, another conservative, Sgt Staples, also seized on the "age adjusted" qualifer, displaying some truly colossal ignorance of sociology with his question "What the hell is an age adjusted death?"

Then, down in post 116, I did the forum a service by explaining the reason for the age-adjustment, for the benefit of ignoramuses like Sgt Staples, Drumcollie, and the Thinker. I even refrained from any hint of an insult in the process, or any advocacy on the gun issue, simply providing it as a neutral explanation of the reasons for the statistical method:

"You need to adjust for age to compare fairly across demographically dissimilar populations. If you do a straight comparison, states with a large share of their populations in their peak crime years will come out looking very violent while those with a lot of very old or young people won't, other things being equal.... That way you compare apples to apples across states, and have more likelihood of measuring policy impacts (e.g., the impact of gun control), rather than just demographics."

This neutral, explanatory offering on my part prompted personal insults from another conservative poster, oicu812. Although I was the target of the insult and didn't complain to the moderators (I oppose censorship), it appears to have been censored, so that all that remains of that attack is the characteristically garbled snippet that made its way into my response to him:

"i suspect you tend to offer your opinion based on hypothetical statistics thattend to favor your position...
a position that would probably be weakened without all the "i suspect, tend to, and would probably's"

So, yes, as I said: 'In another thread, below, Julie pointed out that liberal states tend to have lower age-adjusted firearm death rates than conservative states. Some conservative seized on the "age-adjusted" caveat...'

Sgt Staples and Thinker seized on it, Drumcollie speculated that the age-adjustment was to make the stats fit with Julie's logic, and oicu812 attacked me personally for explaining why age adjustments are done and for my educated guess (which wound up being correct), that the non-age-adjusted figures were even more in line with Julie's logic than the age-adjusted figures.
 
Last edited:
resident_evil said:
There are 10,000 gun homicides a year in this country. I can live with that; no problem.
Click to expand...
We can lower that substantially, saving thousands of lives from homicides, and many thousands more from suicides and accidental shootings, with gun control. It's fine to say "no, that's a price worth paying," for whatever it is you get out of the low-regulation environment around guns today. And it's hard for anyone to dispute that, since it comes down to an apples-to-oranges comparison between the value of those lives and the value of, say, the convenience of gun collectors, and there's no quantifiable way to convert one figure to the other for purposes of an objective comparison. That comes down to value judgments. I just want to make sure that when people get to that stage, they at least are clear on what the decision entails -- that they aren't deluding themselves about the likely outcome of gun control.

I've offered this comparison before, but I think it's a really good one. Owning a swimming pool puts you, your family, and those around you at greater statistical risk. Even if you're a responsible pool owner, that pool still represents a statistically increased risk of mortality. That doesn't mean we should ban home swimming pools, or even that we have to regulate them more heavily. One can argue that what we get out of those pools, in terms of family enjoyment, is worth the price we pay, in drownings, etc. I'd happily live in a house with a pool, so that's where I come down on it. But I'm not so irrational that I have an emotional need to warp reality to my convenience. To have that pool, I wouldn't have to insist --the best evidence notwithstanding-- that owning that pool lowers the mortality risk for my family (by way of, say, resulting in better swimming skills that put us at lower risk of drowning in other settings). I accept that there's a trade off and would make it. The problem I have with so many gun fetishists is how illogical they are about. They insist that guns make us safer and that a gun in the home makes their family safer, the best evidence notwithstanding. If they admitted the likely impact of more gun control, in saving thousands of lives, and then insisted it just wasn't worth it in terms of what that gun control would cost, fine. But they should at least force themselves to be clear-eyed about the fact a trade-off is happening.
 
Arkady said:
I made an accusation you could very easily confirm on your own. But, I'll go ahead and risk being reprimanded for calling out the other poster, if you like. After Julie posted the stats, the Thinker seized on the "age adjusted" qualifer, here:

https://www.politicaljack.com/threads/states-with-highest-gun-death-rates.88254/

"What do you mean by 'age adjusted'?"

A few posts lower, Drumcollie, another conservative, replied "so her logic fits." Setting aside Drumcollie's customary sub-literacy, the clear implication of that comment was that the gun violence statistics only fit with Julie's logic if you first adjust the stats for age. That, of course, was untrue. In fact, it was exactly the opposite of the truth, since the fit between Julie's logic and the statistics is actually even better when you use the non-age-adjusted statistics, as anyone with even a lick of good sense would have expected immediately, and as I later confirmed with the actual raw stats.

Later, another conservative, Sgt Staples, also seized on the "age adjusted" qualifer, displaying some truly colossal ignorance of sociology with his question "What the hell is an age adjusted death?"

Then, down in post 116, I did the forum a service by explaining the reason for the age-adjustment, for the benefit of ignoramuses like Sgt Staples, Drumcollie, and the Thinker. I even refrained from any hint of an insult in the process, or any advocacy on the gun issue, simply providing it as a neutral explanation of the reasons for the statistical method:

"You need to adjust for age to compare fairly across demographically dissimilar populations. If you do a straight comparison, states with a large share of their populations in their peak crime years will come out looking very violent while those with a lot of very old or young people won't, other things being equal.... That way you compare apples to apples across states, and have more likelihood of measuring policy impacts (e.g., the impact of gun control), rather than just demographics."

This neutral, explanatory offering on my part prompted personal insults from another conservative poster, oicu812. Although I was the target of the insult and didn't complain to the moderators (I oppose censorship), it appears to have been censored, so that all that remains of that attack is the characteristically garbled snippet that made its way into my response to him:

"i suspect you tend to offer your opinion based on hypothetical statistics thattend to favor your position...
a position that would probably be weakened without all the "i suspect, tend to, and would probably's"

So, yes, as I said: 'In another thread, below, Julie pointed out that liberal states tend to have lower age-adjusted firearm death rates than conservative states. Some conservative seized on the "age-adjusted" caveat...'

Sgt Staples and Thinker seized on it, Drumcollie speculated that the age-adjustment was to make the stats fit with Julie's logic, and oicu812 attacked me personally for explaining why age adjustments are down and for my educated guess (which wound up being correct), that the non-age-adjusted figures were even more in line with Julie's logic than the age-adjusted figures.
Click to expand...
An excellent example of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance....", counselor. I'm sure the judges just looooove you. ;)

Again, all you need to do is link a quote, not give me a bunch of opinionated bullshit then link the entire thread. Something like this:
oicu812 said:
LOL!

you missed the point entirely!!!!

AGAIN!
Click to expand...
Agreed!
 
Max R. said:
An excellent example of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance....", counselor.
Click to expand...

If you're still unable to follow this, after I spoon-fed it to you with links and direct quotations, there's nothing more I can do. Information flow is limited by the narrower of the two ends of a conduit. And then you wonder why I'm reluctant to dig back through the feeds to come up with this kind of spoon-feeding in the first place. Why should I bother when it's all wasted effort when directed at someone like you?
 
Max R. said:
An excellent example of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance....", counselor. I'm sure the judges just looooove you. ;)

Again, all you need to do is link a quote, not give me a bunch of opinionated bullshit then link the entire thread. Something like this:

Agreed!
Click to expand...

You ask a person to provide information...with your usual passive aggressive personal attack...

Max R. said:
No. You made an accusation. All you have to do is provide a post quote of someone doing it. Good Lord, aren't you a [Unwelcome language removed] lawyer? If so, you'd know better. If not, your mistake is understood.
Click to expand...

Then, when the info you asked for is generously provided...you once again...level a passive aggressive personal attack:

Max R. said:
An excellent example of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance....", counselor. I'm sure the judges just looooove you. ;)

Again, all you need to do is link a quote, not give me a bunch of opinionated bullshit then link the entire thread. Something like this:

Agreed!
Click to expand...

Just letting you know...your posts are visible to others.
 
Arkady said:
We can lower that substantially, saving thousands of lives from homicides, and many thousands more from suicides and accidental shootings, with gun control. It's fine to say "no, that's a price worth paying," for whatever it is you get out of the low-regulation environment around guns today. And it's hard for anyone to dispute that, since it comes down to an apples-to-oranges comparison between the value of those lives and the value of, say, the convenience of gun collectors, and there's no quantifiable way to convert one figure to the other for purposes of an objective comparison. That comes down to value judgments. I just want to make sure that when people get to that stage, they at least are clear on what the decision entails -- that they aren't deluding themselves about the likely outcome of gun control.

I've offered this comparison before, but I think it's a really good one. Owning a swimming pool puts you, your family, and those around you at greater statistical risk. Even if you're a responsible pool owner, that pool still represents a statistically increased risk of mortality. That doesn't mean we should ban home swimming pools, or even that we have to regulate them more heavily. One can argue that what we get out of those pools, in terms of family enjoyment, is worth the price we pay, in drownings, etc. I'd happily live in a house with a pool, so that's where I come down on it. But I'm not so irrational that I have an emotional need to warp reality to my convenience. To have that pool, I wouldn't have to insist --the best evidence notwithstanding-- that owning that pool lowers the mortality risk for my family (by way of, say, resulting in better swimming skills that put us at lower risk of drowning in other settings). I accept that there's a trade off and would make it. The problem I have with so many gun fetishists is how illogical they are about. They insist that guns make us safer and that a gun in the home makes their family safer, the best evidence notwithstanding. If they admitted the likely impact of more gun control, in saving thousands of lives, and then insisted it just wasn't worth it in terms of what that gun control would cost, fine. But they should at least force themselves to be clear-eyed about the fact a trade-off is happening.
Click to expand...

Well, alcohol related deaths are a greater burden. Why don't you start with prohibition there? Why doesn't that matter to you more?

upload_2016-1-13_12-30-17.png

http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics
 
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