In the wake of the Newtown school massacre, we've noted a strong uptick in our site traffic by people wanting to find out how different the U.S. might be if the nation adopted Canada's much more restrictive firearms laws. This post gathers all our analysis on that topic from 2011 in one place.
We examine the FBI's data on the race of victims and their killers. We find that the vast majority of offenders prefer to kill their own kind (that evidence is borne out elsewhere, where criminals also seem to prefer killing other criminals!)
We want to compare the U.S. and Canada's murder statistics, but find we can't do a direct comparison because Canada is significantly lacking in two things the U.S. has in much greater quantities: blacks and Hispanics!
We work out how to get around Canada's demographic deficiencies in reporting its homicides to be able to directly compare the populations of both nations.
We determine the real difference in the number of homicides per 100,000 people between Canada and the most demographically-similar-to-Canada portion of the U.S. population.
This is the one post that has drawn the most attention since the shootings in Connecticut. We break down the number of homicides per 100,000 by method for Canada and the most demographically-similar-to-Canada portion of the U.S. population, finding that Canada's much more strict laws regulating firearms "saves" about one life for every 100,000 people, although Canadian homicide offenders have adapted to the lack of firearms available to them by making murder more brutal.
We find that there's an additional price to be paid for saving that one life for every 100,000 people with strict gun control laws. It turns out that after adjusting for the major demographic differences between the two nations, Canada is a much more violent place than is the U.S. (Ed. At least Canadians are polite, eh? Just don't cross them....)
Do Canada's stricter gun-control laws reduce the number of suicides per 100,000 people compared to the U.S.? We find the answer is not at all....
Update: Doc Palmer picks up on a report that indicates the U.S. is also much less violent than the U.K., Sweden, Belgium and Holland - all places that also feature much more restrictive gun laws than does the U.S....
Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:
This year, we'll be experimenting with a number of apps to bring more of a current events focus to Political Calculations - we're test driving the app(s) below!
Political Calculations' U.S. GDP Temperature Gauge provides a means to quickly evaluate the growth rate of the U.S. economy against the backdrop of how the economy has performed since 1980, with the "temperature" color spectrum ranging from a recessionary "cold" (purple) through an expansionary "hot" (red).
The GDP Temperature Gauge presents both the annualized GDP growth rate as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports for a one-quarter period and also as averaged over a two quarter period, which smooths out the volatility seen in the one-quarter data and provides a better indication of the relative strength of the U.S. economy over time.
Site Data
This site is primarily powered by:
Visitors since December 6, 2004:
CSS Validation
RSS Site Feed
JavaScript
The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best
free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.
Other Cool Resources
ZunZun - Exceptional regression analysis tool. Wolfram Integrator - Solve integrals. Do calculus! Create a Graph - Easy-to-use basic graph-making tool. Many Eyes - Data visualization extraordinaire!
Wolfram Alpha - Computational knowledge engine. Khan Academy - Math & science video mini-lectures! Picasion - Animate images.
