The headline from a well-researched story has been well-repeated: Arkansas ranks seventh in gun deaths.
But a few asterisks apply to that headline, and especially to its sub-theme concerning possible correlation with weapons restrictions.
The first asterisk is the semantics: "gun deaths," rather than "gun murder" or "gun crime." Failing to separate suicide from criminal homicide hopelessly muddles applicable analysis. The state of mind, motivation and methods employed are completely different between an otherwise law-abiding person intending to end their own life and a violent criminal intending to harm others.
The majority of gun deaths in Arkansas are suicide; indeed, the number of gun suicides over the measured 17-year period is almost twice the number of fatal gun assaults (5,002 versus 2,635).
That is not the case in all states, however. And as that ratio changes, so does the measure--and the state rankings--of criminal gun homicides. In Illinois, for example, six of 10 gun deaths are homicides.
Counting only firearm murders reduces the Arkansas rate from 15.7 percent to 5.1 percent. All of a sudden, instead of us ranking significantly higher in the rate of "gun deaths" than Illinois, we're ranked slightly lower for gun murders.
That's more in line with the FBI's Uniform Crime Report homicide rate data, which ranks Illinois fourth in the nation and Arkansas 10th (which is still too high).
A second asterisk applies to "weapons restrictions," which sounds authoritative, as though the words themselves would somehow alter or curb the behavior of armed outlaws. It seemingly suggests we could restrict weapons, but simply aren't.
The nagging reality is that adding more laws about guns only adds to the list criminals who use guns illegally will break. The result is most such laws wind up needlessly hassling the overwhelming majority of gun owners who do not commit crimes, and failing miserably at regulating gun criminals or reducing gun crime.
One of the laws examined in the story is a mandatory reporting restriction, which requires gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms to the police. Illinois has that law, Arkansas doesn't.
From 1999 to 2016, Illinois had almost five times as many gun murders as Arkansas (11,793 versus 2,635).
In the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives's Annual Statistical Update for 2017, Illinois has 146,487 National Firearms Act-registered weapons compared to Arkansas' 79,841. According to a gun ownership survey published by Injury Prevention, Illinois residents own an estimated 3.4 million guns.
Yet the National Crime Information Center's most recent figures on number of guns reported stolen annually show a total of only 3,302 for the entire state of Illinois. That contrasts strangely with the fact that Chicago police recover some 5,000 stolen firearms every year.
Arkansas, on the other hand, with one-third of Illinois's population and half as many guns owned, reported 4,049 firearms stolen in the NCIC report--without any legal requirement to report at all.
The mandatory reporting is essentially just another meaningless statute on the books, one of the 64 various gun-control laws the Illinois legislature has enacted.
Despite all those "weapons restrictions," Illinois still has a higher gun murder rate than we do, and a significantly higher rate than neighboring Indiana, which has only 12 gun laws.
Another asterisk is required to clarify the ranking of gun deaths in a purely per capita manner.
A more accurate representation would factor in gun ownership. For example, a state with a high percentage of gun owners would be expected to have a higher gun murder rate, all other things being equal. Conversely, a state with lower ownership rates would be expected to have a lower gun murder rate.
Would Arkansas, which has a higher than average gun ownership percentage, still rank high if the gun murder figures are factored in?
Assuming the Injury Prevention study's 58 percent gun ownership rate, and 151 firearm homicides in 2016 according to the FBI, that means 0.0084 percent of Arkansas guns were used murderously.
Compare with Michigan, which only has a 29 percent gun ownership rate, but with 443 firearm homicides (and twice as many gun laws as Arkansas). The percentage of Michigan guns used for murder at 0.0154 is nearly double the Arkansas figure.
Measuring gun homicides in the context of guns owned, Michigan residents abuse their guns for homicide at a higher rate than Arkansans.
Asterisks aside, violent crime in the Natural State has been far too high for far too long.
A much better metric than murder rate for gauging the violence of criminals in society is aggravated assault, and we don't need a special study for that.
The FBI publishes it every year, and in the last report the Arkansas rate was fifth in the nation, and 60 percent higher than the current national average.
The average for the 10 states with the lowest assault rates is about what the national rate was back in 1965. There's no reason we can't be among them.
The priority is controlling violent criminals. As FBI data clearly show, do that first and gun crime falls as well.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 08/17/2018