Quote Originally Posted by oladub View Post
Of the ten states with the lowest homicide rates by my count, 3 are red [[ND, WY, ID) , 3 are blue [[MN, VT, Hawaii) and four are purple. Of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates 1 is blue [[MD), 2 are red [[SC, MS), and 7 are purple. One would think that gun control might be an answer but Democratic states with more gun control laws than Republican states wind up in similar proportions among the highest and lowest homicide rate states.
If I may quibble, the ten states with the lowest homicide rates for 2015 [[the latest year for which the FBI has released data) were: NH [[1.1/100K), HI [[1.3), VT [[1.6), ME [[1.7), UT [[1.8), ID [[1.9), MA [[1.9), 2.3 [[IA), MN [[2.4), and OR [[2.5). Of those, I would say five are blue [[HI, VT, MA, MN, and OR), three are red [[UT, ID, and IA), and two are purple [[NH and ME).

Conversely, the ten states with the highest homicide rates were: LA [[10.3), MS [[8.7), MD [[8.6), MO [[8.3), SC [[8.1), AK [[8.0), AL [[7.2), DE [[6.7), NV [[6.2), and TN [[6.2). Of those, I would say two are blue [[MD and DE), seven are red [[LA, MS, MO, SC, AK, AL, and TN), and one is purple [[NV).

Of the ten best states, two get an A- for the strictness of their gun laws from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, one gets a B, one a C, one a C+, one a D, and four an F. Of the worst states, one gets an A-, one gets a B, one gets a C, and seven get an F.

Accepting any counter-quibbling one may have with my color assignments, my main point is to rebut any inference that if more gun control does not equal less murder then more guns and lax gun laws do. If that were the case, the U.S., with the highest total and per capita number of guns in the developed first world -- in fact, the world, with 88.8/100K per the Small Arms Survey -- should have a correspondingly low murder rate. It does not. In fact, it is one of the highest among first world countries. According to the FBI data, 71.5 % of the murders in 2015 for which they received weapons data involved the use of firearms. This amounted to 9,616 deaths.

That all said, I accept that gun control is not the only answer, as gun violence is an incredibly complex problem rife with socio-economic, political, and constitutional issues. Sadly, given our current state of hyper-partisan politics, I don't see any end to the tragically high number of murders in this country - blue, red, or purple.