Sunday, September 20, 2015

New Data Adds Another Strike Against Vermont’s Reputation as a Gun-Filled, Violence-Free Oasis

 The Trace

Vermont does face a dilemma of gun violence, one that carries a grisly association with domestic violence. This month, the Violence Policy Center released the newest iteration of its continuing study tracking the number of women murdered in the United States by men. As it turns out, Vermont has the eighth-highest rate of any state, with 1.58 victims killed per 100,000 people. Of those slain by men they knew, three-quarters were intimates (wives, ex-wives, or girlfriends) of their killers, and two-thirds were shot to death. 
 
There is another tragic layer to gun violence in Vermont. In almost every year since 1990, the state has suffered a higher suicide rate than the country at large — a number that has continued to climb recently — and well over half of its suicides are committed via firearm. And the grim harvest of its weapon surplus can’t even be properly contextualized by looking at in-state numbers, since it’s also a northeastern hub of gun trafficking.

Again, in universal terms, the total number of homicides, domestic violence cases, and gun-related deaths is indeed small, which can make some of these rate statistics seem exaggerated. But the argument can be made that they’re also less deceptive than the happy reports of a Second Amendment oasis in the heart of New England. A truer picture lies in this final statistic: Vermont, which is virtually impossible to traverse without a car, is a state where firearms deaths outnumber traffic deaths.

10 comments:

  1. As it turns out, Vermont has the eighth-highest rate of any state, with 1.58 victims killed per 100,000 people. Of those slain by men they knew, three-quarters were intimates (wives, ex-wives, or girlfriends) of their killers, and two-thirds were shot to death.

    One may think they are rounding when they say "three-quarters", or "two-thirds", but in the case of these Vermont statistics, it is quite literal. Of the three total women murdered by an intimate partner, two of them were shot to death. There were five total women murdered by men in 2013.

    In statistics, it is very important to look at rates instead of just totals, but the reverse is also true. We need to look at totals to see if we are talking about a statistically significant sample size.



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    1. That's a typically tricky way you used to downplay the point, taking only one year. The report considers a bit wider view than that.

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    2. Not the VPC report that they were citing in the first paragraph. That was only for 2013.

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  2. In 2013, Vermont had a total of ten homicides with a homicide rate of 1.6 per 100k. So I'm assuming that the murder rate of men is pretty much the same. So that would be called gender parity.
    Just like the Bloomberg news organ to take a report from the VPC and attempt to make a state that was responsible for less than one percent of the homicides that it counts in this report and rank it up near the top.
    And to think you give TS a hard time with his statistical analysis.

    https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/5tabledatadecpdf/table_5_crime_in_the_united_states_by_state_2013.xls

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    1. Love it when these dishonest gun loons will use any unheard of group to cite numbers favorable to them, but when reputable groups put out their numbers these guys ALWAYS have some convoluted reason to deny them. Deny, deny, deny, is proof theses loons have not a leg to stand on.

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    2. Well Anon, in this case, I used the FBI's crime report. In fact, the VPC claimed to be using the same source. They just left out the the other five homicides that took place that year. Keep in mind that both the VPC and The Trace can hardly be called impartial on this issue.

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    3. The FBI is an unheard of group?

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    4. Like SS uses Wikipedia. What a joke

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    5. Well, Anon, in this case, I used the unheard of group called the FBI. I didn't know they ran Wikipedia too....

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    6. Thanks for acknowledging that your Wikipedia source was shit.

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