The controversy over gun control is once again on point in America, and appears to be more emotionally driven than ever from both sides. I thought it would be interesting to approach a topic like this strictly from a data standpoint, much like a good trader approaches trading. The key is to keep your emotions out of it and base your decisions on hard statistical data.
Anytime you develop or implement a strategy as a trader, you have two primary datasets that you are working with. The first dataset would be the criteria of your strategy you are implementing. Essentially the rules that make up your trading strategy. The second dataset is the outcome. In trading, we will define a positive outcome as being the goal of our strategy and that outcome would equal overall profitability.
If we do not like the outcome of our strategy results, we have to adjust the strategy rules. Most traders are using either a proven strategy, i.e. it’s been used in the past and has worked, or they have taken a proven strategy and made adjustments. I am not aware of any traders looking to implement strategies that have failed historically to produce positive results. As traders, we just look past those and continue searching for strategies that have met our desired outcome.
I thought it would be interesting to approach gun control in a similar fashion, so I decided to define the two datasets. I started with the outcome and worked backwards. My goal for the outcome of the second dataset is to reduce violent crimes. The first dataset would be the strategy we take, i.e. the rules or “laws” implemented around guns – how and where they can be possessed.
Now that we have our datasets for this experiment, we need to take a look at some strategies for both sides of the fence. I searched for countries with strict gun control laws as well as countries more extreme in the other direction.
My search landed me on two different countries. I ended up finding one that has very strict gun control laws and one on the entire other side of the spectrum. In fact, that country has the largest number of guns in circulation per 100,000 citizens. It was difficult to find countries extreme to the side of having guns, hence I describe only one example of each of the datasets.
The countries I landed on were the UK and Switzerland.
We will start with the United Kingdom. Their gun control laws resulted from another horrible massacre very similar to the one we as Americans are currently enduring. Its roots go way back, but the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak was when a 43-year-old man entered a school with four handguns, killing 16 children and one adult before committing suicide. This massacre occurred in 1996, and led to the passing of the Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1997 which banned all private ownership of handguns in the UK. So that Fire Arms Act of 1997 is our rule set.
Now we will look at our output or result. Let me start by saying the crime rates in the UK were very low already, and there is a huge debate over how reliable the governmental statistics are, many believe they have skewed the numbers to be less crime after the gun ban, but here is what I found.
Homicide Offenses recorded by the police in England and Wales 1954 to 2005/06
As you can see, the desired outcome was not experienced. We were looking for a decrease in violent crimes, and ended up getting an unexpected outcome. Like trading, this is beginning to provide some factual information that is somewhat unexpected.
Have you ever had a strategy you just knew would work, but when you applied it, despite your strong belief that it would work, it just fell flat? I am feeling a little like that. I thought for sure if we banned guns it would reduce crime. I think we should keep looking.
Let’s break this down to just firearm crimes.
This graph was released by the UK Home Office in a statistical bulletin. Although I don’t blame the results on the gun ban, it’s clear this rule set did not give us the outcome we were after. As you can see, crimes involving guns actually increased quite a bit. In fact, based on these numbers, it looks like the rate of violent crimes where a gun was present more than doubledfrom the 1997 (gun ban year) to 2002. It’s starting to look like only honest people are following the laws.Before we move on to Switzerland, let’s look at one more number.
53%… That is the number of burglaries in the UK that occur while occupants are at home. This number, compared to 13% in the US, is an interesting number. One has to wonder if it’s due to UK criminals knowing they will face minimal opposition and are less concerned with timing their intrusions. Unfortunately, not only did burglaries increase, but rape cases and a number of other non-fatal crimes escalated quite a bit after the gun ban went into effect, in addition to the increase in gun-related violence.
There is no way to definitively tell if this increased crime was due to the gun ban, but one can reasonably assume it was. In fact, many seem to believe so. Just look at a fact list put out by Yahoo Business:
- “In the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled.
- Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York.
- England’s rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America’s.
- 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police.”
A study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gerts from the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology [3] boasts some interesting information regarding armed resistance and its impact on crime. Their study states that in America, gun ownership protects 65 lives for every 2 lives lost, which would further explain the increase in crime in the UK after the gun ban.
Let’s get back on task here. In my trading, if I make a strategy change and see a correlating change in my outcome, I would have to base my decision to continue or end the implementation of that strategy on the data available, rather than on speculation.
In the case of the UK gun control ban, the outcome was not desirable. In fact, not only did it fail to accomplish my goal of decreasing gun-based crime, it actually increased it… along with several other types of crimes.
Let’s look at another strategy. We are going to look at the complete opposite side of the spectrum. Switzerland is one of the few countries I could find with firearms so deeply rooted within their culture, that every Swiss man will at some point own and be trained with a fully automatic weapon.
This is quite the extreme, as they do not have a military… but the government instead chooses to arm their citizens with fully automatic weapons as part of a citizen militia and train them accordingly. You read that right, fully automatic weapons.
The country has a population of about six million, and at any one time close to 20% of the citizens will have a fully automatic weapon or handgun. Another 25.7% have some other type of firearm, meaning almost half the Swiss population has a gun!
After hours of searching, I could not find any clear data on Swiss crime, outside of what is available on Wikipedia (which only covers about 5 years).
A BBC news article cites: [4]
“Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture – but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept…
…but despite the wide ownership and availability of guns, violent crime is extremely rare. There are only minimal controls at public buildings and politicians rarely have police protection.
Mark Eisenecker, a sociologist from the University of Zurich told BBC News Online that guns are “anchored” in Swiss society and that gun control is simply not an issue.”
Although we don’t have a “before and after” to look at since the Swiss have always been a gun-filled society, we can simply look at the outcome as being the end result, i.e. low crime.
When trading, sometimes you come across a strategy that works as is. Meaning you do not have to adjust it or make any changes, so you end up not having any new data points to compare. It would be like trading a strategy with the goal of generating 10% a year in mind and being profitable right out of the gate at the desired rate. Why would you change anything, right?
I have tried to keep my sources in the .gov and .org area to keep any of the tabloid type content from creeping its way into this article. My goal was to assess the options for gun control in the same way I would assess the options for a trading strategy, and make my decision based on the outcome, not emotion. It is amazing how close of a relation this topic is to trading.
One of the biggest problems people have with finding success in trading is controlling their emotions, and I think the way most people are coping with the current gun control issues are very similar to how many failed traders have dealt with trading. They make mistakes based on fear and greed, and I hear a lot of that in the gun control debate.
I just read a post from someone about their experience as a kid in high school, and how they were so scared of guns they would think about where they would hide if a gunman came into their classroom. They talked about how they were shaking their fist in anger at the current gun control laws or lack thereof.
Although these are understandable emotions to have, this emotional reasoning is filled with anger and fear. They have no place in the creation or implementation of policy. Careful study and methodical planning is the reaction this requires. Not an emotional knee-jerk reaction brought on by fearful people.
I will leave it to you to choose which trading strategy you would employ. If you are from the UK or Switzerland, I would love to hear from you. Let us know from a standpoint of experience how the gun laws in your country have affected crime. I would be interested to read some firsthand responses from citizens of these two countries.
I would also be extremely grateful if you would like, share, or tweet this article to your friends and colleagues.
[1] Uk National Archives [2] Uk Home Office Statistics Bulletin [3] Journal of Criminal law & criminiology [4] BBC News Article
The statistics from the U.K. perspective are skewed by two important issues.
Firstly,the effects that mass immigration into our country over the last ten years in particular,have had on crime.We have been overwhelmed by people from Eastern Europe in particular.
Secondly,the fact that so many people were discouraged from defending themselves when attacked.Many were of the opinion that criminals were better represented than victims.This is still true to an extent. It would be interesting to see statistical analysis of these two points.
Regards,Roger.
You seem to have a lot of brains considering that you are a Forex Trader – have you considered writing for the NRA?
The stastictic of 2 lives lost for every 62 lives saved by armed citizens is likley innaccurate when you consider that governments often commit the mass murder of their citizens and others by conscripting for senseless Wars – the history books are full of it.
Correction:
Sir, everything you relate in your study, I imagine is to be held up against America’s psycho-socio state as related to the UK’s and Switzerland’s.
To speak to the part about Switzerland:
The comparison is somewhat farfetched as you had mentioned that “instead of an army” The government chose to arm its citizens with guns and training. America has no obligatory training for its people. As well the responsibility of a soldier, as you are comparing the Swiss people to, is beyond anything that America could hope for of its people at least for the next 15-20 years if the same ideology was implemented. The lack of respect and responsibility that infests and divides America on the issue and use of guns would increase and degrade to a point of chaos before it could hope for a Swiss-like ideology. Therefore the study is purely for discussion and cannot be taken seriously as an active model.
To speak of the UK:
It is too bad you didn’t mention the quantity of heinous gun attacks on school and malls involving child deaths occurring after the 1997 law. You say that violent gun crimes increased but this is vague at best. You see America might be happy, as was the UK evidently, to exchange a few more burglaries for a lot less school and mall massacres where children are targeted. As you know from trading, there is no system that is 100%.
I applaud your attempt at trying something, anything, to help the problem. However, I am hoping that you are not a closet NRA lobbyist in disguise transforming a vague and random set of occurrences into some form of study to further your agenda.
Not accusing…. just hoping.
Peter Nathanson
Hi – interesting. We certainly do have some hysteria about guns & the burglary data comparing UK & US is quite compelling. In relation to the overall numbers a big feature – not researched – but I will, is that an apparently rapidly increasing area of gun crime in the Uk is gang on gang related so there appears to be a pretty big subset where say 4 years ago not many gags had guns, so stabbed each other, while now increasingly they seem to have guns so shoot each other. If this is a big effect the general conclusion may be questioned. Jeff
An interesting article, but I don’t think the increase in crime in the UK has anything to do with the possession, or otherwise, of arms by law-abiding citizens. The UK has over the last 30 years or more experienced substantial immigration, for the most part from countries that do not have the respect for human life that was traditional in our culture. When you combine that with the huge increase in drug-related crime and the tensions that arise from our chronic shortage of housing, it is not surprising that we have experienced an increase in crime levels. Obviously, criminals are not concerned with a ban on guns and they will carry on shooting. What you will not get in this country is a person from a law-abiding family going mad and slaying loads of children and teachers. He or she would not know where to get a gun and such crimes are rarely premeditated. Even when we were allowed to keep guns, if one was foolish enough to shoot an intruder the outcome would normally be a long prison sentence for the home defender. We have never had the freedom to defend our property and person that you enjoy.
Switzerland has not experienced much in the way of immigration other than from a handful of wealthy individuals seeking a tax haven with a healthy climate. Their people don’t experience much if any of the ethnic and cultural tensions that the UK experiences and they hold arms to defend the country, not themselves.
From the UK: After Dunblane, the school shooting incident, the idea was to shut off handgun ownership rather than risk the Saturday night special situation you get in the states. UK is a much more unruly [mainly alcohol fuelled ] society than any other in the developed world and it seemed a good idea to use Dunblane as an opportunity to avoid an inner city pistol situation developing what with the shut down of Ulster troubles [ surplus firearms for sale on the mainland] together with the increase in mail order pistol ownership. It worked. For all sorts of reasons violent crime did increase during the decade following Dunblane but this was violent crime in general, not crime involving handguns. Had handgun ownership proliferated during those years the consequences would have proved much worse. As it is, a UK murder rate of around a thousand people a year has barely changed in decades.
I reckon this was as much as we could have hoped for. Violent crime isn’t the same as being shot dead. Murder happens in different ways and each year, as indicated, around a thousand UK individuals are murdered in different ways. Call it a hundered murders a month, 25 a week. In the states with 5 times the UK population you might expect 5 times that figure, say, 125 people murdered each week. Instead it’s 500 a week over there who die because of firearms. Twenty five thousand people a year – granted, accidents, suicides – but it’s a big difference and the difference is handguns and how much easier it is to kill with a pistol. Finally, yes, UK and the States do have one enormous crime related problem in common. Poverty. Not so Switzerland. An entirely different inner city situation, I suspect – enviably stable. This, too, needs to be taken into account.
Good article backed by facts. If only our media and politicians based what they do on facts instead of using tragedies like Connecticut
to further their ideas and agendas. Perhaps that is too much to ask. RT
Dustin, I would like to congratulate you on writing a well reasoned and researched article. I read through the comments afterward and it looks as though the majority agreed with you at least to some extent. Of course, there are many other variables that can contribute to the overall outcome but I believe that gun control laws/gun bans are the driving factors of these outcomes. If you introduce one other country’s results, I believe that you can start to see a trend that is very similar to that of Great Britain’s. Essentially, Australia has had a similar increase in gun violence, murder, and armed robbery since banning guns. I contend that while these are only two countries the results are very significant in that they are very similar cultures and are somewhat similar to the U.S. I also agree that gun control advocates tend to be very emotional about the subject of gun control. It’s my experience that the liberal left tend to base their decisions on extreme emotion and rarely on scientific or logical facts and data. Let’s just hope that cooler heads will prevail here and that we won’t follow the same disastrous line of thought. Our Founders included the Second Amendment as a God given right. It wasn’t just meant to guarantee our freedom to hunt or for sporting purposes but to protect ourselves from enemies both foreign and domestic. Once we give up that right, we will have no defense against a tyrannical government. If you don’t believe that can happen, just look at all of the countries in the Middle East right now!
Dustin, Since you seem to know where to go to find gun violence statistics, I’d like to know the following.
What were the results of the ten year (1994-2004) The Federal Assault Weapons Ban in the US? Just from my own memory, it seems to me that we are experiencing a lot more mass shootings using assault weapons since the expiration of the ban. It would be very interesting to see data of deaths from assault weapons, before (perhaps a ten year period), during & after the assault ban. Since you mentioned that you are looking at overall gun deaths, perhaps you could chart those as well for the same time periods.
In the USA the dominant reason for gun possession other than the obvious defense of oneself and others – is to assure that the Voter is capable of freeley and publicley expressing His or Her views at ALL times – between and during elections – that is the First Ammendent to the Constitution in Action! – without it, elections would be thinley disguised Power Grabs at best, as they are over much of the World.
Data is just garbage in garbage out.
Model assumptions are wrong.
Violence & Non Violence is based on spiritual knowledge.
Evil is just evil anywhere.
You cannot arm all people as people around world do not hold same values ( Nazi annihilation of fellow citizens, or as some countries in Africa, Middle East or Asia )
People will have to get used to guns and laws must start where the guns are manufactured. Simple hand guns are all that are needed for self-protection. Automatic weapons should somehow be restricted.
Did you consider Australia?
It seems to me that Australia has recently moved to more gun control. I believe they have seen a reduction in crime because of it.
Any comments?
Very good! I had forgotten abut that ban.
A true analysis what take into consideration All of the variables.
Maybe Dustin, did you forget to include news (fundamentals) events in your forex analysis relying only on the technical aspect? ;<)
I’m not the Roger from the UK, but from CA.
Just to get to the states, what about Washington, DC and the decrease in crime since the Supremes said the citizens there can have guns?
Don’t let the government suck anyone into believing that guns are the problem and they need to take them all away.
Guns are never the problem. They are just a machine. They do nothing until a person picks one up.
The problem is always with the person. It’s never the gun.
How does a person sink to such a low state of inhumanity to shoot and kill children?
What can turn a person into a brain dead killer of innocent children?
That’s the question that should be asked and answered.
You need to get at the cause of the action not the outcome.
The cause is whatever it is that can reduce a person to such a level of insanity that they can do something like this without any feelings or remorse and without a second thought of the consequences of what they are doing.
What could possibly turn a person into such an unaware zombie?
Is it violent video games?
Is it movies that show people doing impossible feats of survival in violent situations?
What can dumb a mind down to such an extent that the person no longer can see real people any more and loses all touch with humanity and reality?
If “mind altering” drugs come to mind you are well on your way to understanding what is happening.
Prozac and Ritalin are good examples.
Street drugs do it even more so.
In every case of mass shootings the shooter was on drugs. That’s the common denominator to every one of them.
A person on any sort of psych drug/street drug becomes unpredictable.
The only difference between these drugs is the degree of mind alteration.
They alter the mind and make people crazy.
To the point where they no longer know or care what they are doing.
They are not just, “off with the fairies” they become “off with the devil”.
Today drugs are rife in the community.
The rise in mass killings follows exactly the rise in the development of more and more potent mind altering drugs.
The problem is drugs not guns.
Get rid of the drugs and you get rid of the crazy killers.
Give your child ANY sort of mind drug and you start them on the way to addiction.
Many foods today are already spiked with weed and pest killing poisons. These are not food for the brain.
Good fresh organically grown food served with love will save your kid’s brain (and your own).
Good fresh organically grown food will completely remove the need for Ritalin and all the other psych drugs they prescribe for the conditions they invent such and ADHD and other similar nonsense.
Start with getting rid of the drug pushing psychiatrist and his false diagnosis of mental problems and you will make inroads on these, brain dead and out of their mind, kid killers.
Better still educate your kids about drugs and the real truth about how they damage a person’s brain and body. They are not called mind altering drugs for nothing.
The popular idea that you are not having “fun” until you are stoned is not actually true. The only fun you will ever know is the fun you can clearly remember. The times when you really knew what you were doing.
These senseless killings are done by stupid drug crazed zombies.
It has nothing to do with guns.
You don’t need money and prayers to comfort the bereaved. You need knowledge and understanding of what is going on to address the cause of the problem so it doesn’t happen in the first place.
We all need good clean chemically free food for a clear thinking mind and we need the eradication of the drug culture and the drug pushers starting with some cool calm factual education about what drugs are and what they do. Police raids do not handle the cause of the drug culture. Dramatic TV scare campaigns which explain nothing and don’t educate anybody won’t handle it either. Only when a full understanding of how drugs disconnect a person from reality and the people quit taking them will the senseless shootings by the drug crazed brain dead addicts eventually end.
In Australia there was a horrific massacre about fifteen years ago in which thirty five people were shot dead at a historic tourist town in which assault weapons were used. One victim had to watch his wife and two young daughters ( under five ) mowed down without being able to help. The laws were changed to ban assault weapons and every rifle has to be single shot . I think the reason is so someone can get to the gunman while he is reloading. There haven’t been any massacres since. Hand guns have never been allowed.
I am from Singapore, the country where many Westerners criticise as an authoritarian state with little civil liberties. The laws here are very strict. We still have the death penalty for serious crimes. Anyone who commits any crime with a firearm gets the mandatory death penalty. Anyone who commits any crime with any tool that _looks_ like a firearm will get a very heavy sentence. Obviously, no one is allowed to own a gun. The only knives you can buy without having to register with the police would be penknives and kitchen knives. Yup, no one can even buy a small survival knife without having your ID taken down. So, many people complain about the lack of freedom for this or that, but the fact is, how many developed cities in the world can a person go walking around after midnight with hardly any fear of getting mugged, robbed, raped or murdered? Our crime rates remain among the lowest globally. I’d rather not have the freedom to own guns and weapons than have my children go to school fearing that they are more likely to die from guns and knives than from choking on a fishball.
Dustin, thank you for getting to people to think about the ” bad guns “. The comments made sofar indicate wise and ballanced thinking. My approach is very simular as that of Merv 23/12/2012. It is the mentality ; social fibre of the citzens that holds the key.
Expecting a Draconian Government and its Police to effectivley control Crime and Gun possession by harsh legislation – results inevitabley in the imprisonment and sometimes execution of Wrongley convicted persons – a sad price to pay for temporary security.
Thank you for this analysis. As many have said elsewhere gun-control has little to do with guns and everything to do with control. Which may be why Kenny MacAskill (SNP), Justice Secretary for Scotland, in the face of declining firearm (including air gun) criminality, declares that owners of air guns must demonstrate a legitimate use to continue ownership. (Air gun owners will need a licence) An illuminating paper on how the UK got this way is: ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: GUN PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND AND SOME LESSONS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA by Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel.
Do a quick google search and you’ll see that their crime rates actually went up as well. Please don’t spew sewage out of your mouth before you know what you are talking about.
Let me guess, you probably think we need to ban “automatic guns” and we need to have “background checks” before we buy guns. I wish you people would at least be able to have an intelligent conversation about guns, but I’m afraid that will never be possible with you.
@Naz, Nazis disarmed the people before they began the genocide. In fact, Hitlers gun laws are translated into English and implemented in the US straight from the Nazi Weapons Manual.
This is from my friend in the UK:
RumBull In a nut shell hun, GUN CRIME SOARED BY 40% in the UK!! Those living out side the law could not believe their good fortune,.. now free to burgle,rob or anything else they have a mind to without fear assured their victims were no longer in a position to fire back, no longer able to defend their homes, family or property. But the Government had also in a stroke ensured their could be no ‘armed revolution by an increasingly betrayed native population.
A Risk Based View from the UK
An interesting article and responses to it and the complex and emotional subject, with good points made on both sides fo the fence. So may I add a few points into the fray:
— Guns are designed to kill, but they do require someone holding them to have the desire to do so.
— Within the UK and I presume the US there are 2 types of firearms – legally and illegally held.
— The majority of the crime figures reported are created by illegally held firearms rather than legally held ones; (unfortunately I cannot quantify this), especially within the UK. However, as in the case of the Dunblane shooting, occasionally legally held firearms are used to commit crime. When such incidents occur people are shocked and even more so when they are legally held and as in the UK there is a knee jerk reaction for political gain.
— The UK’s legal handgun ownership before their ban was small compared to that of the US and it was an easy thing for the government of the day to ban, however the ban did nothing to reduce the numbers or the effects of illegally held firearms, plus the legally held firearms were already well
accounted for by the licensing systems in place
— Setting asside the US constitutional debate, a ban of fireams within the US would be a massive undertaking affecting major companies and jobs etc etc so is a major undertaking and would have an affect on the economy.
— Large incidents such as school shootings, plane crashes etc that kill a large number of people always make front page news, yet smaller and more frequent incidents such as shootings or car crashes don’t. So the 1,901 people / year (2011) who died on the UK roads don’t warrant a mention and I would guess it’s the same for the 32,000 deaths / year (2011) or an average of 93 / day in 2009 on the US roads
So it would seem there are 2 areas to address: 1. gun ownership and 2. the desire to use them on their neighbours. Both extreme and probably unacheivable aims, but some headway in both areas would make a difference, especially in the frequency of large casualty incidents, probably less so in ‘normal’ crime.
However, whilst large fatal incidents are emotionally apalling the total number of fatalities are small when compared to the overall number of deaths attributed to firearms, and small when compared to road deaths – so should we ban the motor vehicle as it is a much bigger killer than legally and / or illegallly held guns in the western world? Or what about malaria which kills more than 2,800 children / day in Africa with a total figure of 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths / year according to the WHO?
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rchrd brt Read the statistic of 65 lives saved by guns to 2 lives lost a little closer. It says “in America”. It included nothing on wars. This statistic is true. Among the resident citizenry, more lives are saved on a daily basis because the person had a gun to defend themselves against an attempted attack by a criminal than lives lost by the use of a gun. Also, if you review the current gun statistics you will find that a great majority of fatalities are caused by gang-related shootings. Another great number of gun related deaths are suicides. Those will be committed anyway in another manner if guns were not available. To put it in perspective: for every 10,000 gun related deaths there are 325,000 people who are saved because they had a gun to defend themselves. Here is a website that makes a lot of sense: http://bachbio.com/gunsavelives.htm
The scariest thing on this website is the quote from Hitler: Said Hitler in his Edict of March 18, 1938: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall.”
Our government is doing its best to disarm the “subjected people”. What is their motive for that? We should all think long and hard on that.
If our nation is to decrease horrific gun crimes, the way to do it is to do “crime control” not gun control. History shows very clearly that no matter what laws are on the books, criminals will ALWAYS have guns. Of course, they are called criminals because they neither respect nor obey the law. They are to ones to be stopped, not law abiding gun owners.