Ezra Klein on Guns, Mass Shootings, and Facts

On a day when broad statements (some entirely correct) are being tossed about, the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein lays out “Eleven facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States.” Here are two of them:

8. More guns tend to mean more homicide.
The Harvard Injury Control Research Center assessed the literature on guns and homicide and found that there’s substantial evidence that indicates more guns means more murders. This holds true whether you’re looking at different countries or different states. Citations here.

9. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.
Last year, economist Richard Florida dove deep into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths….

Read all 11 here. While some are no-brainers, others really surprised me, including, “Gun ownership in the United States is declining overall.”