Are gun owners getting more senseless, negligent, or is the media covering guns more?

[WVsig]

I believe the OP is referring to reports more recent than 2006 or 2008 per the posted graphs.

I suspect that the dramatically increased prevalence of concealed carry has contributed to an increase of events which are likely to get coverage. Whether or not irresponsible uses of guns has increased statistically overall, events may now be much more likely to happen in the public which is of course going to garner more attention from the media. Such seems to reflect the stories i hear about at a relatively high frequency. Also the fact the people are carrying guns more frequently simply means they handle them more frequently, hence more negligent discharges. Of course, recent changes in gun laws, for and against, simply shine light on the subject of firearms which means stories including them earn higher ratings so are covered more frequently.

I agree with this. The growth of concealed carry has moved a lot of these events into the public eye. Also there are a lot more what I would call inexperienced shooters now carrying and owning guns. Growth in gun ownership and carry in ths country is not without its unintended consequences.

 

[WVsig]

You are certainly correct. That's clear in this graph going all the way back to 1900

You know what they say about statics... "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Gun deaths is not a good measure of how many accidents are occurring nod comparing mortality rates from 1900 to 2015 is simply not meaningful in a real world sense. A gunshot would on the farm or even in a large city in 1900 had a much higher chance to result in death than a gunshot wound today. Even the most rural critical access hospital today has capabilities that were non-existent in the 1900s.

The further you go back in time the mortality rate of any gunshot wound will be higher which greatly skews the data.

A more interesting stat would be negligent discharges per 100,000 gun owners, then negligent discharges per 100,000 resulting in property damage, then negligent discharges resulting in injury per 100,000 and then NDs resulting in death.

This would give us a much better picture IMHO for which we could make valid claims that the gun community is safer today than in the past.

 

[JSH1]

Excellent points VAgunner. The truth of the matter is the data doesn't exist to do any proper studies on the matter. No one knows how many gun owners there are in the USA.