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States With More Guns Have More Police Killings


Photo: AP Photo/Eric Gay.

Evette Dionne
Jul 10, 2016 8:00 AM

At least one sniper, identified as Micah Johnson, fatally shot five officers and injured seven others during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas [ http://www.refinery29.com/2016/07/116179/dallas-protest-shooting ] on July 8. It has been declared the deadliest attack on law enforcement since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to The Washington Post [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/08/like-a-little-war-snipers-shoot-11-police-officers-during-dallas-protest-march-killing-five/ ].

While this is an isolated incident, which President Obama [ http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b6744f30e1e340ad82e18e5d948e2e39/obama-says-america-horrified-over-dallas-attack ] called a "vicious, calculated, and despicable attack on law enforcement," there is an alarming connection between the shooting of police officers and the ongoing political fight over gun control [ http://www.refinery29.com/2016/04/103875/gun-control-domestic-abuse-womens-rights ].

A study released by Harvard University [ http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302749 ] found that police officers are more likely to be killed in states that have more guns, like Texas. The study looked at FBI data about police-officer deaths [ https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014 ] from 1996 to 2010 alongside a gun ownership survey [ http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/ ] from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers found that among the eight states with the least gun ownership, there's a 13.5% average rate of police fatalities over those 14 years. However, there's a 52% average rate of police fatalities in the 23 states with the highest gun ownership.

Here's what that means, according to The Washington Post [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/08/more-police-officers-die-on-the-job-in-states-with-more-guns/ ]: "Line-of-duty homicide rates among police officers were more than three times higher in states with high gun ownership compared with the low gun-ownership states. Between 1996 and 2010, in other words, there were 0.31 officer fatalities for every 10,000 employed officers in low gun-ownership states. But there were 0.95 fatalities per 10,000 officers in the high gun-ownership states." That's a clear, statistical correlation between civilian gun ownership and police-officer fatalities.

The study found that police officers "working in states with higher levels of gun ownership faced a greater likelihood of being shot and killed on the job compared with their peers in states with lower gun ownership."

© 2016 Refinery29 (emphasis in original)

http://www.refinery29.com/2016/07/116306/study-police-killings-gun-states [with comments]

further to (linked in) my earlier reply at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=123778036 (and any future following)