93 percent of statistics...

From a "friend's" Facebook page:

“25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it’s crazy. However, four out of five US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who’s crazy?” – Andrew Ford


OK, I get it. So 80 percent of the murders in the U.S. are in the half of the states with the most stringent gun laws. Proves that lax carry laws deter murder, doesn't it? (It sure worked in the Old West!)

Oh, but wait. What is the population rank of the 25 states with these lax gun laws? I'm betting you'd see a lot of Montanas and Wyomings in that list, with a Texas mixed in.

Want to convince me of something? Riddle me this: what is the per capita murder rate in those 25 states with more stringent laws compared to those without?

Ah, leave it to a liberal to get all scientific and ask for some commie number like "per capita"....

Update: According to my best estimates and based off what I can ascertain from Wikipedia (Open carry in the United States), the combined population of the 26 states with "open carry" laws (per my understanding of it, as these laws are not all the same) makes up 37.9 percent of the population (Texas isn't actually among them; Pennsylvania, at No. 6, is the largest population). So if that murder number is correct, then 62.1 percent of the country accounts for 80 percent of the murders.

Oh, but wait....! According to FBI statistics, those murder statistics might be off just a smidge...or a lot. See, when I added together the total murders from the FBI statistics for those 26 states (37.9 percent of the population, remember), I got 5,450 murders, out of of a total of 13,646. That's 39.9 percent of the murders in 37.9 percent of the population. That's just a little off from the "4 out of 5" number cited, making me think, oh, maybe it was pulled out of this guy's arse.

Now, this was some quick spreadsheet work on my part, so I wouldn't go before Congress to testify with it....but I bet people have testified based on less evidence than I put together in 10 minutes of research.

Oh, and the FBI statistics had the murders broken down by weapon used -- I won't throw out any random statistics here, but I bet you might find a correlation between states with lax gun laws and high rates of murder by gun. The million-dollar question there would be: if they didn't have easy access to guns, would those murder totals be lower? I'm 93 percent sure they would be.