Full discussion of the data can be found at https://pencer.substack.com/p/guns-in-the-usa-and-canada

Sources:

Crime rates in the US (2020- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States ) and Canada (2017- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada )

Gun-related fatalities in the US and Canada (2017/2018- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate )

Civilian gun ownership (2017- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country )

50 US states gun ownership rates (2013- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4809774/ ) and gun fatality rates (2021- https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm )

Plots were made in OriginLab

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Lol

Now go look up what constitutes various crimes and reporting in Canada vs the US.

You'll see a huge difference where the US doesn't classify a lot of things and Canada does.

This is a common fallacy Americans fall into because they assume everyone reports X the same way they do. And almost always Americans suck at reporting data because there's no cohesive system or set of rules.

This is the first chart I've seen, in my life, that suggests that Canada has more violent and property crime than the US, per capita.

I believe there is a problem here treating two data sets as equivalent that are very much not.

Eh, you can make this same argument when comparing aby two countries. It's not specific to the US. Every country has their own definitions.

Weird how somebody complains about a country generalizing data, generalizes data about that country.

It's like we should ignore your entire reply.

If you don't report it, it's like it never happened!

/s

It's not all definitional. It's literally refusing to report or release figures that would be included in such crime statistics. Often because the police are "overloaded" which is BS.

For example for something random that is part of a statistical issue, in the US it is common for vehicle accidents NOT to be reported in the winter because many areas have statutes where police will not come to a scene and issue a ticket or even police report if the weather is bad. More and more commonly the definition has moved to basically any day with any weather because it's more profitable to give out speeding tickets than write accident reports.

You are then supposed to call and report but it's useless as it wasn't at the time and doesn't actually count to any of the statistics involving auto accidents.

Coincidentally the rate of auto accidents in the winter in most of these areas plummeted! Look how safe!

This is ILLEGAL in most places. It is illegal in the US too, but it doesn't matter because murica.

Generalizing a single country based on repeated and verifiable evidence versus other countries generally not acting in the same way, is valid data.

It's getting to the point where the Americans need their own sub to continue spreading their misinformation.

"'Murica bad!"

We all know you consume our media and lifestyles like we consume McDonalds. Embrace it yo.

Auto accidents and violent crime are on a completely different level. TBH I've never reported an accident to the police before, that's the first I'm hearing that it's expected. Seems like a huge waste of their time for minor accidents.

Comparing 2020 to 2017… seems like there was something happening in 2020 that could’ve had an impact on crime stats?

Charts like this don't recognize the geographic diversity in the US. Northern states (close to Canada) have crime statistics similar to those in Canada.

I don’t mind displaying that to give the reader some idea of potential bias and ‘context’.

In this case, it provides evidence that Canada does NOT under-report “gun-related” crimes given that it likely has more rigorous documentation (or better sources).

Realistically, if I was making a PowerPoint for some stakeholders, that would be a footnote / back-end appendix.

Could it be that final crimes resulting in death are counted as homicides? It's really hard to know what this data represents without seeing how the underlying data is formatted.

Yes, which is why you need to clean up datasets until you have two comparable ones, if you want to compare countries.

One example often posted is "OMG the UK has so much knife crime! It's more dangerous than the US!" Because UK knife crime is mostly the crime of having a knife in a public place (in your pocket or in your car) without good reason.

If you count only knife injuries and murders, then the countries are pretty similar - only the US has gun injuries and deaths too.

Your conclusion sounds more like an assumption so far. Why not look and see if that's actually the case?

The assault rate in Canada is reportedly 575 vs. 246 in the US per 100,000.

Burglary is 438 in Canada vs. 376 for the US.

There could be differences in the way metrics are aggregated, but I don't think the conclusion that they are "very much not equivalent" is founded just because the numbers surprised you.

I was surprised as well. But as I thought about it it made sense. I was in lots of fights as a kid. In vancouver or homeless population , and thus petty theft is out of control. We also might report things more often. It's not that hard to believe.

I don't know, do you have ideas?

But, the potency of Marijuana, has skyrocketed off the charts? Millions of kids now addicted to Marijuana, with pot legalization. 10% of users get addicted. Seems like that's the plan.

Addiction = Profit.

But, I will say hunting is Big Business in America, too. Is it around the globe?

Buying a good hunting rifle for hunting, and an AK just to have an AK.

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LOLOL! What century are you from?

You might be thinking of firearm related crime and homicide rates, which is a stat often used because it paints a different picture than overall crime rates.

According to your findings, there is 2x the amount of property and violent crime (combined) in Canada vs US. I'll grant Canada could surprise me and be higher. But 2x?

If I presented this to a professional audience (which I do for a living) there would some serious skepticism from the audience. Not buying this analysis without some real explanations about the reliability of data sources, timings (3 yr diff), and so on.

Now you listen here son, the grass makes kids violent!

Ok, double the crime in the US, and this still stands!we have more guns and more gun deaths than we need.

It’s seems counter intuitive but it appears that gun ownership % is positively correlated to gun-related deaths per capital.

Yes, it's the Wacky Tobaccy that the kids are puffing nowadays. It was all downhill once they started doing the Charleston and listening to that devil music.

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Doesn’t pass the smell test tbh.

It is comparing US 2020 data vs Canada 2017 data. That is a huge problem, didn’t Covid affect crime rates?

Snow makes people do crazy things.

Tbh looks like pro gun propaganda to me.

Who needs facts when we have preconceived notions?

...so, you in the 10%?

Do you speak from experience, or denial.

Maybe you should attend marijuana anonymous and see the Destroyed Lives. It's an epidemic of failed lives, by the way have you visited the drug legal states, and seen the begger kids?

Must be nice to live in your everythings-perfect dream land.

Exactly! So glad to meet a fellow addict with experience.

How long have you been in marijuana anonymous? For me, it’s only been 7 years. I live in the ungodly marijuana state of California. It’s terrible. People are so stoned that they become better kids and eat so much ice cream because they get dry mouth from all the grass. Horrible!

I speak from family experience. I see it every day.

I won't touch the stuff after what I've seen.

I'll just add all the rehab clinics are full too. Open slots are rare.

But, keep those clean days coming, 7 years is an achievement. Best of luck.

Maybe you can just keep Canada out of your health care and gun control debates.

Your disinformation seeps into the consciousness up here.

I am not doing anything except reporting what governments say in their official numbers.

You seem to be the one making random evidence-free assertions

Violent crime increased in 2020 vs prior years

I’m confused. Do you see your family everyday, or do you see weed everyday? Because it sounds like you might have an addiction too! The first step to recovering from the devil’s lettuce is to give your weed to a friend so they can hold it for you.

The official numbers are linked in the post and appear to support the presentation without overt misrepresentations or unrepresentative data where it can be compared

Why should police care about car accidents where nobody broke the law? Aren't insurance companies a more logical keeper of such data?

I'm sure police has better use for their time than going to accident sites when nobody broke the law. They could be needed if there is a dispute between people involved in the accident about whose fault it was in which case the police could investigate it and give their statement that the insurance companies then use as a neutral party.

Uh that's my point. So your accident doesn't count towards anything. Now look at number of traffic accidents per year statistically. None of yours have ever been counted. Of you had those accidents almost anywhere else in the world they'd be counted.

I'm not gonna write a research paper to debunk this American gun propaganda. All you have to do is drive from Toronto to Buffalo, Windsor to Detroit or from Vancouver to Seattle to know that these numbers aren't accurate.

Triple the violent crime rate, despite having a third as many murders. Sure, seems totally accurate. Graph isn't accurate on that one either. Canada's murder rate isn't as low as OP suggests.

No. Not buying it. There's such a thing as substantive incompatibility in data and the author is always responsible for that. The responses above about rrends in reporting crime and what falls into property and violent crime buckets are spot on.

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Great job on that. You were almost funny.

LOL. No I don't have any weed to give you.

The "Devil's Lettuce", that's funny too.

Thanks for this point. I'm sure there are differences in the crime reporting methods between US and Canada, and frankly between each agency keeping and aggregating crime records from the lowest levels of policing orgs on up the hierarchy. It would take more time than I had to try and fully understand what difference there may be, though I would appreciate if you had a suggestion on a practical methodology to go about adjusting for biases in these sorts of comparisons.
The potential for bias in the gun violence data sets is why I chose to focus on comparisons between US and Canada, which share a lot of cultural norms, if that makes sense. All potential for bias aside, I think the data are at least interesting and informative, and most importantly to me, got some healthy debate going on several fronts.

Numbers are important to understanding the world, though of course there could be bias in any data set. It would be really worthwhile if you could identify a potential cause for bias in the data set. When data seems strange, it could be a sampling artifact (bias), or it could be real and up to us to uncover the reason for the strangeness...
I'll put my tin-foil speculations hat on for a second to offer a pro gun explanation for the data: what if higher rates of gun ownership led overall to fewer crimes overall because some sort of deterrence from gun owning population?
The point is, it could be bias, however the differences are quite large, suggesting that it's more likely to be incomplete understanding of the factors at play, warranting research studies to investigate why such differences in crime might exist between two quite similar countries.

Fair enough. I just think it is the researcher's responsibility to understand if the definitions of "gun violence" and general reporting trends are directionally consistent across countries. If there are significant differences, then make some adjustments to the include/exclude rules and state them for your readers. If you don't do that, then we just spiral down into whataboutism in the thread. Also, we can't collectively draw any conclusions from your otherwise good work. Thanks for doing this.