Wikipedia probably changed their source since the publication. The data in my graph was from here, which was the Wikipedia source at the time:
If you want to use a different source, feel free to replicate the process and see what you get. In fact, someone challenged me on this pretty recently, and hilarity ensued. That epic was chronicled here:
Try it out and see. Make the graph, see what you get, and respond.
As Alaska which has the highest gun ownership also has the highest rate of gun deaths.
Be careful now. I graphed gun homicides, not gun deaths. Once you include suicides and accidents, the correlation appears, because suicides and accidents are where the correlation actually lives. Alaska’s homicide rate is quite low. Their suicide rate is very high — highest in the country — which is where these “gun deaths” appear. We discuss suicide here:
In conflating homicides with suicides, you are falling into the exact same trap that we explain Vox and Mother Jones falling into in the article. Read to the end.
