Thursday, January 16, 2014

Annie, where's your gun? Gun ownership in Germany.

Detailed data on gun ownership is scarce.

This quote from the New York Times in 2013 in an article about gun ownership in the U.S. applies to Germany, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree.

The Germans are big on gun registration and background checks, which makes the figures for legal guns here pretty solid.

According to official statistics, there are some 5.5 million legal guns in Germany, which are owned by 1.45 million people. Out of a total population of around 81 million.

We could not find a per household figure, but if we go with an average of 2 per household, we get some 700 000 households, which would get is to around 1.5% of German households.
Deaths by firearms in Germany are under 1 000 a year, with at least three quarters of these classified as suicides.

In the U.S. the NYT gave the share of American households with guns as 34 percent for 2012.
The total number of handguns in the U.S. is generally given as upwards of 270 million, so it is mas o menos one gun per U.S. resident.

Today's online edition of the German Die Zeit has this interactive map of gun ownership per county.

When we saw the map in Zeit online, we went, wait a sec, we have seen a map with a fairly similar pattern in another context not long ago.
This was after the German general elections of 2013. So went and had a look at the election results maps for 2013.

Compare the maps below to the map in Zeit Online and let us know what you see, if anything. In statistics, correlation does not mean causation. In other words, if it walks like a duck, it might simply be your husband after too much liquor. But if it looks like a duck AND walks like a duck AND quacks like a duck it probably is a duck. Keep this in mind when you overlay the maps.
 
Note: In all maps below, darker colors mean a greater percentage share of the vote.

The Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister CSU map of 2013, currently in government:

The second largest part, SPD, in a national level coalition with the CDU:

The Green Party, in parliament but not part of the federal government:


The leftist Die Linke, in parliament but not part of the federal government:

The right wing NPD, not in the national parliament:

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