Recently there has been some crowing about North Dakota having only two murders in 2008 (and neither were committed with a gun):

• Gun Murders and Gun Laws
  
• But guns cause murder!
  
• Via SayUncle: Congratulations to North Dakota; Brady Campaign? Not so much.
  
• VPC: Epic Fail
  
• Despite Being A Top Gun-Owning State, North Dakota Recorded Exactly Two Murders In 2008

And of course North Dakota has a very poor score as far as the Brady Campaign is concerned.

While the claims made above are true this isn’t the whole story. It’s an example of cherry picking the data and is very risky if you are a scientist.

Using the FBI Uniform Crime Report (2005) and the Brady Campaign Scores on the states (2007) I came up with some interesting information. Starting with the FBI data I added the Brady Scores and added some additional rows and columns. The result is here*.

The bottom line is that the assuming someone is murdered then correlation between the Brady Score and a particular method of murder are as follows:

• Weapon:Correlation
  
• Firearm:0.009
  
• Knife:0.215
  
• Weapon other than firearm (including knives):-0.014
  
• Hands, fists, feet, etc. (including being pushed):-0.180 0.007

Correlation is a number between -1.0 and 1.0, inclusive. What the above numbers mean is that a good Brady score does not mean there is a reduction in the the percentage of murders committed with firearms. It may mean there is a slight increase in the percentage of murders committed with knives and a decrease in the percentage of unarmed murders in Brady favored states. Another interesting set of data would be to compare the total violent crime rate to Brady Scores. I have done that in the past with the result of discovering there was essentially no correlation. Perhaps I’ll have time to look at that this weekend sometime.

Update: As noted in the comments I made a mistake on one of the formulas in the spreadsheet. This only affected the correlation of the “Hands, fists, feet, etc.” murders with the Brady Score. Instead of there being a slight negative correlation there is instead essentially zero correlation with Brady Scores. I have updated the spreadsheet accordingly.

This is bizarre, but it’s New Jersey so what do you expect? The guns were legally owned but in a plea bargain the owner paid a small fine and the guns were confiscated:

Goldstein was arrested in March after Northfield police searched his Mount Vernon Avenue home after receiving a report of suspicious objects in his basement. The objects turned out to be old hand grenades and some fuses, but the discovery of a 9mm Uzi submachine gun and what police believed to be the sawed-off shotgun led to Goldstein’s arrest and extradition from Pennsylvania.

Possession of an assault weapon is a third-degree crime in New Jersey, carrying a sentence of as much as five years in prison.

Attorney Amy Weintrob said Goldstein’s Uzi was purchased and registered with the state in 1989 – one year before state law changed to criminalize Uzis as assault weapons.

“The registration was on file with the state of New Jersey,” Weintrob said, “and the Prosecutor’s Office verified the information, and therefore possession of the Uzi was not illegal.”

Housel said Goldstein did voluntarily register the Uzi under its old classification as a rifle in 1989, but after the law changed in 1990 there was a “grace period for (some) individuals who met certain criteria” to register their Uzis under the new classification as an assault weapon. Goldstein’s Uzi was never registered as an assault weapon, Housel said.

“Relying on less-than-complete information from the NRA,” Housel said, “(Goldstein) thought the prior registration was legitimate. Looking at whether there was criminal intent, it’s reasonable that he could have believed the Uzi was registered. The decision by (Assistant Prosecutor David) Ruffenach to do the plea agreement the way he did was a reasonable one.”

Regarding the shotgun, Weintrob said that she and an investigator went to the Northfield Police Department to measure the gun in front of officers. The result, she said, was that the gun was measured at 26.5 inches long, while to be legally considered “sawed-off” it had to be less than 26 inches long overall and less than 18 inches from breech to muzzle.

“That’s when they realized it was legal,” Weintrob said of the Northfield police, who she said were the lead investigators on the case. “The prosecutors realized they couldn’t proceed on that charge.”

…

Goldstein ended up pleading guilty to two amended charges of disorderly conduct resulting in a combined fine of $127. The weapons are in the custody of the Northfield police and could be either destroyed or sold, James said.

“It’s a good resolution for everybody,” Weintrob said. “Mr. Goldstein will never have those weapons again.”

Emphasis on that last line is mine. It’s good for everybody that Goldstein will never have those (legal) weapons again? Goldstein’s attorney, Amy Weintrob, as well as all the people representing the government in this case are bigots.

To my way of thinking nearly all ATF agents should be arrested for violation of 18 USC 242. But I don’t expect that to happen for at least another, like, million years or so. But there is one less ATF agent in the field today which has to be a good thing:

A U.S. federal agent has been charged with second-degree murder in the alleged 2008 shooting of his neighbor in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Justice officials say they arrested Agent William Clark with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He also was charged with involuntary manslaughter and using a dangerous weapon during a violent crime.