@bolwerk That is why I used per capita rates. Also, I cannot help but notice where the rates are pretty low in your link; I don’t know if you know this about VT, NH, or most of WA, but I think it safe to say that they are largely rural. My take is that when you have anywhere from a ten-minute walk to a thirty-minute drive to your nearest neighbor, and you may be miles from pavement, that qualifies as “rural” compared to a place that has blocks full of apartment buildings, buildings over ten stories tall, and enough cars to warrant traffic signals.
What I saw in your link was that the rates were generally elevated in the areas that had the highest poverty rates, and have a stonger correlation than gun ownership rates. Note that Nevada had low ownership rates but high per capita gun deaths while VT is the opposite, and we won’t even get into DC.
Even your own link bears me out; “We did find several factors that are associated with firearm deaths at the state level. On the economic front, gun violence was higher in states with lower average incomes.”.
Of course, the South gets a double-dose of badness there if your link is true; “Similarly, gun violence was less likely in states with more college graduates and stronger knowledge-based economies. Gun violence was also higher in states that tend to vote Republican.” The last education figures and election results I saw put the South as less educated, less prosperous (lower incomes/higher poverty rates), and more Republican.
Yet, despite the proof that there are stronger correlations to factors other than gun ownership or strictness of gun laws, many persist in the statistically dubious insistence that gun violence/death rates are most heavily caused by allowing civilians to have guns with less onerous restrictions than Japan. The numbers do not support that argument, so therefore anybody who has an interest in reducing firearms violence/death rates MUST look at other things rather than use pseudo-statistics to attempt to push an agenda that won’t really affect the problem they claim they are attempting to solve.
I go where the numbers lead me instead of having a destination and seeking the numbers to get me there.