
Ask HN: Is gun purchase data available? - vs2370
Following the horrible incidents I was wondering if we can build a model with gun purchase data and some other data sources like social, etc ?
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danielvf
To get a first approximation on this, assume everyone in the US has access to
a gun, then take a look at the FBI's yearly extended homicide tables, which
breaks down US homicides by demographic factors, (and means of death)

The first, obvious conclusion from FBI data is that a group making up
approximately 4% of the US population commits about half the US homicides,
mostly against others in that group, and the other 96% of the US has a
homicide rate lower than England - and also much lower violent crime rate than
England.

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dsfyu404ed
I think that's a very generous assumption considering that strict gun control
laws mostly correlates with population density. Gun laws vary a lot from state
to state and in most states that have some sort of licensing requirement
anyone below the top half of the middle class would have to invest a non-
trivial (a little more/less than a driver's license) amount of time and money
into owning any sort of firearm. I know in the Boston area the unwritten
policy is "municipalities inside I495 typically don't issue concealed carry
permits unless you're a cop or politically connected" Basically state laws can
skew things a lot.

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jdc0589
Not publicly, so far as I know.

Any time someone purchases a gun from a store, or from most dealers at gun-
shows, a background check gets run. This, + paperwork and records residing
with individual sellers are your only real sources of data, neither of which
are public.

The concept of a national gun registry has been debated hotly for quite a
while, but that would _definitely_ not be public if it existed.

~~~
vs2370
oh ok.. then maybe credit card transactions if they dont buy it with cash
instead

~~~
shaftway
These aren't clear either. Is that $1000 At Guns R' Us a rifle, or bulk ammo?
Is that $25,000 at Guns, Fishing and Other Stuff a rifle with fancy inlay or a
new fishing boat.

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tmaly
there are so many gun owners in the US. If you look at that sheer number and
compare it to the number of horrible incidents involving guns, I think it
would be hard to draw conclusions on gun purchase data.

I think building a model on other factors about the people that commit these
acts would perhaps yield better results.

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poof131
I think you may be going into precog territory while looking for a needle in a
haystack. Some of the common patterns seem fairly well documented: disaffected
male, mental issues, history of abuse, affiliation with radical islam. But
most experts seem to believe finding a key indicator before hand is really
impossible since you will also label so many people who will actually resist
the urge to violence. The Orlando killer popped on the FBIs radar twice and
they couldn’t make the call with all the expertise and experience the
organization has. Machine learning a data model to predict violence will have
so many false positives as to be either useless or used as a totalitarian
hammer. [1, 2, 3, 4]

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/mass-shooting-
psych...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/mass-shooting-psychology-
spree-killers_n_2331236.html)

[2] [http://www.livescience.com/21787-predicting-mass-
shootings.h...](http://www.livescience.com/21787-predicting-mass-
shootings.html)

[3] [http://andrewgelman.com/2016/02/25/probability-paradox-
kills...](http://andrewgelman.com/2016/02/25/probability-paradox-kills-
thousands/)

[4] [https://bayesianbiologist.com/2013/06/06/how-likely-is-
the-n...](https://bayesianbiologist.com/2013/06/06/how-likely-is-the-nsa-
prism-program-to-catch-a-terrorist/)

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hga
It's not going to be very interesting, but the entire lists of NYC residents
who got handgun and long gun licenses was published a while ago, less than 60K
each for a city of 8 million (I counted the totals myself, easy with a fixed
number per all but the first and last pages).

Also check the Federal government statistics as organized by the US gun
industry lobby, the National Shooting Sports Federation:
[http://nssf.com/](http://nssf.com/) Look up the ammo production and
importation numbers, well over 12 _billion_ per year, and I'm not sure which
include the seconds from the DoD Lake City plant that ATK sells to us (the
Pitman-Robinson point of sale tax data will).

Maybe also check the raw numbers of concealed carry licenses, the GAO
publishes these, but 10 states now don't require a license. I'll add that at
the local level of my home county, Jasper in Missouri, as of a year and a half
ago, 5% of the age eligible population had a $$$ Missouri concealed carry
license ("$$$" because our's is one of the most expensive, and any state's
will do if you want to save money). All these numbers are rapidly increasing
as the population ages, as well as the other obvious reasons.

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partisan
Following the [X] I was wondering if we can build a model [Y] and some other
data sources like [Z], etc ?

(X = Reichstag Fire, Y = of potential communists, Z = communist party
affiliation) (X = 9/11 Attacks, Y = of terrorists, Z = mosque attendance)

I guess you could, but has history taught us nothing? If I am a communist, am
I a threat to you? If I am a muslim, am I a threat to you? If I have a gun, am
I a threat to you?

I don't own a gun or have a gun license, nor do I want to be the victim of gun
violence (or violence of any kind, having experienced it), but I don't know
what you would gain from this information if you are looking to profile a
potential disaster.

~~~
vs2370
thats why i used both causation and correlation. Correlation probably doesnt
help here but until the model is built you can't really tell right?

~~~
vs2370
not sure why i got a down vote for this

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akg_67
Firearms Dealers vs. Burgers, Pizza, and Coffee
[http://flowingdata.com/2016/06/14/firearms-dealers-vs-
burger...](http://flowingdata.com/2016/06/14/firearms-dealers-vs-burgers-
pizza-and-coffee/)

ATF Listing of Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) - 2016
[https://www.atf.gov/firearms/listing-federal-firearms-
licens...](https://www.atf.gov/firearms/listing-federal-firearms-licensees-
ffls-2016)

This might offer a start.

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jneumann004
I'm not sure about gun purchase data, but the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives has some interesting information on their website
([https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/data-
statistics](https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/data-statistics)). I'm not
sure if this is useful for you, but I hope this helps you out.

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convivialdingo
I read a well done statistical analysis on state-by-state gun ownership
correlation.

You might find some of the data sources listed valuable.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/06/guns-and-
states/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/06/guns-and-states/)

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sschueller
If you watch last week's John Oliver you will see that due to heavy lobbying
there is no proper electronic record keeping. Gun stores keep record but on
paper and when they close the data is put on microfilm stored somewhere.

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fapi1974
I heard on NPR that the National Institute of Justice, which is an arm of the
Justice Department, has funded some studies. Might want to try there.

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vs2370
to add, there is also training data available in form of people who have
committed shootings or have any crime record. its then just about feature
selection that could prove some causation or correlation

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jdc0589
what do you mean by "training data"?

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vs2370
in machine learning we could use some supervised technique if we have training
data instead of unsupervised. sorry for not being clear

~~~
jdc0589
what I thought, just making sure.

