[hga]

Massachusetts as a low murder rate to begin with, so of course it's going to have a low "gun death" rate.

Correlation does not imply causation. If you seriously follow these sorts of studies, you'd know not to trust anything coming from the VPC (well, maybe they've done a good one, but I'm not aware of any, and helped Clayton Cramer destroy their "Concealed Carry Killers" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2095754).

And that's irrelevant to my point about the historical definition of a citizen in a republic. You aren't anymore, and whatever good you may think that does you, it still does not change that fact.

[revdinosaur]

Do you have a better source of information which provides alternate takes on the correlation? Generally people attack the source of information they want to disagree with and say "correlation does not imply causality" when they have no data to counter.

Again, I am unclear on your definition of our citizenship. Are you suggesting that this event altered it?

[hga]

I only attacked the source after making my greater statistical point, which was obtained in a couple of minutes of using Google and comparing state murder rates (I originally thought MA did have a high murder rate, colored, I suppose, by living next to Boston for dozen years. Should have paid more attention to Somerville, where I perhaps spent the most time, which has a fairly high crime rate but a quite "reasonable" murder rate, at least when I was there).

And I attacked the source because I've actually done serious research on their work (well, as one of several minions of Clayton's). It's hard to retain respect for an organization when you track down incidents of "Concealed Carry Killers" and find out many never even had a concealed carry license. Or the guy with the licence didn't hurt anyone (albeit he was an idiot). Or the license was irrelevant, a fumble plus a defective weapon resulted in a true accidental death. Etc.; did you take a glance at the paper I linked to, like I did at the VPC paper?

Not to mention I know their history of deliberate lying propaganda, Josh Sugerman is a twisted genius, e.g. he had the whole campaign against "assault weapons" planned out a year or two before Stockton. The VPC is by far the best "think tank" of the gun grabbers (compare to the Joyce Foundation squandering millions trying to establish a "collective right" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, which 9 out 9 Supreme Court justices disagreed with).

To your latter question, no. The traditional historical definition of a citizen in a republic was one who bore arms in defense of it, at least when called upon to. To bring this to American particulars, if you're a citizen or have declared an intention of becoming one and are between 17 and 44 years of age inclusive, you are a member of the unorganized militia (10 USC § 311). But if your state denies you the right to keep and bear arms, or makes that hard, expensive and legally dangerous, so very few do, including I gather you ... I call you a subject, not a citizen.

[revdinosaur]

I took a look at your source, but upon reading it saw it as a gesture to taint the data I provided so wasn't sure of its relavence to my status as a citizen of the US. I take issue with the "traditional historical" definition of a citizen supposedly applying to any person in the US. Wars today are fought largely with munition so beyond the scope of personally obtainable firearms that it is absurd to think that even armed persons with truly automatic firearms would be able to defend an attack by a foreign or domestic military force.