Boondocking safety-Are you armed?

Ralph Cramden wrote:

pianotuna wrote:
The USA has a problem with guns. I don't know the solution--but what is being done now certainly is NOT working.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-death-rates-the-us-is-in-a-different-world.html

A scatter graph of the over 45,000 incidents (so far in 2017) including over 11000 deaths.



Something to take away from the graph is that the farther you are from a high population density--the safer it appears to be. That's what boondocking is all about, yes?

LOL, posted by a Canadian referencing a NY Times article. That's special. Perhaps do not visit the USA if you're that concerned, and if you do just visit one of the states where they have it all figured out and safe, all through legislation, such as NY, NJ, MD, MA and most New England states, or most of the west coast lol.

That graphic is interesting. Compare it to a map of states that have the most stringent gun control and you'll see the red dots are mostly concentrated there lol.

Don't think so. Just look at this map:



Dark blue states have the highest rate of deaths caused by firearms, lightest blue the lowest. The number of circles indicates the number of laws, four circles meaning the most, one meaning the least. Pretty good correlation. NY, NJ, CA, CT MA etc. have lots of gun laws and low death rates. States like MS, LA, AR, AZ and AK have few gun laws and are in the top 25% for gun death rates.

There are exceptions. Nebraska and NH have fewer laws yet a low death rate while Alabama and SC have more laws but a higher death rate. But plotted up on a graph, there's still a strong correlation between higher number of gun deaths and fewer laws.

On this map, remember that deaths can be from suicide, accident, homicide, etc. And homicide deaths are often at the hands of family members or acquaintances, not random shootings.

But some of the states with the lowest death rates, like CT and RI are a little short on boondocking locations.