Gun Registration and Homicide

The dataset below contains data by state, including population, area in square miles, percent urban population, percent below poverty line, whether there are gun registration laws or not, and the number of homicides. The socioeconomic data are from 1990/91. The gun registration indicator is taken from a USA Today article (Tuesday, January 7, 1992, PAGE 5A).

Load the data with

GunReg <- read.table("http://people.reed.edu/~jones/141/Guns.dat",header=TRUE) 
or copy and paste into your R session:

"GunReg" <- 
structure(.Data = list(
"pop" = c(4089, 2372, 30380, 3291, 598, 13277, 1135, 2795, 11543, 5996, 
   4860, 9368, 4432, 5158, 6737, 635, 7760, 18058, 10939, 11961, 1004,
   3560, 4953, 17349, 1770, 5018, 570, 3750, 3377, 680, 6623,
   1039, 5610, 2495, 3713, 4252, 1235, 2592, 808, 1593, 1105,
   1548, 1284, 3175, 2922, 703, 6286, 567, 4955, 1801, 460.), 
"area" = c(52.4, 53.2, 163.7, 5.5, 0.1, 65.8, 10.9, 56.3, 57.9, 10.6, 
   12.4, 96.8, 86.9, 69.7, 53.8, 70.7, 8.7, 54.5, 44.8, 46.1, 1.5, 32, 
   42.1, 268.6, 84.9, 71.3, 656.4, 114, 104.1, 2.5, 59.4, 83.6, 36.4, 
   82.3, 40.4, 51.8, 35.4, 48.4, 147, 77.4, 9.4, 121.6, 110.6, 69.9, 
   98.4, 77.1, 42.8, 9.6, 65.5, 24.2, 97.8), 
"urban" = c(60, 54, 93, 79, 100, 85, 89, 61, 85, 84, 81, 70, 71, 53, 
   50, 53, 89, 84, 74, 69, 86, 55, 61, 80, 87, 76, 68, 88, 82,
   73, 63, 57, 65, 69, 52, 68, 45, 47, 53, 66, 51, 73, 88,
   68, 71, 50, 69, 32, 66, 36, 65.), 
"poverty" = c(19, 18.4, 14.2, 5.8, 19.2, 14.1, 10, 10.1, 13.3, 10.2, 
   9.3, 13.9, 12, 13.6, 13.2, 13.5, 9, 14.1, 11.8, 10.8, 8.2, 16.5, 
   16.9, 16.8, 9.8, 26.2, 11.2, 14.2, 12.1, 8.1, 16, 13.7, 14.1, 11.1, 
   17.4, 22, 12.5, 23.8, 15.8, 10.9, 7.1, 20.9, 10.7, 15.8, 11.3, 13.5, 
   10.6, 7.1, 9.2, 17.2, 10.6), 
"gunreg" = c(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
   1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
   0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0.), 
"homicides" = c(410, 240, 3710, 170, 489, 1300, 44, 62, 1270, 200, 540, 
   1020, 100, 550, 730, 11, 350, 2550, 760, 740, 38, 350, 470, 2660,
   43, 220, 56, 290, 155, 32, 720, 21, 380, 150, 260, 760,
   23, 370, 29, 43, 32, 160, 135, 220, 120, 9, 550, 24, 240,
   135, 20.)), 
names = c("pop", "area", "urban", "poverty", "gunreg", "homicides"), 
row.names = c("AL", "AR", "CA", "CT", "DC", "FL", "HI", "IA", "IL", "MA", 
   "MD", "MI", "MN", "MO", "NC", "ND", "NJ", "NY", "OH", "PA", "RI", "SC", 
   "TN", "TX", "UT", "WA", "AK", "AZ", "CO", "DE", "GA", "ID", "IN", "KS", 
   "KY", "LA", "ME", "MS", "MT", "NE", "NH", "NM", "NV", "OK", "OR", "SD", 
   "VA", "VT", "WI", "WV", "WY"), class = "data.frame")