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Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Defense Indexes vs Mass Shooting Database >= 14 'Dead + Injured'

In my last post, I established that the FBI will complete the three year period (2013 - 2015) with ~64M NICS background checks for firearms purchase.  In this post, I look at the relationship between two Defense  index/exchanges traded over the same period. Specifically, I am interested in the whether there is a relationship  between high volume "spree shootings" and equity increases for defense companies. If widespread publicity of spree shootings encourages Americans to purchase extraordinary volumes of weapons, does this in turn equal greater purchase of defense stock? R code here.

Here are the eleven events with (Dead + Injured) >=  14 mass shooting incidents according to Mass Shooting Tracker. I have left out shooter names. Some of these events will be recognizable by location:


arrange(subset(GV,(Dead + Injured) >= 14,select=c("Date","Dead","Injured","Location")))
         Date Dead Injured           Location
1  2013-05-12    0      19    New Orleans, LA
2  2013-07-10    2      12      Kissimmee, FL
3  2013-09-16   13       8     Washington, DC
4  2013-10-05    1      13         Fresno, CA
5  2013-11-09    2      16         Cyprus, TX
6  2014-04-03    4      16         Kileen, TX
7  2014-09-28    0      15          Miami, FL
8  2015-05-17    9      18           Waco, TX
9  2015-10-01   10       7       Roseburg, OR
10 2015-11-22    0      17    New Orleans, LA
11 2015-12-02   14      17 San Bernardino, CA

I plot two defense indexes below and overlay mass shooting data at the appropriate scale. The blue (lowess) regression lines plot those mass shootings that kill/injure >= 14 (top) and for all three years (bottom). Click on charts to expand.


In order to make the arguments that gun sales are contributing to the advance of the defense industry, I would need to produce  more direct evidence that the large rise in gun sales that happen after mass shootings are padding the budgets of defense industries. This would be complicated to unravel if true, but not impossible. Many gun manufacturers have dual consumers: civilian and military.  The popularity of military style assault rifles with civilians has probably fused production methods some. Some examples of this fusion are extant.[1,2,3]   Since 2006, one group (originally backed by an investment firm) has consolidated many of these dual use manufacturers.  Clearly, gun manufacturers support lobby groups that protect and support their customers rights to buy weapons. [1]

If indeed it were the case that our militaristic consumption habits domestically increase equity for our militaristic efforts abroad, what implications would such a revelation have for our culture and reputation as a country?

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