United States Internal Migrations As Related To The 2nd Amendment

HERE'S THE LINK to the source story. It's another Washington Post one since I'm roaming around in their space at the moment. Cope as best you can.

The numbers here are INTERNAL AMERICAN MOVES ONLY - they do not include immigration (legal or otherwise).

Florida added about 200,000 and Illinois lost about 105,000 ... 

Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, both Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida added to their populations, as did seven others (and D.C.) to a lesser degree.

Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and California were the biggest losers, with 25 other states seeing decreases over the past year or two.

Overall, folks seem to be moving basically southeast and northwest with the mid-west holding essentially stable by comparison. Well, except for Illinois which lost a bunch and Colorado which gained a bunch but only about half of what Illinois lost. The rest of the mid-western states (central area, basically) seem to be juggling a little with their populations ... but in general pretty well balanced, which is my opinion.

My opinion is biased. I admit it so don't get your knickers in a knot about it. We've never been as unbalanced as the rest doncha know ... 

The story has maps and such that are interesting I have to say. Go look at them.

Anyway, we're apparently moving around in our nation and that's not a bad thing. It's a big nation with a lot of pretty good roads.

And now I'm going to go look up a few other statistics. Hang on until I get back.

#

Click HERE for an interesting chart ... it's an article in the Guardian; cope with that as best you can. Specific comparisons are kind of hard to pin down when it comes to stuff like this.

The handiest visual for me is the circular chart depicting the Regulations, Carry, and Permit/License laws per state, arranged by region (which is kind of a thought-provoking image when paired with the Internal Migration stuff, yep).

You will never in this world guess what it shows. 

The strictest gun laws are in the Northeast, Illinois, and California - the least restrictive being in the Southeast and Northwest - with the Midwest and Southwest kind of balancing (but for Illinois and California, with Michigan and Ohio higher than the others in regulations) - 

##

Because it's the middle of the night for me and I have a shift to fill tomorrow (well, later today but about ten hours from now so I DO have time to sleep and wake up) I'm not going to do the research comparing state by state population losses and gains with gun laws.

However, one thing really did pop real big for me in just these very preliminary separate sets of statistics.

Americans are moving.

They're leaving the Northeast, Illinois, Michigan, and California and moving to the Southeast, Northwest, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado - with again the Midwest basically stable ... and it's darned near state for state a match for the gun laws being strict or not.

Fancy that.

I wonder if it's pure coincidence, instinct, or if people take this kind of stuff into consideration if/when they decide to move.

It's only just a following of my gut,  the thought of even looking into the comparison. Turns out my gut might be trying to tell me something (besides that I did not go ahead and cook up the steak, chicken, pork, veggies, and pasta I was going to make as soon as I got home tonight but went into this roaming around on line thing instead *sigh* ) Huh. Since I've been following my gut here, it better not gripe. I can cook that stuff when I wake up.

As far as numbers go, I reckon there are scads of them out there. I'm pretty sure that these two sets were generated independently of one another with no interest whatsoever in connecting them. That's part of why I find it so interesting.

Yeah, this is what I tend to do: take unrelated things, superimpose them, and see if a pattern pops.

Sometimes a very interesting pattern does indeed pop.

There are at least a couple of other factors I'd like to add to this equation but am not going to do it tonight. Maybe somebody else will do it and save me the trouble.

If I had more time on my hands I'd do a color coded map just to see what it looks like. 

Mm-hmm ... maybe Americans aren't really as slow on the uptake as some people think they are (or hope they are). Or maybe they just have good instincts. Who knows? I have to admit I was a bit startled by what I found. I thought it might be a little related but didn't expect it to be as clear as it seems to be. 

Seriously, check out the visuals in the links above. I bet you'll see the same thing I do.

Uffda.