Advocacy pattern (E³-style)
- Narrow law sets, broad claims
- Weak or missing ownership / enforcement controls
- Little policing, poverty, or urban structure
- Defensive gun use treated as inconvenient
- Correlation sold as mandate
Evidence pages
The truth engine gun policy deserves.
Liberty Evidence Engine is a transparent counterweight to advocacy-only stats tools — starting with the pattern behind Everytown’s E³: convenient laws, thin controls, confident conclusions. We aim for full confounders, published methods, and results you can verify.
Published
Evidence on this site
Most defensive gun uses don't involve shots fired
William English's 2026 National Firearms Survey (Wave 2) asked 51,399 U.S. adults about defensive gun use. The public microdata show 6,673 lifetime DGUs among respondents who answered that question. English's published finding that most incidents did not involve firing the gun is the lead — reported here as his result, not a LEE recompute. Large sample; survey, not NCVS; not a Kleck war.
How much of U.S. homicide is FBI “active shooter”?
Mass-public-shooting headlines are not the homicide problem. FBI active-shooter reports name a real, narrow category. Put those killed counts next to the same national murder estimate LEE already uses for urban concentration, and the share is a fraction of one percent. Download the series. Not a gun-law causal model.
Why defensive-gun-use estimates disagree
CDC republished a 60,000–2.5 million yearly range. That is a literature envelope, not a CDC count. Compare the instruments — who was asked, whether the survey was anonymous, and whether anyone had to already say they were a victim — and keep the CDC/NAS band as an honest overlay.
Crime pockets: how concentrated is U.S. homicide in major cities?
National murder totals hide geography. Use the interactive explorer on 2023 major-city homicide counts against the FBI national murder estimate: drag Top N, rank by count or rate, filter, drop Chicago, and watch the national share move. Real counts; not a causal gun-law model.
Are firearms the leading cause of death for children? What CDC numbers actually show
Both things can be true: on broad pediatric bands (especially 0–19 / 14–19), firearms lead recent CDC WONDER injury rankings — and for younger children the ranking collapses. Use the interactive age-band explorer to see how the slogan’s truth depends on ages and comparators.
U.S. violent crime rate, 1985–2023
National violent crime rate per 100,000 residents — a public reference series. Drag the year window to see start→end change, peak, and percent move. Not a causal claim about any single gun law.
The advocacy problem
Cherry-picked inputs make cherry-picked policy.
Liberty Evidence bar
- State the research question plainly
- Show every control — and every omission
- Sensitivity and robustness, not one pretty p-value
- Downloadable tables where claims are public
- No “engine live” theater before the data is real
Approach
Where the numbers come from.
Named agencies. Downloadable files. Limits on the page. Not a causal gun-law engine.
FBI and city counts
Crime in the Nation murder estimates, major-city PD year-end totals, FBI/ALERRT active-shooter reports. Same national denominator when we put them next to each other.
CDC mortality
Child-firearm pages use published CDC WONDER / WISQARS queries — ages named, comparators named. Not a slogan band. Not a LEE bulk WONDER warehouse yet.
Surveys stay surveys
NCVS, Kleck, and the CDC/NAS defensive-gun-use range. Instrument first. That range is an overlay, not a third CDC count.