Deltoid

If you want to consider population density, Alaska has a density 7 times that of Yukon. This is a rather enormous difference.

Andy Freeman said:

But, is it a significant one? The relative size of the empty spaces probably doesn't matter much, except when it comes to computing average population density, because we really can ignore places where there's no one around to kill or be killed.

I think it is up to those who claim that the two places are comparable, to show that, ignoring uninhabited areas, the densities are the same.

Here is another way they differ:

% of population living in centres of population 20,000 or greater:
Alaska 60%
Yukon 0%

Legal availability is certainly lower in the Yukon than in Alaska.

The evidence is a knowledge of Alaska, US, and Canadian gun laws and an assumption that Yukon gun laws don't preempt Canadian laws.

Does Lambert really want to argue that Canadian gun laws are less strict than US laws? While I wouldn't be surprised by a "the US laws provide no legal obstacles to gun ownership" claim, I'd be surprised by one about Canada.

Rather than speculate on the effect of Canadian gun laws on legal ownership, we could actually look at Centerwall's data. This shows that ownership of long guns is about the same in the Prairie states and the Prairie provinces and the same in Washington and British Columbia. Does Andy want to argue that long gun ownership would be much higher on the Canadian side of the border without strict Canadian gun laws? I suppose that is possible, but then the places will differ in ways other than gun laws....

Centerwall's data suggests that long gun ownership increases with decreasing centre size. This means that long gun ownership is probably higher in Yukon than in Alaska.

Note that there's a difference between legal availability and legal ownership rates. Since we're talking about the value of gun laws as restrictions on typical people, surely legal availability is the relevant factor.

Only if legal ownership rates make no difference.