Murder, suicide rates up in parts of US -study

more guns means less murders.

I'd bet the rates would be the same if guns were banned entirely - people would just use a different method.

since at least half of those states named have incredibly restrictive gun laws. What happened to the murder rates in Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska etc where shall issue carry permits are freely available and restrictions on guns minimal?

"based on data from the first six states to take part" in the study.

Is that the least restrictive carry and gun purchasing states have some of the lowest homicide rates in the country.

Note that this is NOT definitely causal to my mind at least. I am NOT saying that more guns automatically means less murder, but I definitely AM saying that more guns absolutely does not mean more murder. The factors in crime rates cannot be explained based on one factor alone - it's silly for either side of whatever debate you choose to try to imply that - be it guns, death penalty, whatever.

Frankly I think if all states went to a shall-issue carry status, and stopped silly restrictions based on what guns looked like or what kind of bullets they fire, we'd see essentially no change in the crime rate - maybe just maybe a trivial drop as SOME casual thugs may be deterred. But essentially a no-score win. If we followed that with meaningful restrictions such as licensing, registration, mandatory training, and universal background checks we'd almost certainly see a decrease in crime.

You see what neither side of the gun debate wants to admit is that it's not the number of guns that makes us either safer or at more risk - it's who has them and how they are used.

There hasn't been one state that has freed up carry laws recently (and many states have) that has seen a wholesale and significant increase in gun crime. There hasn't been one state that has implemented draconian gun laws that has seen a significant and wholesale drop.

Who has the strongest most restrictive gun laws in the country? DC, NYC, NJ, CA, Chicago, MA.

Any of these strike you as universally low crime?

Where are the least restrictive gun laws in the country? Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and yes to be intellectually honest I should admit TX too. Apart from parts of the latter any of them strike you as violent hellholes?

I KNOW that other factors are involved - race, drugs, poverty, population density. I'm not trying to pretend that freely available gun ownership is a panacea, but it's sure as hell not a poison either.

that is being created these days.

I think we have fewer social ties than before. This is the contentiousness you are talking about. People are just unpleasant to each other and see no social consequences of being that way. The lack of social ties make people feel alone and increase the sense of desperation. They have no one to turn to help.

:wtf:

Guns have gotten more difficult to obtain since the early 1990s due to the Brady Act and a large reduction of the number of "kitchen table" gun dealers.

I thought the War On (some) Drugs was making drugs harder to obtain. Certainly medical standards for habit-forming prescription drugs like narcotic painkillers have gotten stricter.

umbrella term for using the CIA and U.S. military to supposedly bash drug producers in other countries.

Meth is easily produced anywhere using commonly available ingredients. And it's become the primary drug of abuse today.

Has it not?

Target stores just announced that they are voluntarily limiting the amount of pseudoephedrine that anyone can buy in a single retail transaction, for example.

Availability of meth may not have dropped, but is there any evidence that it is more available now than it was 15 years ago? I don't associate with anyone who uses it, so I have no "read" on the black market in my area.

No one in my circle uses it either, but the local police summaries are stuffed full of meth busts, meth lab discoveries, meth-related violence.



About 15 years ago, the police reports showed a clear mixture of heroin, marijuana, cocaine (incl. crack), speed, and ecstasy crimes. Today, I see mostly methamphetamine mentioned and very little else.

Such as the county in which I live. Speed has been around a long time; the Hells Angels were cooking it up in the San Joaquin Valley in the 60's. Also, here a large number of the arrests for meth production is surprisingly amoung older (35+) adults.

I do not think the "drug wars" will ever be "won"...as long as there are people who are thrill seekers or who are running from themselves. I have always thought that drug abusen(vs. use) stems from mental problems; self-medication is the general term.

You still have to route a gun through a licensed gun dealer when you buy one over the Internet, along with going through all the required background checks before you can take possession of it.

Now back in the 50's and 60's, you really could buy guns through the mail, no questions asked. Lots of mil-surplus German, Japanese, Russian and Italian guns available then.

There was a piece on the news last night, at a high school in Milwaukee, the mothers were meeting because Rush's drug of choice and Vicodin was being purchased over the web by their kids, that the sites had on staff doctors to prescribe after buyer describes systems they are experiencing (kind of pain).

were on anti depressant drugs doled out
as clinical trial samples by the pharma cartel.
I wonder if any one has done a comparative
study examining the increase in these prescriptions
and the suicide rate.

BHN

Unfortunately, I think it's going to get a lot worse.

in MA and MD history....heinous bastards, both of them.

Economic pressure certainly doesn't help. When people have jobs, they don't tend to go out robbing their neighbors, and killing them if they happen to find their victims at home.

I also predicted that there will be significant increases in mental health disorders, and illness. Just watch...

psych medications for whatever ails you! :sarcasm:

The six states, which accounted for 11 percent of the murders and 10 percent of suicides in 2002, were in step with the rest of the nation between 1993 and 2000, when national homicide and suicide rates fell sharply.

So - that still leaves 44 other states to live in...
What's the problem?

In the coal mine.

I can say that from my monitoring the police frequencies in NW NJ and NE PA that the number of Attempted and suicide-related police calls is significantly up.

Next week; BA Announces they'll no longer collect and publish stat data regarding...

If the information looks bad, well, then, someone isn't doing a good enough job hiding it.

...I wonder if there are any updates to that?

Why abortion rate is up in Bush years
Oct. 17, 2004, 1:27AM
By GLEN HAROLD STASSEN and GARY KRANE
"...We look at the fruits of political policies more than words. We analyzed the data on abortion during the Bush presidency. There is no single source for this information -- federal reports go only to the year 2000, and many states do not report -- but we found enough data to identify trends. Our findings are disturbing.

Abortion was decreasing. When President Bush took office, the nation's abortion rates were at a 24-year low, after a 17.4 percent decline during the 1990s. This was a steady decrease averaging 1.7 percent per year. (The data come from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life using the Guttmacher Institute's studies.)

Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened....

...Two-thirds of women who have abortions cite "inability to afford a child" as their primary reason (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life). In the Bush presidency, unemployment rates increased half again. Not since Herbert Hoover had there been a net loss of jobs during a presidency until the current administration. Average real incomes decreased, and for seven years the minimum wage has not been raised to match inflation. With less income, many prospective mothers fear another mouth to feed.

Half of all women who abort say they do not have a reliable mate. And men who are jobless usually do not marry. In the 16 states, there were 16,392 fewer marriages than the year before, and 7,869 more abortions. As male unemployment increases, marriages fall and abortion rises.

Women worry about health care for themselves and their children. Since 5.2 million more people have no health insurance now than before this presidency -- with women of childbearing age overrepresented in those 5.2 million -- abortion increases...."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2851283

Many people will be in survival mode...jobless and w/o healthcare.
November and December things will only get worse. That is when the cost of heating fuel goes up, then add to that the people who realize they can't afford gifts for their loved ones. Depression will be up and the malls will be dangerous places at night.
Yep, thanks a pantload.

seemed to even consider such a scenario then. CRIME WILL INCREASE

Perhaps some of you are doing okay. Way too many of us ARE NOT. We are living in a pressure cooker and it's starting to blow it's top.

The rancor between the parties, the joblessness, the lack of services for the poor, the cost of living going through the stratosphere, lack of quality health care, watching every move we make, take take take away constantly from the people and they will explode. Drugs are used to either make money or to escape the horror that is their existence.

For me, I can hardly find one single reason to get up in the morning. I am completely hopeless about my future. We live with crisis piled upon crisis..unrelenting trouble and fear. Yeah, I could blow someones head off but I don't own a gun. I'd have to push them off the cliff or find some othter form to do it. I could kill myself for lack of hope. We can't move forward, we can't go backward. We stagnate. Life in current America is utterly pointless for some folks.

People in every location are DESPARATE. Desparate for security--that jobs will be there the next day and housing will become affordable--desparate for a future, something to live for, independence, freedoms, jobs and places to live, a decent income, respect for the individual..and so on.

The radios spew hatred from the left and the right.. there's no getting away from it. Kids are using harder drugs like crazy. The school system has failed. Husbands can beat the bejesus out of their wives but the wives and kids have no where to go!

There will always be crime: murder and suicide, but today the inclination is extremely pronounced due to lack of hope and an increase in rancor among people and LOUSY government.

We are and will see crimes of violence due to rancor and hatred because there's no outlet and everyone else is angry all the time too; some crime due to drug use. Crimes of violence due to stress overload and a person flips out in the social security office or a towering highrise on wall street. Crimes relating to money: bank robbery, shoplifting, forgery, life insurance money etc.........because WE AIN'T GOT ANY and can't get any. Then there will be suicides due to strain and hopelessness and lack of access to medical treatment.

The American "little" people are FURIOUS beyond description. Contempt breeds violence and crime.

As democrats, I would think we'd be the ones to stand up and fight for all the people in everyday places. Write and petition congressmen/senators at a local and federal level NON STOP. It's best that you stand up and ask for services and help for that character living next door to you before he/she flips out and kills YOU. All the prisons in the world will NOT stop the attitudes coming down. It takes a whole nation and decent government to address the REAL WORKADAY problems that cause discomfort among the masses.

STOP TALKING ABOUT THE ISSUES AND START DOING SOMETHING.:rant:

and murder rates in the South as compared to the Northeast.

It would be interesting to compare murder statistics to average household income by region and state as well.

Why would anyone feel depressed or angry with such a roaring economy? :eyes:

A 10% rise in murder and suicide rates sounds about right for *'s first 4 years.

Just like under Reagan and Bush I - Gangs picked up allot of recruits because it is a survival tactic. When there are no jobs for undereducated (hell, even colleges grads are finding it takes at least 2 years of intensive searching to find a job) you have to get money somehow, so you do it illegally, hence the increase in drugs and guns, if you sell drugs, it's just like any other sales job, you have to create a market, and you have to protect your buyer and product. = territorial rights (gangs), guns (protection) Since the Republicans have won on cutting programs and welfare that help these situations, where else do the people have to go? Their policies create violence and fear...When will they see this? I argued with a repuge for hours that gangs aren't created for fun (he thought they were) they are created out of need for self preservation.


On edit: I also have to add, that there is a sharp decrease in cops too. When that guy escaped in Florida(?) and killed the judge, the police cheif said that there was supposed to have been 2 guards with the prisoner, but since they are short of manpower they had to settle for one. Also, last night on Obermann there was a case where a woman called 911 and after about the 12th call, she was told there just were no cops available to send...Thanks Bush for cutting the COPS program and even cutting funding further....

that the suicide rate will climb even more after bush's giveaway to the credit card companies takes effect. People will no longer have a safety net to give them another chance after catastrophic illness etc. The only recourse afforded these people will be death or perpetual debt to credit card companies. Great choice, huh? :eyes:
bush's legacy; dishonesty, dishonor, death. What grate guy. :sarcasm:

The article said "... the recession ended in November {of 2001}."

Sorry, but the recession hasn't ended yet {& I say it became the 2nd Great Depression}. It's obvious when you look at the job situation in this country.


-------------
"Prosperity is just around the corner." — Herbert Hoover
"The economy has turned a corner." — GW Bush

Herbert Hoover = GW Bush

Neither man cared about the Depression their economic policies created.

The population of those in the crime-prone years is increasing again.

In epidemiology, disease rates are usually adjusted to a standard age and sex profile, to ensure that changes are not just reflections of changes in the underlying demographic profile of the population. Crude murder rates (murders/population) are very sensitive to the age structure of the population. Late teens to early thirties are violence prone years, and the baby boom echo is entering those years.

...and Americans who expose corruption. I wonder what those statistics are.