NEW FBI VIOLENT CRIME REPORT!!!!

Just heard on the morning news the annual FBI violent crime report states that violent crime in the US is the lowest since they started keeping records in 1973.

I guess there has been no blood in the streets because of the "shall issue" and "Castle Doctrine" laws and all those evil guns "on the street."

Anti's, you were wrong again - about time you owned it.

mark

I am not anti gun but I don't see a clear connection.

claims made 'round here, the most common (almost daily) being, 'more guns = more crime', which is demonstrably false when looking at the past 10 years of these crime reports.

and inferring a correlation.

If there was some quantifiable data in your statement I might give it serious consideration.

there is an endless stream of "more guns = more crime" here on DU. Ten years of FBI crime reports show declining violent crime over the same period. As I have said before, guns are not made of meat, they do not rot away, they last generations so every single year since their inception there have been more guns than the previous year. All that being true, if you request I can show the last 10 years violent crime reports, the meme "more guns = more crime" is demonstrably false. I am not suggesting that more guns = less crime, I believe that numbers have little to no effect on violent crime statistics.

the issue was not inferring a correlation

there is undeniably a correlation

the question is: is that correlation inferring a CAUSATION (between more guns = more crimes), and the OP did NOT say that.

you can't deny there is a correlation in the time period sampled.

we have a period of increasing guns CORRELATING with decreasing crime.

res ipsa loquitor

you are confusing correlation with causation.

as oft stated, corelation does not imply causation. which was your point, except you confused correlation WITH causation, by claiming he was inferring correlation. he wasn't inferring CAUSATION, and there is no need to INFER correlation. again, the thing speaks for itself. data set: more guns corresponded with less crime

but correlation IS correlation.

and when variables have an inverse relationship in a sample of data (the inverse relationship being guns increasing, violent crime decreasing) there most definitely IS a correlation

and the "gun violence" that will surely follow any liberalization of right to carry laws. The laws have been enacted, violence is down, they were wrong. That's it.

mark

At least where I live they are.

on edit: Florida and DC are two exceptions that come to mind.

In the last 2 decades:

The 5 day manual background check and waiting period was replaced with NICS "instant background check" despite massive lobbying by Brady Bunch.

1994 "assault weapons ban" was allowed to sunset.

Federal "safe passage" laws enable lawful transport of firearms through states with restrictive firearm laws.

Heller v. DC struck down DC gun ban.
NRA v. San Fransisco stuck down ban on firearms in public housing.
McDonald v. Chicago is now before supreme court and 90% likely will strike down Chicago gun ban.

Mandatory storage of firearms locked and unloaded found unconstitutional.

Number of states with "shall issue" conceal carry grew from 2 to 38.
Lawful carry restored to national parks after 37 years.

In VA preemption by the state made approximately 870 gunlaws by local govt null and void.

Castle Doctrine type laws (presumption of reasonable fear when acting in self defense) has been expanded to 17 states.

An additional 12 states have added "stand your ground" (no duty to retreat provisions) for a total of 14.

Defense of Lawful Commerce shields gun manufacturers from lawsuits based on use of firearms.

Montana & Tennessee passed laws making federal regulations on firearms not apply to in-state transactions.

Federal govt prohibited from making firearm registry. Access to 4473 is via warrant only.
Repeal of record keeping on ammunition purchases.
ATF agents now prohibited from more than one routine inspection of an FFL per year.

I live in MA and very little if any of this has had any impact locally.

The NICS is a monumental step in the right direction. It is one law that makes sense.

The 'assault weapons' ban was cluster fuck from the get go. It made sense to let that die.

DC, SF laws were clearly unconstitutional but a different court could rule another way. I wouldn't bet on Chicago.

In my home state we are required to lock all guns when not in use.

I have my concealed carry permit and do not consider this a liberalization. Personally I think we are born with the right to carry, and only lose it when we engage in criminal or insane behavior.

MA has a Castle doctrine in place. Not sure I consider this a liberalization of anything. MA does require retreat when possible.

Suing a gun manufacturer? There are times when that should be allowed. Blanket protection is nonsense.

Montana and Tennessee. Who gives a fuck? As long as guns sold there legally don't illegally make it into my state.

The registry will be back.

Need to show permit when buying ammo in MA. No records beyond normal retail sales records.

I simply don't agree with tying the hands of the ATF.

I am glad you agree with most of the changes however all of it points towards gun laws becoming less restrictive and more accepting of gun rights.

So gun laws become less restrictive and crime went down.

More guns, less restrictive laws and less crime.

Gun control is an utter failure as a policy.

BTW: Within the next couple year I would expect a lawsuit requiring firearms to be locked up. It was found to be Unconstitutional in DC and once 2nd is incorporated it is simply waiting for someone to challenge it.

the heads of some people.

Putting the two thoughts together in sentence and making a claim does not establish the correlation. The FBI report does not try make the claim.

It is a circumstantial and coincidental observation. I personally believe that there is much potential to establish the link, but one seems willing to make the effort.

Spurious statements of cause an effect do nothing to advance the cause of gun ownership.

Every time there is an attempt to liberalize a gun law (move from may issue to shall issue for example) the antis always talk about blood in the street.

The fact that we have had 20 years of less restrictive gun laws and crime steadily declined puts that "theory" to bed.

While we can't say more guns = less crime we can certainly disprove the more guns = more crime claim.

However despite this evidence the very next time there is an attempt to remove restrictions from law abiding citizens such as:

striking down gun ban in Chicago
striking down the "assault weapons ban" in CA
allowing "shall issue" conceal carry in IL or CA
etc

the antis will once again be out in force with the tired "blood in the streets" and "shootouts at the OK corral" meme.

However 20 years of legislative action has dis-proven that over and over and over.

Note that overall deaths were 17 less than last year, and that 3 were in the Northeast where some of the strictest gun laws in nation are enforced.

are there some areas where they have gotten tighter? yes, but in general, they have been getting looser.

You bastard.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS178525+02-Sep-2009+PRN20090902

Interesting observation here:



That decline is interesting, and currently runs counter to the "things are exponentially getting worse" meme one hears from the MSM.

It has not brought back the "wild west" as predicted by some, nor has it been a cure all to stop crime, as predicted by others.

That is exactly what I have seen.

It can make a difference for the person who chooses to carry a handgun for defense. But it has no effect on anything else.

a habitual offender can commit 200+ felonies in a year.

A habitual offender who is shot either dies or is much more likely to be caught.

If he/she dies that is 200 * length of criminal career in felonies not committed.
If he/she is caught and gets say 5 years that is 200 * 5 years = 1000 felonies not committed.

However I think the overall effect is small given small number of DGU that shots fired or even smaller % that involve hitting/killing the perp.
Combine that small effect with a low rate of firearms being carried (3% of population issued CCW, even less are carrying at any particular moment) and the overall influence is very low.

Still I don't think we can say it has no effect.

However at minimum there is no evidence to indicate a rise in number of firearms in the United States produces more crime so the whole "MORE GUNS = MORE CRIME" or "MORE GUNS = MORE DEATH" meme isn't supported by the data.

Granted if one badguy is taken out of society it has an effect. But I think it is too small to be measured, all things considered.

one thing cops know all too well is the "frequent flyer" EFFECT.

it is astounding how FEW people contribute to the significant majority of crime (especially crime that is not a crime of passion or stuff like domestic violence, but crimes where one person chooses to go out and victimize people -auto prowls, burglaries, robberies, etc.)

we had one guy who was such a frequent flyer that once he got put away, crime literally fell off a cliff OVERNIGHT. car prowls, burg's, etc. dropped by a huge margin. that's ONE guy.

just like a tiny percentage of people in this country, own the vast majority of wealth, a tiny percentage of scumbag criminals contributes to a gross majority of these types of crimes.

Thus they may change their behavior even if there is only a small chance their target is armed and knows how to use their weapon.

individuals differences extended throughout a population = aggregate difference

that's absurd. the point is that it most definitely has not INCREASED crime.

i have seen many predict it would REDUCE crime. but not STOP crime

NOTHING will stop crime.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/guncrimetab.htm

preliminary 07 & 08 data is available but not analyzed completely

exploring the statistics in depth requires time.

1994 - 225.4 per 100K
2006 - 129.9 per 100K

Since the 90s gun laws have become much more liberalized. The gun supply has also risen by about 1/3 to 300 million firearms.

Despite that the gun crime rate has been approximately cut in half.

So more guns, more access to guns, less guns used in crime.

You can find the FBI Unified Crime Reports here.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

2008 is still preliminary. Usually by the fall they finalize the data.
I wouldn't use 2008 as gold yet but it is clearly obvious violent crime peaked in the 90s and we are basically in a 2 decade decline.

Not only that accidental gun deaths are in a 30 year decline.

The economy is a big factor, and I think we will start to see those violent crime rates increase if the economy stays in the dumps for very long.

Keep in mind the antis were all clamoring over the big violent crime drop in the mid-1990s as being proof of the Assault Weapon Ban's success, when it really had nothing to do with that at all...

Year to year stats are not very useful for tracking changes (unless it is a huge change).
Trends over a decade or more are much better for examination.

Yet, there are probably hundreds of factors in crime. Firearm availability does play a role (going both ways, IMO), but it is not very strongly correlated. Other factors have a MUCH stronger correlation to crime rates.

In fact, the majority of criminologists dispute that crime increases during economic downturns. And there's evidence to support that. For example, the economy definitely took a hit during Bush's first year in office, but crime didn't increase; rather, the rate of decline leveled off. And conversely, we can point to severe increases in crime (especially violent crime) that occurred during periods of economic prosperity, like the US in the 1920s and the UK in the late 1990s.

The crime drop during the 1990s had very little to do with firearms regulation, and everything to do with smarter policing. Longer prison sentences played a part, too, but that's not a solution, because at some point, the offenders you've put away are going to start being released again, and if you've not bothered to rehabilitate them in the meantime, you're more or less back where you started.

And all the unintended consequences that brought along with it. You can't tell me that the crime drop of the 1990s didn't have anything to do with the good economy under Clinton.

Abortion became legal in 1973. In general, women who choose to abort are aware that, for whatever reasons, they aren't able to raise that child properly. Poorly raised children are at greater risk of becoming violent criminals. The crime rate started dropping about 20 years after abortion became legal.

The book supports their contention by comparing the crime rates with other groups.

and in my opinion payed for by the state (I think the initial expense will be more than recovered by the drop in crime and other benefits).

And I haven't been attacked by tigers since!

Clearly my PC is keeping me safe from tigers.

Some people swore up and down that computers are evil and if buy one you will immediately be set upon and devoured by tigers, they propose legislature to outlaw computers and predict that mass ownership will lead to mass death (by tigers).

You and many others then purchase a computer and are not mauled by tigers.

Does this help or hurt their argument?

Get off my tiger, dude!

:rofl:

More guns = more death, that is a fact! We have more guns so we must have more death. That is axiomatic.

Only conclusion; americans hate gun control so much they stopped killing each other just to discredit the entire idea.

That's just low america.

responsibility and citizens can exercise their inalienable right to keep and bear arms for self-defense when seconds count or try to call 911 and wait ten or more minutes and hope LEO will respond.

It would seem that if we went after gangs as if they were terrorists (which they are) we could drop crime significantly and our country would be a much more peaceful place to live.

Draconian gun laws do little or no effect on criminal drug gangs. Even if all sales of firearms were stopped and all firearms were confiscated, drug gangs would merely smuggle weapons into the country. Disarming the citizens would allow the gangs to operate with impunity and perhaps do more home invasions, robberies and kidnappings. Such activities are already occurring.

who are not members of gangs.

But they realize they can't accomplish this easily. So they try to ban classes of weapons such as "assault weapons". They often have the media on their side so while a gun grabber appears on TV discussing an assault weapons ban, the weapons shown are fully automatic.

This works fine in areas that have draconian gun laws. Few people in those areas (except the criminals) have firearms and understand very little about them. Unfortunately for the gun grabbers, a large area of the country has far more liberal gun laws. People in those areas are much more familiar with firearms and can readily recognize lies and deceit.

Every time a state wants to enact a law such as allowing concealed carry, the anti-gun forces pump out enormous amounts of propaganda and say lies like "The state will turn in the Wild West, with shootouts at every traffic intersection."
But of course if the law passes, there are very very few such incidents.

Like in the old story, you can cry wolf only so often before everybody ignores you.

The pro-gun and anti-gun groups could work together to improve the NICS background check and push for new legislation to punish straw purchasers and dealers who ignore the law. They could also push for laws that would define any criminal gang as a terrorist organization and would set up a coordinated effort at the federal, state and local level to incarcerate gangs members. Also, anyone caught carrying a firearm illegally should face a LONG prison term. This prison term should be so long that it actually discourages illegally carrying a firearm.

By pushing such legislation the crime rate would fall dramatically. The demand for firearms would decrease as our streets and home would be safer.

The FBI warning says not to use the data to try to rank the effectiveness of one LE agency or department vs. another. On the other hand, it says the data IS useful "for information on the fluctuations in the level of crime from year to year."

we are WAY worse off financially (most americans) than we were two years ago.

yet crime has gone down!

iow, the increased poverty, and increased financial meltdown has NOT caused americans to ramp up violent behavior.

i know many people think poverty or economic disparity (take yer pick) CAUSES crime. that's simply absurd. and this is one data point to refute that belief