More "Big Lie", heavenly deception, or cooked stats?

[friendly_iconoclast]

From the Boston Globe, yesterday (20 December):

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/20/gun_permits_surge_in_state/?page=2

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x276454

....“I think the more guns, the more gun violence,’’ said John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence, which led the push for the state’s groundbreaking Gun Control Act of 1998, widely seen as the nation’s most comprehensive gun legislation.....

....Kristen Rand, legislative director at the Violence Policy Center in Washington, pointed to troad-rage shootings as cautionary tales.

“People may feel safer with a handgun, but all the evidence points to the opposite,’’ she said. “We see it happen across the country. They are not enhancing public safety; they are a public safety problem.’’....

Reuters, today (21 December):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4193932

Crime Drops In First Half Of 2009: FBI

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Violent crime in the United States, including murder and robbery, dropped 4.4 percent in the first half of 2009 and property crime like car thefts also dropped, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Monday.

The latest statistics suggest that U.S. violent crime could drop for a third full year in a row, a steady decline despite the harsh economic recession that some policymakers and police groups had feared would lead to an upward spike.

The number of murders plummeted 10 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2008, while robbery fell 6.5 percent and forcible rape dropped 3.3 percent, according to preliminary statistics released by the FBI.

Violent crime in all of 2008 fell 1.9 percent from 2007.....

[taurus145]

1. The usual grabber rhetoric

They love to quote feelings rather than statistics. Statistics show the lie of their "facts".

They keep pissing down our backs and telling us it's raining. More bullshit pie, just in time for Christmas.

Enjoy dessert.

[PavePusher]

4. And the really strange part is...

It's not even WARM rain.

Eeeewhh....

[oneshooter]

2. Same lies, same "Proof" same same. N/T

[spin]

3. I tend to feel that the FBI stats are more reliable than...

anything produced by the Stop Handgun Violence organization, the Violence Policy Center or the Brady Center.

Obviously, the number of firearms in the U.S. has increased dramatically in the last year since the Obama election. More people have also obtained concealed carry permits.

The correlation between the number of firearms in the hands of citizens and the violent crime rate seems questionable. So does the number of people licensed to carry concealed firearms and the violent crime rate.

On the other hand, I'm hesitant to attribute the decrease in violent crime to more firearms and licenses. Better police work may be the cause.

Another outside force has appeared, this one in the form of modern crime deterrent tactics. Many police departments now maintain frequently updated maps of high-crime areas to more effectively deploy foot patrols—“putting cops on the dots,” as William Bratton, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department who pioneered the technique in New York City in the early 1990s, likes to say. Police departments have also begun to interact directly with known criminal groups, placing them on notice that violence by any member of the group will result in a harsh crackdown on all. The technique leads to more self-policing within the group and resulted in the “Boston Miracle” of the 1990s. It has since been expanded to hundreds of municipalities around the country.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-recessions-increase-crime&page=2