And the violent crime rate continues to fall. Murder is down another 7%.

[benEzra]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64N37320100524?type=domesticNews
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/24/AR2010052402210.html

Declines by region:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/prelimsem2009/table_2.html

The sky is still not falling.

Full data, including data on type of weapon used, will be available in the fall. Here's the 2008 data, for comparison.

[virginia mountainman]

1. yep, but they still read off the same old script...

"wild wild west"

"blood will run in the streets"

"only criminals would own that"


Gun Control advocates, have no shame in repeating the same worn out script over and over, no matter how many times they are proven wrong...They are acting on faith...

EDIT: with all the guns sold over the past couple of years, this kinda shoots the hell out of "more guns = more crime"...

Time to consign that to the heap with the three above...

[X_Digger]

2. rape -3.1%, robbery -8.1%, agg assault -4.2%, arson -10.4%, motor vehicle theft -17.2%

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/prelimsem2009/table_3.html

[gorfle]

3. Yeah, check this:

From the OP:

"Murders and auto thefts fell sharply in the United States in 2009, extending the downward trend in violent and property crimes, according to preliminary statistics released by the FBI on Monday."

Sharp decline in violent crime, and yet A RECORD YEAR IN FIREARM SALES:

http://www.ammoland.com/2010/01/13/gun-owners-buy-14-million-plus-guns-in-2009/

"Washington, DC --(AmmoLand.com)- Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for the year reported 14,033,824 NICS Checks for the year of 2009, a 10 percent increase in gun purchases from the 12,709,023 reported in 2008.

So far that is roughly 14,000,000+ guns bought last year!
The total is probably more as many NICS background checks cover the purchase of more than one gun at a time by individuals."

So much for the more guns = more crime meme.

[jazzhound]

4. Somehow I doubt that the factose-intolerant supporters of gun "control"

will as much as scratch their heads over the latest statistics re. violent crime, and simultaneous spike in the number of firearms in the U.S.

[Callisto32]

5. "Factose-intolerant" I love it.

I'm totally going to start using that.

[jazzhound]

8. I'm actually lactose intolerant.

But better that than factose intolerant, eh?

See post #6 for a perfect example of just such a personality type.

[GreenStormCloud]

15. Yes, I definately see the similarity in the symptoms.

For those not familiar, on of the major syptoms of lactose intolerance is horrible flatulence, both in quanity and quality, and a tenency toward diarrhea.

Factose intolerance definately shows a similarity of symptoms, doesn't it?

I am so going to use that phrase from time to time.

[jazzhound]

17. "Factose intolerance definately shows a similarity of symptoms, doesn't it?"

Hadn't occurred to me, but of course you are correct!!

:rofl:

[jazzhound]

24. I've been straining to remember who I heard use the phrase "Factose

Intolerance and I finally remembered ---- it was Dr. Stephen T. Colbert! Enjoy:

http://wikiality.wikia.com/Factose_Intolerance

[onehandle]

6. Less reason than ever to own guns.

Excellent.

[X_Digger]

7. Do you try to justify any other rights you have?

If there were zero murders, the right would still exist, and some would choose to exercise it.

[proteus_lives]

9. Nohandle goes for the spin.....

But it's off the rim. No points, the anti-crowd is devastated. They had high hopes for this OTP.

[benEzra]

11. So don't own them. Your choice, as it should be.

We'll keep ours, thanks. Our choice, also as it should be.

[gorfle]

13. But since there is obviously little harm in it...

Less reason than ever to own guns.

But since there is obviously little harm in doing so, why not be prepared for when times aren't so rosy?

At a minimum, anti-firearm folks certainly can't say that more firearms = more crime. Last year was a record year of sales of firearms and ammunition, yet crime has spiked downward.

There may be little reason to own them, but there is even less of a reason not to.

[old mark]

10. BenEzra, seems like truth hurts - at least when you refuse to accept it.

Rec.
Thank you for this post.

mark

[Xela]

12. In foreign media also...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10153264.stm

"Criminologists attribute the unusual decline to better policing and security technology, and programmes targeting repeat offenders and vulnerable youths."

Not one word of CCW laws.

Xela

[Euromutt]

22. Well, in fairness, that's a difficult causal relationship to establish

Over the past fifteen years, we've seen major drops in crime in both New York city and Los Angeles, and it's not as if concealed carry laws have been relaxed in those jurisdictions.

The primary piece of evidence for the contention that "shall-issue" laws result in decreases in violent crime is still John Lott's work, and that hasn't stood up well to scrutiny. Black and Nagin produced a study in which tweaking Lott's model only slightly, or leaving out the statistics for Florida, caused Lott's findings to disappear. The main problem with Lott's work is that (like the many studies purporting to show that possessing a firearm places one at more risk of injury or death) it relies on econometric modeling, and with econometric modeling, the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. In this context, the "eating" consists of whether the model can be used to predict trends in data to a significantly better degree than chance, as opposed to merely "explaining" the data on which the model was based in the first place. But almost all researchers who employ econometric modeling don't bother to submit it to predictive testing, largely because the few who do tend to find their models fail the test.

[jazzhound]

23. Good information --- thanks for sharing it. n/t

[Xela]

25. I hear your points

The way I saw it, perhaps I was simply expecting too much from the BBC. Hoping perhaps that an anti-gun institution would admit that CCW gun laws had a role in this (no matter how small). I know, silly me.

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on Gleck's "Point Blank" and Wright/Rossi's "Armed and Dangerous" (2nd edition)?

Kind regards,

Xela

[Euromutt]

26. Or at least acknowledge that expanded CCW hasn't made things worse

...along with the acknowledgment that last year's massive sales of ARs, handguns and ammunition haven't resulted in a perceptible increase in violent crime, let alone turned the country into Somalia.

I haven't read the Wright & Rossi book, though I've read a fair amount of Kleck's stuff. From what I've seen, it looks to be based on as solid a foundation as any piece of social science research can be. I'd actually credit Kleck with supplying the evidence that tipped me over from fence-sitter into being fully pro-RKBA. Speaking as a political science major, though, bear in mind that in science in general, but in the social sciences especially, research rarely turns up the truth, but overwhelmingly only manages to eliminate that which is demonstrably untrue.

[Euromutt]

27. Let me qualify my previous post

Research involving econometric modeling, by its nature, is retrospective; it looks back on data that has been compiled previously, usually by people other than the researchers themselves. Retrospective studies certainly have their place, such as case control studies in medical science, but only very rarely do they produce any conclusive evidence.

Retrospective studies are conducted to see if an association can be found between a phenomenon and a possible cause, and usually they produce such an association. But because the data wasn't gathered under controlled conditions, it's practically impossible to control for every possible variable, which means the associations produced are likely to be spurious to some extent. So competent, responsible scientists use the results as a basis for a subsequent prospective study under more controlled conditions. (These are more expensive to conduct than retrospective studies, obviously, which is why retrospective studies is used for initial exploratory research.) In prospective studies, the associations found by retrospective studies generally turn out to be much weaker, or they disappear entirely. So a retrospective study by itself isn't very good evidence, unless and until its findings have been confirmed by a subsequent prospective study.

Incidentally, if you look at the public health literature on firearms, you see it consists almost entirely of retrospective studies, with no follow-up prospective studies. Several decades of one retrospective study after another, but for some reason, nobody's ever had the bottle to see if the findings of all those studies hold up under a prospective trial. Makes you wonder why, doesn't it?

[jazzhound]

28. Perhaps it's timely here to revisit some of Kleck's thoughts on the relative

merits of studies:


"ALL STUDIES ARE CREATED EQUAL": FAILING TO DISTINGUISH TECHNICALLY SOUND STUDIES FROM POOR ONES


Reviews of large bodies of research studies can be misleading if the reviewers implicitly give equal weight to all studies. Most of the research done in the guns-violence field, especially that published in medical journals, is technically primitive, relying on research methods that most social scientists would regard as reflective of the technical standards of the mid-1960’s or earlier. More specifically, the research commonly (1) uses simple univariate or bivariate analysis procedures rather than multivariate procedures that control for variables that may confound the relationship between violence and guns or gun control, (2) ignores the possible two-way relationship between guns and violence (gun levels may increase violence rates, but higher violence rates may also increase gun acquisition for defensive purposes), (3) uses primitive, invalid measures of gun availability (or none at all), and (4) relies on small local samples that are not representative of any larger population.

If the strong studies yielded the same findings as the weak ones, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, in general the research supporting the ideas that guns cause violence and that gun laws reduce violence is nearly all of the technically primitive variety, while technically competent studies tend to support the null hypotheses that gun levels and gun laws have no significant net effect on violence rates. For example, among studies of the relationship between gun levels and homicide rates, technically inferior studies ignore the effects of violence rates on gun levels, find positive associations, and erroneously interpret them as reflecting the effect of gun levels on violence rates (e.g., Brearley 1932; Newton and Zimring 1969; Seitz 1972; Fisher 1976; Phillips, Votey, and Howell 1976; Brill 1977; Cook 1979; Lester 1988b). The technically better studies that use complex statistical procedures to take account of the possible two-way relationship generally find no evidence of net positive effect of gun levels on violence rates .

Consequently, it can be misleading when reviewers of the research literature engage in “research democracy,” acting as if “all studies are created equal” (Kleck 1985). Whenever scholars summarize evidence on a topic by simply listing studies, without comment of the relative methodological adequacy of each study, they are practicing research democracy. In drawing conclusions, serious scholars are supposed to weight evidence by the soundness of the methods used to generate it. To merely count up studies favoring a particular conclusion would generally lead to an outcome dominated by the technically inferior studies, since these tend to be more numerous. Probably in most fields poor research is more common that good research, but this is especially likely to be true in fields that generate intense emotions and ideologically based conflict, and it is certainly the case with work on guns and violence.

Dr. Gary Kleck – “Targeting Guns – Firearms and Their Control” pp. 32 & 33
(emphasis added, reprinted with permission)

[SteveM]

30. Perceptions of a "target group," criminals, may be critical to a sound model...

Since most violent gun-related crime is committed by repeat criminals, the perceptions of these criminals, viz a viz the likelihood they will encounter deadly force from gun-bearing citizens, would seem to be a critical component in demonstrating the proposition that "more armed people = less violent crime." But even here, this is a look back.

Perhaps any test of this proposition must rely on "feeding" a perception that a criminal's would-be victim is more likely (in comparison with the past) to be armed, then predicting an outcome. This would require social policy changes, legislation, ad campaigns, etc. But would any such "perception" include concealed-carry folks, or those adequately prepared for home defense only, or both?

Modeling for something like this would be a hellish proposition in itself.

[krispos42]

14. So hundreds weren't killed in National Parks?

Thousands weren't killed when Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws were passed?

Hmph. It's almost as if giving more leeway to the criminally uninclined doesn't result in mass slaughter.

Who'da thunk?

[DonP]

16. Well, it's still early - they can keep hoping I guess. ntxt

[Biker13]

18. Kick

[east texas lib]

19. While nothing will ever stop the rain dance of the hard core anti RKBA types, this is good news.

But eternal vigilance is required due to the opium-like attraction to complete control these folks exhibit. Watch 'em like a hawk.

[jazzhound]

20. Outstanding advice.

:thumbsup:

[DonP]

21. Just a coincidence, like last year and the year before, and the .... ntxt

[jazzhound]

29. kick n/t