Some Good News About Crime
Friday, May 24, 2013
Despite the best efforts of the NRA to get rid of all gun laws and arm criminals, there is research that suggests we are on track to having the lowest murder rate in 100 years. This is also reflected in data that just looks at gun crimes. Interestingly enough, the same study shows that Americans believe that gun crime has been going up. This doesn't come as a huge surprise. Media saturation of violent events probably leads many people to believe such events are commonplace. I am not going to speculate to why this has gone down. As Jay has said on more than one occasion, it is very difficult to pick out causal factors when you are dealing with something this complex.
4 comments:
And yet several people I work with bought guns in the last year because they really believe that crime is out of control and skyrocketing.
I saw this data recently. Some people believe the murder rate rose and fell when lead entered our environment.
Man, we need an edit button. When I look at that graph, do I see the first hump correlating with prohibition and a second hump correlating with drug use? Just a thought.
Unless you believe e theory that the liberalization of carry laws has resulted in a decrease in crime. Prohibition also saw the enactment of the first federal gun laws. Just a thought. Even if you don't believe that gun laws cause the crime rate to go up, it seems to indicate that they certainly don't have anything to do with making us safer. If that were the case, we would be seeing an increase in crime.
FWIW, I think the war on drugs has resulted in an increase in violence.
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