A call to Arms: 2005 Crime Stats in; Golden opportunity for a wave of letters

FirstFreedom

Moderator
Guys, the 2005 FBI Uniform Crime Statistics are out as of this month:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/

This is the first *really good* opportunity to write letters to editors and such to point how the sunset of the 94-04 homeland defense rifle and standard capacity magazine ban, had no effect or a negative effect on crime reduction, in the period from September 14, 2005 until December 31, 2005, but specifically from Jan 1 2005 to Dec 31 2005, the first full year following the sunset of the ban.

Of course you remember all the naysayers saying that blood will run in the streets, and every other politician, police chief, and their dogs were against the ban's sunset, blah blah blah. And of course they were wrong. Now we have the proof to show them.

Get on it, you guys with writing skills. Do this on a town-by-town grass roots basis to make everyone who predicted chaos and crime by the sunset, look very stupid for predicting as much. I'm starting with my local police chief, who was against the sunset. I'll post my letter after I compose it.

Dig up the comparative 05 and 04 data, for the nation, your region, and your state, and compare them, or better yet, to control for the "split" year of '04, compare the 03 data with the 05 data, the two years for which each entire year was wholly within or without the ban.
Thanks for your help.
 
Seems like they've bowed to political correctness and are no longer doing rankings by rate per 100,000, unless I missed a table somewhere. Something about how unless you compare the various aspects of a given jurisdiction you can't really be sure that a violent crime rate of 100 is really higher than a violent crime rate of 75.
 
Here's your best table for the nation as a whole, comparing years.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html

It does show rates (per 100,000), mvpel, so we're ok there. Although violent crime did edge up ever so slightly from 04 to 05 (all categories except rape), which may be explained by the nearly 4 months of sunsetted period, if anything, it is down from 03 - the last full year of the HDR ban - and WAY WAY DOWN from the general period of 95-04, inclusive, to the 05 year. Property crime dropped both from 03 to 04, AND from 04 to 05, AND greatly from the 95-04 period, to 05. Go here for state and regional analysis which gives rates, and compares both 04 and 05:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_04.html

From that last table, it shows the U.S.A., for both years (04 and 05), for each crime category, except arson, and gives rates, and also gives two aggregates (violent crimes and property crimes). Then, it also proceeds to gives the totals for each region, and it also breaks down each of the 50 states. So it's very useful for everything except the 95 to 03 data, which is very important also.

I don't know why arson is not considered a property crime, and I don't know where drug crimes fit in at all.
 
also note that you can click on the "download as excel" link in the upper left of each page containing a table, and voila, it's on your harddrive to be opened by any spreadsheet program, and massaged as you may wish. Very handy - it worked well for me.
 
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