New study by the Cato Institute on DGU

If you want a causation simply look at the demographics and level of urbanization. 90% of high crime states have many things in common.
 
MTT TL said:
If you want a causation simply look at the demographics and level of urbanization. 90% of high crime states have many things in common.
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I'm sorry, but that's really not enough. We need much better data and analysis. And some of our cherished notions may be unsupportable.

In NYC, beginning in 1990, the crime rate dropped precipitously. Murders were reduced by two-third, felonies fell by 50%; and by 2000, felonies on the subways had declined 75% (The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, 2002, pg. 137). The RKBA and liberalized right to carry laws certainly had nothing to do with that.

I suspect that liberalized gun carry laws and an increased willingness for people to take responsibility for their own safety are factors in the Nationwide declining crime rate. But it's still only, at best, two factors, and it's very tough to prove.

On the other hand it seems pretty clear that right to carry laws have not led to the bloodbaths that the anti-gun crowd had predicted.

But we have to be careful about making claims that we can't substantiate. Claims which can be shown to be suspect will hurt us. It's vital to our interests that we establish and maintain the highest levels of credibility.

What we can substantiate by collecting data on successful defensive gun use, especially published accounts, is that there are many ordinary people who have been able to avoid becoming victims of violent crime because they did have guns.
 
I'm sorry, but that's really not enough. We need much better data and analysis. And some of our cherished notions may be unsupportable.
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True, but nearly every state with a large older population and small youth population also has a low crime rate. The only exceptions are the States with a large population that is not properly censused. Age of the population plays a huge role in crime rates and the US has been getting steadily older.

Here is a link to a number of studies:

http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/69/2/351.abstract
 
No, I really don't know if the general perception now (outside of the shooting community), is that the Brady Campaign cooks the statistics.

I'm not sure how to even get at something like that, niether side of the gun debate would be objective. I guess what is the general perception among moderates on the issue, have they come to believe that the Brady Campaign information is not credible?
 
I found NO correlation between how strict a state controls guns and either it's total violent crime rate or it's change over the last 2 decades. States with favorable gun laws are not safer and those with strict controls are more dangerous, as I had hopped to discover. But the reverse is also true.

That doesn't mean gun laws have no affect - logic dictates that they must, one way or the other - but it seems to mean that the other factors are far more important.
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You know.. logic does dictate that BUT...I'm not so sure.

I think that the people that make the decision to use a gun (or ANY weapon) in a violent crime has no civility and therefore the laws of our civilization are of NO value to those violent criminals.

If the laws have little value to violent criminals, then the laws have little effect on violent crime rates.
 
I think falling violent crime rates is the most important issue to bring up to anyone you happen upon who tends to sit on the fence, and might have a belief that more guns would logically seem to be related to more violent crime. We can use some very simple stats which are not political in nature.

1. violent crime rates in the US have been declining since the very early 90's. This includes crimes where guns are used during the commission of the crime.

2. Gun sales have been steadily increasing, and spiked after 2008. Still, violent crime rates have steadily decreased.

3. The assault weapons ban was allowed to sunset in 2004 and violent crime rates continued to decrease.

4. Almost all states now have some sort of permit laws in place to allow citizens to carry handguns in public, whether concealed or openly carried. Violent crime rates have continued to decline.

This doesn't get into the complex issues of causation versus correlation. It doesn't get into arguing as to what is causing the decrease in violent crimes. What it does do, is pointedly show how the people who constantly claim that more guns in society WILL result in more violent crime, are not correct. Otherwise the violent crime rates would be increasing in the United States.
 
Article in Forbes by author Larry Bell references some of the findings in the Cato study:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybe...-the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/

I know it's important for us in Illinois because we have 2 fights on our hands:

1) Quashing the spate of anti-gun bills recently introduced in Illinois

2) Attempting again to get HB148 - the Family Protection Act ( carry legislation) passed in Illinois.


I was surprised by the information that stated that citizens mistakenly identified criminals and mistakenly shot them less than police:

... American citizens using guns in self-defense during 2003 shot and killed two and one-half times as many criminals as police did, and with fewer than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal (2% versus 11%).
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But rightly shot more than 2.5 times more criminals.

Now that I think of it though - average citizens aren't going into those domestic disturbance situations or breaking up rowdy parties - like police are, I'm guessing that some of those shootings arise from situations like that.

Or maybe it's a function of being a third party to everything that's going on. If someone is breaking into my house, there's no confusion on my part about who's who.

Also, it's nice that they didn't use a Glock for their gun picture.

Who do I talk to to get them to use something cool like an HK P7M8 or P9 ???




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Here's my idea of gun control. If you commit a crime with a gun, its an automatic 10 year sentence...no judicial up or down...ten years added to the original offense. If you have no record and get probation for robbery, commit it with a gun and get ten years in prison for using a gun and probation for the robbery. Why punish gun owners for criminal acts, punish the perps.
 
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