Tag Archives: Crime

News

Do gun control laws cause crime rates to go down?

Leave a comment

First, here’s a story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch regarding their new law relaxing restrictions on legal firearm ownership.

Excerpt:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found.

Columnist Don Surber adds:

So the gun crimes dropped and the gun crimes that they had were not by people with concealed gun permits but rather by outlaws.

In fact, the newspaper reported: “Only two fatal shootings occurred during the last fiscal year — one outside a Petersburg nightclub and the other at a Radford restaurant — but neither involved concealed-gun permit holders. And only two of the 18 aggravated assaults reported could be linked definitively to concealed-carry holders.”

Once again, our moral and intellectual superiors on the left are wrong.

But is that the normal outcome of relaxing gun control laws, or an anomaly? What do the government statistics show?

Even the leftist MSNBC agrees that legal gun ownership reduces crime.

Excerpt:

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

So even liberal MSNBC thinks that legal firearm ownership reduces crime rates.

Let’s learn about the issue from the news

ABC News explains in this short 6-minute clip:

And here is a longer 44-minute show from Fox Business: (featuring a debate between economist John Lott and the Brady Campaign spokesman)

The debate is about John Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime”, published by the University of Chicago Press. There are other debates in the show as well.

Now watch a 3-on-3 debate on gun control

This debate is in 13 parts, featuring the two of the best proponents of legal firearm ownership – John Lott and Gary Kleck. The real sparks fly during the Q&A, so don’t miss that. (If you can’t watch the debate, then you can read this post and this post instead).

Here’s part 1, which contains the introduction.

Here are the remaining speeches:

This is everything you need to know about whether legal ownership of firearms reduce crime.

News

Can citizens rely on politically correct police to enforce the law?

3 Comments

This Wall Street Journal article provides more insight into why the unionized police did nothing during the UK riots.

Excerpt:

The night before, at approximately 9:30 p.m., between 30 and 40 teenagers broke into the shop and left with all its liquor, cigarettes and cash. Mr. Raif, his brother and a handful of customers were inside at the time.

“I saw them coming and started to lock the doors, but they kicked through the glass and forced the doors open. All the customers ran to the back and my brother called the police,” he recalls.

[…]Once inside, the looters snatched six-packs of Supermalt from the shelves nearest the entrance and hurled them at the cigarette and alcohol cases behind the register. They appeared to be 16 or younger and sober to Mr. Raif. He doesn’t know if they were kids from the neighborhood, but despite their hoods and balaclavas he could tell “from their hands” that his looters were mostly white.

“They were very shameful. It was a horrible experience.”

The police never did appear, although they followed up nine hours later with a phone call. “Everything we pay here—taxes, rates, rents—it’s all so expensive. And we can’t even get the police when there are people robbing our shop.”

[…]”I’ve been here 12 years,” says the Pakistan native. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

So what’s the problem? Welfare cuts, racist police, the “rich”?

“Please,” he laughs. “We’re all poor.

“Look, my point of view is this: It started in Tottenham, on Saturday, when a man got shot by the police. People protested, and then some people went and burned down a police car. And the police did nothing. They burned down more police cars, they burned down a bus, they burned down a building—and the police did nothing. They needed to respond. Instead the police retreated in Tottenham. So this, whatever you call it, it started as something against the police. The police did not show the strength to push back, and it spread. And that is why I’m out here now like a security guard.”

As we speak, “it” is spreading to Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Wolverhampton. Elsewhere in London, locals have formed vigilante groups and are patrolling their own streets.

Home Secretary Theresa May earlier on Tuesday had defended the government’s use-of-force policies, declaring that “the way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon. The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.”

Perhaps if the police had been privatized, and had to please customers in order to get paid, then this would not have happened. But the market forces of choice and competition are nowhere to be found when government has a monopoly on some service. Taxes are deducted automatically, and you get the service they provide. They have no incentive to risk their necks for you – they get paid regardless. If they want a raise, then they go on strike.

Now where do you suppose that this disdain for the use of force against lawlessness came from? Could it be from the secular left, that is so uncomfortable with the ideas of moral standards, moral duties and moral accountability? They have been in power in the UK for over a decade. You may also recall that they have passed many measures opposing private property, self-defense, legal firearm ownership – and weakened prosecution and incarceration of convicted criminals. Bleeding heart liberals just hate the idea that criminals might be shot while committing crimes against law abiding citizens – they don’t want criminals to be frightened by gun-wielding property owners. That’s why they banned hand guns in 1997, leading to a doubling of the violent crime rate in the next four years.

This story reminds me of what happened in Canada a while back, when the police refused to do anything about vandalism committed by the native Canadians. It’s not politically correct to enforce laws against groups who vote for secular leftists, didn’t you know?

News

Did attorney general Eric Holder know about Operation Fast and Furious?

Leave a comment

From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

As hearings reveal the attorney general to be either a charlatan or a boob, word comes of possible FBI complicity in letting guns “walk” into Mexico, ordered by an administration pushing gun control.

If there was any doubt that Project Gunrunner and its offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, had little to do with stopping gun-trafficking into Mexico and a lot to do with creating an atmosphere for more gun control, it ended with the revelation by Fox News that two convicted felons were allowed to buy and move more than 300 guns into Mexico, something the FBI should have caught but didn’t.

Under current federal law, people with felony convictions are not permitted to buy weapons, and those with felony arrests are typically flagged while the FBI conducts a thorough background check through its National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

According to court records reviewed by Fox News, two of the 20 defendants indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation — and, yes, there have been indictments — have felony convictions. Jacob Wayne Chambers and Sean Christopher Stewart obtained more than 360 weapons despite criminal records that should have prevented them from buying even one gun.

When asked about the breakdown, Stephen Fischer, a spokesman for the NICS System, said the FBI had no comment. We are not surprised. Since day one, you could here crickets chirp every time the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or the Department of Justice was asked about an operation that got two U.S. agents killed.

We suspect the FBI was ordered to look the other way just as ATF agents were told to every time they had a chance to interdict weapons going to Mexico, allegedly the whole purpose of the operation. That order could only have come from Attorney General Eric Holder.

One wonders how far up the chain this operation went. The Democrats are desperate to impose gun control measures, and this operation would have given them their chance, if it had not been exposed as government-supported arms dealing.

Related posts