OT- Info about NY State and end of ASW

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 06:23:18 GMT, Gunner calmly ranted:

Unfortunately, two bad laws don't make a right, nor does one make the other right. It's illuminating that the two states with the most strict firearms laws also have the highest crime rates.

Patriotic note: The Star Spangled Banner was written on this day in 1814.

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Your Wild & Woody Website Wonk

not a shocker. NY State has to be the leader in dumb laws. I still cant buy a 1/2 keg of beer without shelling out a $75.00 manditory deposit that i will forfeit when i dont drink it within 30 days. Another stellar law to PREVENT teenage binge drinking.

walt ps. but now i can buy an uzi... much safer than my beer!

Huh? Arizona has the highest crime rate in the US. Hawaii is second. Florida is third. South Carolina is fourth. Texas is fifth.

California is in the middle, 27th. But Alaska, with lax gun laws, is 20th. New Jersey, with arguably the strictest gun laws, is 41st. But then, Vermont, with what are probably the most lax gun laws, is 46th. New York is near the bottom, 44th. New Hampshire is 50th.

There is no systematic relationship between firearms laws and crime rates -- only some very strained statistics that are cooked up by people on both sides of the issue. There are low-crime states that have strict gun laws, and low-crime states that have lax gun laws. And there are high-crime states with both strict and lax gun laws.

Ed Huntress

Btw..are those violent crimes, or all crimes in general? If a state has massive illegal immigration arrests..those would be each considered a crime event....

So are you saying Ed..its not the guns..but the culture in each of those places?

Interesting. Who would have thought of that idea? Not Chuckly Shumer....

Gunner

"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman Liebmann

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 06:18:54 GMT, "Ed Huntress" calmly ranted:

I sit corrected. (Too lazy to stand.)

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Those statistics do not include immigration arrests. Just violent, property and robbery crimes.

This is where people start straining the statistics. Those are total crimes, based on the FBI's UCR statistics for 2002 -- the last year for which final figures are available.

If you want to build a case on crime and gun-law statistics, Gunner, the field is well-plowed for your work.

But the fact is that, if you look at it with some sense rather than with a statistics calculator, you can see that there is no real pattern. Other factors overwhelm gun laws as an issue in crime rates. It's a sterile field.

That's my take on it. Culture, and some physical factors.

Well, he's one of the partisans who like to cook the stats to suit his purpose. The NRA does the same thing.

I think I've said before that, after immersing myself in gun stats for a few years, back when NJ was tightening its gun-control laws in the '80s, I finally gave it all up as a bunch of crap.

Ed Huntress

Oooh, talking trash about the NRA. Saying they're the same a shumer will cause a marked reaction. A webcam at gunner's computer would show thin wisps of smoke wafting out of his ears at this point...

:^)

Jim

Ed, like you I've spent a good deal of time looking at crime statistics. However IMHO it makes much more sense to look at homicide rates when discussing gun control.

If you do that, then you do tend to find a correlation between homicide and gun control laws. (IE, more gun control laws, more homicides.) It isn't absolute, but it is a general trend.

There are several problems with using the overall FBI crime rate to make such comparisons. The big two are:

1) In effect you end up comparing only property crimes. Property crimes vastly outnumber violent crimes of all sorts, so they end up completely dominating the numbers.

In the case of Arizona this is exactly what happens. Arizona one of the top states for auto theft because of its proximity to Mexico. Arizona has a lot of drug offenses in part because of its proximity to Mexico. Arizona has a very high burglary rate (for which we can't blame proximity to Mexico). Ergo, Arizona has a high crime rate. But that has nothing to do with guns.

2) Inconsistent classifications. This is a major problem for non-lethal crimes of physical violence. What is aggravated assault in one jurisdiction can easily be a misdemeanor in another. It depends in part on local customs and perceptions and in part on the level of general violence in that jurisdiction.

By contrast, homicide is one of the most uniformly reported crimes and a high percentage of homicides are committed with firearms.

--RC

Ed Huntress wrote:

We have found that illegal immigration increases violent, property and robbery crimes. Our Calif. jails are full of three strikes - they get by two times and then the slammer.

Illegal immigration brings in illegal activities along the line of drug dealing and home invasion.

Martin

No, the figures show that it's exactly the opposite, Rick. However, I still wouldn't call it a "pattern."

I don't have time to go look for the most recent ranks of homicides committed with firearms, but here are some from 1996:

The highest is Louisiana (25.37 per 100k population) The lowest is Massachusetts (3.98) The states with the highest homicide rates include Nevada (#2), Alaska (#3), Mississippi (#4) and Alabama (#5) The states with the lowest homicide rates include New York (#40), Connecticut (#43), New Jersey (#47), and Hawaii (#49)

But, as in the case of total crimes reported in the UCR, it's a mixed bag.

Ed Huntress