Small Florida Town "gets it" (guns)

I've not seen any statistics here breaking down murders and victims by ethnicity and/or affiliation, though it's evident from news reports that a preponderance of violent crime here takes place in relatively few neighborhoods.

If the preponderance of violent crime is minorities killing minorities, then it's about irrelevant to the statistics whether or not you or I are armed; they'll have their wars either way. However, our abilities could be very relevant to us personally in the rather unlikely event that we find ourselves in grave peril. Statistically insignificant, perhaps, but still higly relevant to us. So I don't buy the halo effect argument simply because it is irrelevant to me. I have no duty or even right to defend others. Others have no right to interfere with my ability to legally defend myself whether or not my ability is of any benefit to others, as long as it is of no detriment to others and creates no peril for them.

I looked up the violent crime rate for your town. Glad I live somewhere where the violent crime rate is half of yours.

Dan

It makes no difference what is YOu believe is relevant or not. What does occur is that the minorities (for example) understand that many non minority members are armed and willing to defend themselves with deadly force..so they go to places and attack people who are less likely to do exactly that.

You are of course familiar with Florida after they inacted the first Shall Issue permit CCW system in the US some 15-20 yrs ago, right?

Crime rates went down like a rock for most people. However..crimes against tourists with out of state tags, and rental cars rose like a skyrocket. In fact..most rental car companies had to remove the rental car stickers from their vehicles, before attacks on the drivers stopped.

Thats called Halo Effect.

You are confusing your personal beliefs versus Real Life, in a most small town manner. You really need to work on that.

Between 3 Strike Laws, and the fact that 40some states now have Shall Issue CCW laws..the end result has been a plunge in crime rates to below

1960s crime rates..and a strong rise in crime rates between minoritiy members. They had to shift their methods of income generation and now are killing each other off in turf wars.

Shrug

Gunner

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

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In the big cities, most of the minority violence takes place in certain neighborhoods. The halo effect is less in an urban area. But in a small to medium-size town like the one in the original post, it's very effective. It puts all those sex offenders and every other do-bad of whatever strip on notice that anti-social behavior could result in added ventilation, with the blessing of the authorities.

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So they have gone from income generation to wealth redistribution?

That makes at least one segment of American society that is on-board with the Obama agenda!

>>>

No..they are still in the Income generation business. Lasse'faire capitalists everyone of them. However a sense of fair play and community service isnt in their playbooks. Neither is mercy. Family is everything...family being whatever particular gang they swore their oaths to.

Of course it does. Minorities always do when it comes to Barry Soretos

Gunner

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

Bar of soap? I didn't realize NJ didn't have liquid soap. I buy shampoo at the dollar store to wash my hands and shower with. You have to be a fool to use bar soap in a shower when you're disabled.

A lot of that crime is committed by 'Tourists' from other parts of Florida, or from other states. The main road is US Hwy. 27/State Rte

441. At one time it was the main road from the north into Central Florida. Parts of 441 are the old 'Orange Blossom Trail'.

A lot of the cars that pass through have out of state tags.

If you need body armor, you must have pissed off a lot of people.

That seems inconsistent with your previous statements like: "Frankly..its gang warfare between two minority groups that is rising the homicide rate. And given that MS-13 has few scruples and will kill purely out of instinct...its going to be an interesting year or two." I see no evidence that this has any dependency upon whether or not non-minorities are armed. It may well have far more to do with increasing population density of minorities that join gangs.

Wrong. 15-20 years ago I had absolutely no interest in CCW. I've carried a blade or blades every day of my adult life and was once somewhat proficient with same, never felt any need for more as a civilian until I realized after Katrina that I'd become older, slower and weaker than I was in my salad days. Life lurches on.

Good example. I'd call it a plausible but quite possibly wrong hypothesis without supporting evidence.

Whoa! I constantly review my personal beliefs against the realities of my life. Change is constant as life goes on. My life is clearly different from yours. Matter of fact, your life may be different from how it was when you formed many of your beliefs and convictions decades ago. Don't presume to tell me about real life, not my real life anyway. YRLMV (your real life may vary)

3 strike laws have made what once would have been a simple mugging assault into a may-as-well-murder sit for a 2-time loser. Not speaking against 3-strike but that's the reality and it's a strong reason to carry where mugging is more than a remote possibility.

You know damned well that I strongly value my 2d amendment rights as a responsible citizen. If you don't know that you haven't been paying attention. Flawed-logic arguments like your preceding paragraph can easily be repellent to thoughtful people so I think they could aid and abet those intent on infringing or curtailing my

2d amendment rights. I do NOT appreciate that.

Ditto for the damned fool who showed up at a political ralley in Phoenix with a rifle clearly of tactical intent (vs hunting or target) slung on his shoulder. That is clear intent to intimidate because there was no need for defense. I regard that as flagrant abuse of 2d amendent rights. There's no excuse for that sort of behavior. Many or most reasonable gentle citizens would find that offensive and even frightening, which could easily make them less reasonable and more amenable to suggestions for draconian gun control.

Ed has led a rather sheltered life. Much of New Jersey is pleasant to opulent, a Garden State to be sure. Lots of bluewater salt sea shore beyond the refineries and garbage dumps, what's not to like?

They don't have the giant insects like palmetto bugs that y'all have in Florida. No gators in the pine barrens.

It may well make no difference to you or anyone else what I believe is relevant. That was and is, in a way, my point. I neither refute nor support the halo effect argument that you present and presumably believe. It is not a factor in any decisions I make so it is irrelevant to me. YMMV.

I've never been there, so i wouldn't know. I tested out of a three year engineering course at Ft. Monmoth while in Basic Training, and that was the closest I ever got.

I just think its funny that so many people from New Jersey move to Florida and constantly brag about where they came from. They get really upset when you ask why they left 'paradise' :)

Don't badmouth the gators. They help keep the sheltered snowbird population in check. ;-)

Partly true. Kern County's white non-hispanic murder rate runs around

3.8/100k white population. Nothing to shout about, but only 10 murders out of 60, with a population that's around 47% white non-hisp.

(Those are arrest records; divide by 0.79 for typical offense numbers.)

Interestingly, Kern county's white non-hisp. murder rate is about the same as my county's *total* murder rate, and we're only 52% white non-hispanic and we have a few really nasty towns in this county, including some where hardly anyone speaks English. Not enough guns around here, I guess.

-- Ed Huntress

Hey, good for you, Dan. There are lots of retirement villages that have very low violent crime rates.

Where do you live? Let's see, half of 0 murders...hmmm,,,0; half of 1 rape...1/2 a rape (couldn't get it up, maybe? )

-- Ed Huntress

Whoop, hold the phone...California's white non-hispanic (perp) murder rate is 2.04/100,000. Kern County's is over 3.5.

So much for the Halo effect of having the most CCW permit carriers. If you're going to measure it that way, Gunner, it looks like the result is almost twice as many murders because you have all of those CCWs.

But as Don has said and I have said, I don't think there's any effect either way.

-- Ed Huntress

Hey, ask them why they left Florida after they move back up here. We left (in 1963) because it's a swamp in the summer time, more than anything else. My mother was afraid we'd all develop mildew.

-- Ed Huntress

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Dan

It is the opposite from a retirement village. The houses are too far apart to suit criminals. But the deer, rabbits, and foxes like it.

Dan

Ed -

Most Hispanics are on the sly. Those into drugs and such get guns. Workers that hide out and work don't have ID or can pass fed check..... They would have to buy black market - and that is out of the sly game.

I can spot them on the road here - driving 45 in a 60 or the like. Likely part of the non driving skill and can't get a ticket...

Mart>> >>

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I'm not sure how that relates to the stats or to Gunner's claims, Martin. The arrest data on racial/ethnic bases is not based on whether they're legal or not. Legals and illegals are counted the same.

As for the effects of gun ownership on crime ratings, if you spend a few hundred hours with the UCR and other crime stats you're likely to throw up your hands trying to find correlations. That's why John Lott's "research" can so easily buffalo any non-experts (and even a few experts); when you try to refine the relationships with multi-variate analysis, it all depends on which variables you choose.

But there are some things that are straightforward in the data. For example, people of Hispanic origin and blacks commit violent crimes at several times the rate for whites. Interestingly, that varies a lot by region -- telling us that specific cultural issues, rather than race or ethnicity themselves, are the big factors. In some areas the rate of crime by Hispanics is much lower than in others. Middle-class blacks appear to have about the same rates as white. Still, the racial/ethnic data is irrefutable, whatever the reason.

Likewise, if you do any kind of comparison among states with CCW prevalence and crime data, you'll find that there is no straightforward relationship. For example, regarding relatively slack gun laws, Vermont is 1.9 murders/100k; Nevada is 9.0. With strict gun laws, New Jersey is 4.9, Hawaii is 1.6.

A lot of this becomes clearer when you look at the race/ethnic data by state, which you can find in the UCR. And it becomes clearer still when you look at the proportion of population living in cities, particularly cities with large ghettoes or depressed areas, in each state.

But even after all that, there is a residual measure left that suggests that the prevalence of legally owned guns corresponds to the prevalence of violent crime. The relationship is a weak one and it takes a good statistician (which I'm not) to pluck it out of the noise. That data has been available for years in the professional criminology literature and it is precisely what John Lott was trying to contradict in _More Guns, Less Crime_. It appears that most professionals in the field disagree with the way he compiled his data.

Here, they're the ones riding bicycles at commuting hours. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress