http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2010/nov/09/michael-bloomberg/bloomberg-gun-claim-takes-aim-georgia/ Take it as you will.
I read the whole article - it made a very weak case and lacked a lot of specifics, reporting criteria, etc. I struggle to believe that states with strict gun laws have less gun crime. NJ, NY, DC, IL, CA all come to mind...
Let's see. They use FBI raw data for comparisons, even as they note that the FBI says not to use them that way. They take the word of "experts" even as they note that the study doesn't control for many variables that contribute to crime. And then they pass a mostly true judgement. And they took the word of these experts who said that "there's less research and data on whether states with weaker gun laws have more crime" as if John Lott and his, what?, 15-20 years of closely-researched data didn't exist. Eh. What did I expect? Integrity and accuracy from an AJC article? Also, http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2007/01/pro ... enway.html
I took the time to pull up the cited FBI crime stats to take a look for myself and am now irate that the AJC or even Bloomberg's group could have possibly used these numbers to support an obviously unsupportable conclusion. http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_05.html Many of their "top 10" states with what they call weak gun laws are among the safest states in the nation as it applies to violent crime. Many of the states with the strongest gun laws that this group supports rank among the most dangerous states as it applies to violent crime. In addition, "violent crime" includes things like rape, burglary, robbery, property crime and auto theft......none of which have any supporting evidence that guns might have been involved. Yet, the AJC, in it's infant (infinite) wisdom, ranks this statement as "mostly true"!!
Montana, Alaska, Nebraska, and Utah must be just flat-out ate up with violent crime! Because all of those states have very loose gun laws and high rates of gun ownership. But like Malum suggested, they are different demographically. They don't have big cities with a ghetto population killing each other off daily. They have fewer problems with gangs, too. Nobody has ever done a study that I know of that compares similar populations (similar statistics on age, race, national origin, sex, education, intelligence) in a strict gun control place to those same kind of people living in a gun-friendly area. I know that Japan has very low violent crime and very strict gun laws. Is the first the cause of the second? I think not. The rate of violent crime among Japanese -Americans who are U.S. citizens is even lower than the violent crime rate in Japan itself, but the Japanese-Americans here have 'easy access' to guns.
This must be dated information or something, because as we all know, the Brady Campaign and the NICS check already solved all those problems.
Did anyone besides myself notice that the continuation of the Bloomberg article (page B6 of yesterdays AJC) was sitting shoulder to shoulder with this article? http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/fulton-murder-charges-dismissed-731857.html I'm not sure what to make of that.
CDC reports gun deaths as a cause of death and nothing more. They do not elaborate on the circumstances or break them down by accident, suicide, homicide, self defense action, or anything else. Similarly they report drownings as a cause of death, but do not break that down by accident, suicide, homicide, or act of nature either. If a homicide occurs with a firearm, then gun deaths increase by one. If self defense with a firearm ends with a dead criminal, then gun deaths also increase by one. That being said, gun death numbers might be morbidly interesting in a pie chart but they are not useful to define crime.
John Lott's analysis showed that violent crime dropped following the loosening of gun laws, and property crime generally increased. The criminals were still committing crimes, but switched to crimes that would not put them in contact with possibly armed citizens. Burglary vs robbery, car theft vs carjacking. Perhaps the lower violent crime is balanced out by the increased property crime, making us somehow more dangerous because we have guns, even though we have less violent crime.
Ok - I see the Brady Center complaining about the practices of the store, but they didn't say specifically what the stores were doing that was violating the "spirit" of the law. It would seem like if they were doing anything illegal, since they are high on the BATFE radar, the BATFE would be all over them.
My opinion on gun control: Don B. Kates, Henry E. Schaffer, et al., "Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda", 62 TENN. L. REV. 513-596 (1995) at 525-26. The bottom line is this. For every study showing gun control reduces violence, there's a study showing gun control increases violence. Both sides can spend an eternity pulling out statistics and all of them will be flawed because the relationship between gun ownership and crime has so many variables it's impossible to have a perfect study. In my opinion, it's a waste of breath to try and argue statistics on an issue like this, both sides have their numbers and each side is going to be biased towards studies that agree with them. Unfortunately, that is human nature. This is why when an anti starts talking statistics, I stop them right there and simply tell them "There's flaws to every study, and I can bring up just as many of them. The point is, as a free man I have a right to defend my life against people who seek to take it from me. There's really no statistic you can bring up that's going to justify the idea that a man should be required to give up his life to a criminal act."
Well guys, Bloomberg has convinced me. I suggest that each one of us give up our rights to self-defense, stop carrying guns, and just give in to any armed robber or person that wants to murder us or rape our women. I think GCO needs to disband, and make a public statement that gun control works, and we should immediately ban all private ownership of all firearms. We should all have to turn in our firearms by January 1st, 2011. If you refuse the give them up, I feel our government should be able to no-knock your home at 3AM, arrest you on felony charges, shoot all your pets, and confiscate all your firearms. All GCO members should then join Georgians for Gun Safety. Here is the link: http://www.georgiansforgunsafety.org/ After doing that we should all go join the Brady Campaign as well. Its over guys... just wave the white flag. I have seen the light.
ERJ I thought you were serious for a minute there. Then you asked us to join Alice, then I knew you were joking. We all know they don't have a way to join.
Oh nice! Dang it EJ, this information would have been a heck of a lot more useful BEFORE I did my Christmas gun shopping. You know these things aren't returnable right?
Studies can persuade those who don't deny the existence of reason. (*) http://reason.com/archives/1997/04/01/p ... -pot-shots There may be "flaws to every study," but that doesn't mean all studies are equally worthless. I've noticed, after reading the methodology John Lott uses, that the more "honest" studies show that gun control increases crime. That is, a researcher who does his best to faithfully and honestly account for influential variables that might exist in reality will produce numbers that link gun control to higher crime rates. Mr. Lott tries to account for every possible influence: arrest rate, conviction rate, prison sentence length, percentage gun carriers, size of population, race, family income, etc. What I like about John Lott's book is he will do his best to isolate the effect of any particular variable, so that he's able to conclude that the most cost-effective way to combat crime is to have looser restrictions on gun carry. We could put more cops on the street, or lock away more criminals, or lock up criminals for longer, but those choices cost more. "Gun-control" studies always seem to leave out some serious variable like race to show a false relationship. I believe they do that because they start with a preconceived notion, add variables or cherry-pick samples until they get their conclusion, and stop the study when they do. I also note that there's a strong tendency for "gun-carry" studies to release all their data for independent verification, whereas gun-control study authors often refuse to. That's a pretty strong indicator that gun-control authors are denying reason. (*) Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. -Ayn Rand