Gun Ownership in Michigan goes up, Crime goes down

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mbt2001

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Anyone surprised by this??

http://www.kxmb.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=196038#CommentStart

As Personal Gun Ownership In Michigan Goes Up, Crime Goes Down

Whenever a loosening of gun policy is brought up in a state we get the usual chorus of doom and gloom from liberals. They tell us that with more citizens owning and carrying guns the streets will run red with the blood of shooting victims. But the truth is that the more citizens who are allowed to own/carry weapons, the less dangerous the streets become

The most recent example of his phenomena is Michigan

Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold

But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics

The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.

It’s amazing what happens when you allow citizens to be self-reliant
 
The thought of Sarah Brady's head spinning and bile rushing up her throat at a report like this brings a smile to my face. :evil:
 
So if the AWB ended and crime went up, would you say its because the ban ended? Violent crime in general is down. Michigan or otherwise. Be careful of confusing correlation with cause.
 
So if the AWB ended and crime went up, would you say its because the ban ended? Violent crime in general is down. Michigan or otherwise. Be careful of confusing correlation with cause.

Indeed. I don't think this comparison means anything.
 
People will come up with all kinds of explanations

This was today's editorial in the St Louis Post Dispatch. It's not more guns, it's not more police and prisons...it's unleaded gas....yes my friends the editorial board of the St Louis Post Dispatch says the decline in the crime rate is because we took the lead out of gasoline:
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/th...08/06/tuesday-editorial-crime-of-the-century/
Tuesday editorial: Crime of the century
By Editorial Board


Some people think crime declined during the 1990s because of aggressive police work, tough sentencing guidelines and the construction of more prison cells.

But some scientists now have a more provocative explanation, one with big implications for St. Louis and Missouri: They say crime may have declined in the 1990s because lead was removed from gasoline 20 years earlier.

The link between lead exposure and criminal behavior isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. It was first noted as far back as 1943.

A new study, published last month in the medical journal PLoS Medicine, makes the strongest case to date for a relationship between childhood lead exposure and adult crime. Beginning in 1979, researchers in Cincinnati followed 250 people from birth to young adulthood. They found that prenatal and childhood exposure to lead was a strong predictor of future arrests, particularly arrests for violent crime.

The greater the exposure, researchers found, the stronger the association. That kind of proportional relationship is something scientists look for when trying to establish cause and effect. But the link between lead levels and violence was noted even in children with blood lead levels below what’s considered poisoned — 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood.

Early exposure to lead is associated with lower IQ, less tolerance for frustration, hyper-activity and poor impulse control. Lead interferes with brain development in children and lowers levels of key neurotransmitters. Brain damage has been found at the lowest levels that can be monitored. Once that damage occurs, it is irreversible.

Last year, economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes published research showing that the rise and fall of lead exposure rates among American children seems to match the rise and fall of violent crime — but with a 20 year time lag. That makes sense, because people in their late teens and early 20s statistically are more likely to commit crimes.

Today, lead paint is the cause of most childhood lead exposure. But before the switch to unleaded gasoline between 1975 and 1985, lead in gas was the primary source. Ms. Reyes used small variations in the lead content of gasoline from state to state to strengthen her conclusions.

If she’s correct, the same effect should be found in other countries. That’s exactly what researcher Rick Nevin found in an international study published in 2006.

Countries like Britain and Australia, which switched to unleaded gasoline only in the 1980s, are only just beginning to see a drop in violent crime rates, Mr. Nevin’s study found. He tracked violent crime and lead content in gasoline in nine countries.

Most of the homes and apartments in St. Louis were built before lead paint was banned. As a result, the city has high rates of lead poisoning and lead exposure.

Missouri also is home to a primary lead smelter in Herculaneum, the nation’s largest, and an active lead mining and reprocessing industry. Lead poisoning remains a problem in large parts of the state.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, children were exposed to high lead levels because no one knew the damage it was inflicting. That’s a tragedy.

Today, we know better. Allowing it to continue is worse than tragedy, it’s a crime.

Next week's theory might be the lack of sunspots for the last several years....:rolleyes:

Jeff
 
In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning. ;)

When the price goes up for anything you get less of it. Raise the price of committing a crime and there will be fewer crimes. Guns in the hands of honesty, law-abiding citizens raises the price on crime.

One has to wonder, why is that concept hard for so many people out there??????
 
Dang-it! I hate it when people tell the truth with statistics!

Sorry all, I wish I had more time to post...but, I'm off to fight crime. Well, to buy a new gun. :D
 
Looks like a good jumping off point for the dispatch to call for the ban of lead ammo in missouri. Wait for tomorrow's paper ;)
 
This doesn't prove anything.
It's a logical fallacy to say that if x happened and then y followed it, that y is a result of x.
 
But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics...

Well, this is the important part - IMHO - that's being ignored. Regardless of the correlation between - more guns and less crime - violent crime did not increase as the "gun control freaks" would like to make everyone believe they would have.....even as more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens have increased by 6 times...
 
The latest research suggests that guns have a neutral effect on crime. Crime rates are affected by many factors and guns don't really figure into them.

The population in Wisconsin and Tennessee is fairly close to the same number of people. Wisconsin has no concealed carry and Tennessee is a shall issue state. Yet Tennessee has the higher crime rate.

It's much more complicated then guns, no guns, unleaded gas or any other pet theory.

Those of us in the gun culture need to be intellectually honest enough to recognize that guns have a neutral effect on the crime rate.

Jeff
 
Those of us in the gun culture need to be intellectually honest enough to recognize that guns have a neutral effect on the crime rate.
Exactly, and there's nothing wrong with that. We don't need to claim that letting people carry guns makes the world safer or reverses global warming. It can be shown to have no impact at all on crime or general safety. The facts behind this look so much better than any sad john lott study. We should embrace that and run with it being the right thing to do. Letting people carry concealed weapons isn't dangerous and allows them the choice of defending themselves.
 
Crime rates are affected by many factors and guns don't really figure into them.

I wonder if this would be true if - maybe - 1 of 4 people carried a gun for self defense? You would think at some point criminals would be concerned about their chances....
 
I wonder if this would be true if - maybe - 1 of 4 people carried a gun for self defense? You would think at some point criminals would be concerned about their chances....

It has never been true in the past. We had violent crime before there were laws restricting the carrying of weapons. In place like Somalia, Zimbabwe and South Africa there is violent crime even though it's highly likely the victim is armed.

Criminals don't think like you do. The nature of the crime would just change. A violent attack rather then a; "Give me your wallet!" Would become the norm.

The ability to legally carry a firearm for self defense has a personal safety benefit. But that benefit does not extend to society as a whole.

Despite all of the "if it bleeds it leads news stories, we live in a very safe society. For the most part, the criminals prey on each other. Jeff Cooper once said that the big secret in the American crime stats was that most of the people killing each other are people society is probably better off without. No one wants to admit it, but he was right. If you don't live a criminal lifestyle or hang out with those that do, your chances of being a victim of a violent crime are greatly reduced. If you look past the raw numbers and look at where most of the violence is, it's in certain districts in urban areas. Perhaps we ought to look at what's happening there?

Jeff
 
Well the key is crime hasn't gone up, which means you can't say Guns cause crime.
 
Those of us in the gun culture need to be intellectually honest enough to recognize that guns have a neutral effect on the crime rate.

Not only that, but the right to defend one's life exists completely independently of the behavior of criminals. It makes no difference whether crime is extremely common, extremely rare, or somewhere in between: rights are still rights.
 
Guns have a neutral effect on crime because we never use the same variables of constant controls in these little 'experiments'. Every state and city is different in its own way. Average income, poverty level, urban development, race/ethnic demographics, sectional/regional characteristics, and gun laws all shape the picture for it, not JUST gun laws.
 
I have long suspected that the effect that more CCWs has on crime is the crime that never happened, thus never reported. Those go unreported and undocumented. Face it, how many crackheads will call the local LEOs and say they just passed on a victim because they looked like they may have had a CCW?

As we say in research: there are two forms of significance: 1) statistical significance and 2) practical significance. Of course correlation, being a descriptive statistic, has neither. However, the findings do hold different form of significance...what I call the affect (emotional) significace. We are able to show that less blood has run in the streeets, not more, and that puts people's minds at ease.
 
Face it, how many crackheads will call the local LEOs and say they just passed on a victim because they looked like they may have had a CCW?

Crackheads face armed people all the time. It doesn't phase them. Think of where they work. They have been facing the possibility of running into an armed victim for a lot longer then there has been CCW. The people they run with carry guns without the benefit of CCW and always have. They may pass on known violent people, those who by their street creds are not to be messed with, because in the world they live in, the ones with better street creds are higher on the food chain.

Their world isn't the same as ours and the only time they interact is when a regular person goes into their world, if it's going to a bad neighborhood with friends who live a semi criminal lifestyle, or our world becomes their world as in certain neighborhoods after the sun goes down. Other interactions between the two worlds are rare.

If you're theory were true and CCW actually effected the crime rate, Tennessee should have a much lower crime rate then Wisconsin. But it doesn't.

There are plenty of examples of laws that severely restrict the possession and carry of firearms don't have any affect on the crime rate. But there is no example where CCW has had an affect either.

Jeff
 
The studies that suggest that more people with guns doesn't effect crime is not right IMO. I work around prisoners all the time and know several people that work at two different prisons. I have heard prisoners say that is has an effect. Some have said that they wouldn't consider breaking into a house anymore because of the amount of guns have gone up. Now they may do something else but guns have had an effect.

The one thing that has been noticed by several prisoners is that fact people do protect them selves and they get off with no charges. That gives the normal people some confidence that maybe "I can protect myself now".

Sure, there are thugs out there that don't give a damn though.
 
The lead exposure theory may not be as far fetched as it sounds. The violent moral decay of Rome is blamed on lead exposure by some.


http://www.leadpoison.net/general/history.htm
In ancient Rome, lead poisoning was a disease of the wealthy who used lead extensively: leaden cooking utensils and pots, leaden wine urns, lead plumbing (also to line the aqueducts) (Plumbing is derived from plumbum, Latin for " Lead"), vessels used to concentrate grape juice, containers used to store wine, and lead-based makeup. In those days there were no substances ( like sulfites) to act as preservatives for the wines. Lead is naturally sweet in taste and was found to enhance both the color and bouquet of wine. The Romans shipped wines all over their empire, as far way as northern Germany. A preservative was needed to prevent bacteria from turning the wines into vinegar. The Greeks added pine tree resin to their wines but the Romans preferred sweet Sapa, a boiled down concentrate of grape juice. The problem with Sapa was that the kettle used in boiling unfermented grape juice into a concentrate was made of lead, which leaches into the liquid because of the high acidic content of the grape juice. The final product, Sapa, is a sweet aromatic syrup containing about one gram of lead per liter. Because of its sweet taste, many Romans used it as a sweetening agent in many dishes. When taken together, all the pathways of lead in Roman society, and the intake of lead in Roman times is estimated to have varied from about 35 mg/day to about 250 mg/day, compared to today’s daily intake of 0.3mg in the United states in the 1980’s (National Academy of Sciences 1980).



There are many distinquished historians who now believe that this high exposure to lead was a contributing force in the decline of the Roman Empire. With the more recent scientific research proving that lead is a highly neurotoxicant and analyzing the strange behavior of most Roman leaders and the upper classes, a good case can be made for lead’s role in a declining Roman society. What is ironic is the fact the during Roman times lead poisoning was primarily a disease of the affluent while today it is an affliction of primarily the poorer communities.
 
Guns and safety.

Hey there:
Here is a question. If we put 100 crriminals in a fenced in area in the desert,
gave each one a pistol with one round each. And they had the means to live there (Food , water ,Etc. ) would they kill off each other or would there be no shots fired ?
Just food for thought.....
 
When I first started statistics classes I think the first thing they told me was: correlation DOES NOT EQUAL causation.

To drive this point home the teacher walked to the board and drew two "bell-ish" curves and asked us to think of correlation and causation. Then she labled the lines and labled the axis...Numbers up the side and months across the bottom. The high points of the bellish lines were right around summer. Then she labled the lines.

Ice cream sales and drowning deaths. Correlation has never meant causation to me since.
 
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