According to the new FBI statistics, violent crime in the US just keeps falling. It’s down 50% in the last decade.
“Right to carry” laws also became very common in the last decade. There couldn’t possibly be a connection could there?
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US Crime rates are fallingAugust 24th, 2003 |
 23 comments to US Crime rates are falling |
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I’d say that what this indicates is that private gun-ownership is NOT the determining factor regarding the level of violent crime. Whether or not CC laws have contributed to that is open to question, but I think the lesser, more conservative claim (that guns don’t make an OVERALL difference to crime levels – though in individual cases they do) is the more easily defended.
There might just as easily not be. Lots of things have changed at the same time.
It might be abortion preventing a cohort of offenders being born. It might well be imprisonment
keeping existing ones out of circulation much, much longer than previously.
Either seems more plausible than the patchy introduction of right-to-carry, since crime is down all over.
It might even be that non-violent crime is relatively more profitable and easier than it used to be, what with the web and universal credit cards…
“After passing their concealed carry law, Florida’s homicide rate fell from 36% above the national
average to 4% below the national average and remains below the national average to this day.”
— from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith
I’m as wary of statistics about crime from books called “Gun Facts”, as I am about environmental ones emanating from the Worldwatch Institute.
Here’s one data point:
Some local dude recently broke into the garage of a doctor’s residence. An alarm system was tripped, and the next thing you know the doctor was unloading both barrels of his 12-gauge into the ass of the unsuspecting punk (who survived).
There wasn’t even a full investigation by the (New Bern, North Carolina) police. “The boy shouldn’t o’ been there,” remarked a sheriff’s deputy, in a breathtaking understatement.
The above post nails the true reason. While the “conventional wisdom” is that the prison population is too high, and I would agree in terms of minor drug and vice crimes, the decline in crime very nicely coincides with the end of probation on demand policies and the get tough approach to violent and/or repeat offenders.
It was a given for many years that anyone could be rehabilitated if the system was responsive and compassionate enough. Unfortunately, there is a relatively small group of people whose lives are devoted entirely to criminal activity. They are professional criminals, and nothing will stop them except incarceration, until they are too old to do it any more.
The wails from the “how can you be so cruel” crowd were finally drowned out by the cries of the victims of the multitude of assaults, rapes, robberies, burglaries, swindles, etc., and laws were passed that toughened up sentencing and probation guidelines.
There may very well be any number of contributing factors to the drop in criminal activity, but keeping certain violent or recidivist offenders behind bars as much as the law allows is definitely a major element in the equation.
I know this sounds boring, but before we can assume a connection between crime reduction and right to carry laws anywhere we have to document it somewhere, and not by isolated anecdotes either. I recognize the methodological challenges, which are formidable, but there is no good policy reason to assume that something we wish were true is, in fact, true without a lot more evidence than we have in this case.
Yes, I’d put my money on longer prison sentences for repeat offenders, too. I’m too lazy to look up the figures on a drowsy Sunday afternoon, but a startling amount of crime is committed by a relatively small, hard core of incorrigibles.
Once we got over the goofy notion that professional criminals would go straight if they earned a mail order degree in sociology in prison, and got with the idea that prison is more about segregation than punishment, our numbers started to get better.
I’m still keeping my gun, though.
You can count on the American press to put out a few “Crime falls in spite of relaxed gun laws and longer prison terms” articles. Those are always good.
Zanthras, I do not believe that you will be able to ever provide conclusive proof of the efficacy of carry laws or tougher sentencing. But I think that the trend is important, if only to contradict the (also unproven) assertion that relaxed gun ownership regulations will increase violent crime.
… but there is no good policy reason to assume that something we wish were true is, in fact, true without a lot more evidence than we have in this case.
Yes of course, Zathras. But the (admitted) limitation you describe applies to almost everything you’re likely to read on this site, or any site.
Actually, I thought everyone knew about Lott and Landes 1999…
Eh?
Multiple victim public shootings? Spree killers? I thought we were talking about “normal” crime rates. Dramatic as they are, clocktower shooters take fewer victims per annum than…slippery bathtubs.
This is an article by Lott et al that directly speaks to the topic at hand: Confirming More Guns, Less Crime. This was written in reponse to criticism (some exceedingly hysterical) of Lotts’ book “More Guns, Less Crime”.
More articles by Dr. John Lott may be found at the website of Dr. John Lott Jr.
Al of this said, I suspect tougher sentencing for criminals has more to do with the long-term trending-down in the crime statistics than right-to-carry laws. But it is true that I occasionally carry an HK P7, albeit openly, not concealed (and fortunately I have never needed it). Openly, because I haven’t reconciled my libertarian beliefs against the tacit acknowledgment that the State may decide which fundamental right it shall let me enjoy, inherent in the notion of a concealed-weapons carry permit.
Um, JK, too late. A few months ago, the NY Times headlined an article on the same topic, “Falling Crime Rates Despite Longer Prison Terms”.
In fairness, the last three words may also have been “Swelling Prison Population.”
Doesn’t matter, same sentiment.
I’m still waiting for the “Paper of Record” to announce, “Water Acts as Solvent, Despite its Dampness”
Yep, and the writer who writes those pieces for the NYT? Fox Butterfield. He does one every nine months or so.
Other titles: More Inmates, Despite Drop in Crime and Crime Falling, Yet Prisons Still Filling
Heck, if crime keeps dropping, maybe we won’t eventually have to jail ANYone.
Do US crime stats include the Imperial Province of Iraq?
Three reasons why crime is falling in the USA:
1) The number one criminal group that represents 20% of the population and commits 50% of the crime is killing itself off at increasingly high rates.
2) Three strikes and you’re out rule lends itself well to dispatching members of the number one criminal group (who can’t count very well) to prison.
3) American citizens are allowed to use deadly force to protect their lives and property. Can you imagine?
Kodiak,
I believe that one falls under a variant of Godwin’s Law.
NC3
Another reason is that the baby boom is much older. I’ve read that if a person is not criminally active by 25 years old the odds of them becoming so is neglible. And mainly career criminals continue over forty yrs of age. Something like that.
I expect the rates will nose up again within the next ten-fifteen years as the “baby boomlet” gets to their prime-crime years. But with welfare reform, the percentage of them who are in single-mom homes should be smaller, so I doubt the rates will be as high as they once were.
The reason is the legalisation of abortion after Roe v Wade, nothing to do with zero tolerance or gun ownership.
One of the most depressing things about being a libertarian is having to listen to all the drivel spouted by you gun nuts. Sure, in a free society you will be free to carry your guns if you want but please stop with all the fantasising about how they are protecting you from crime and tyranny, any fool with eyes in his head can see that that is false.
Well, I’ve sure got eyes in my head, but I can’t see that that is false so I must not be a fool…..
I’m an armed Floridian. Works for me.
Quote: “in a free society you will be free”… Key point: we do live in an approximately free society, so I have no reason to speak in other than the present tense.
I’m sure you speak with authority from the fools’ perspective; you certainly don’t let mere empirical observations get in the way of your fatuous assertions of fact.