“Detroit has experienced 37 percent fewer robberies in 2014 than during the same period last year, 22 percent fewer break-ins of businesses and homes, and 30 percent fewer carjackings. (Police Chief James) Craig attributed the drop to better police work and criminals being reluctant to prey on citizens who may be carrying guns.” Of course, that good news lede is buried behind an anecdote about an 88-year-old opening fire on a news crew. The Detroit News can’t allow un-alloyed gun-related positive news to go unchallenged. But don’t try telling Chief Craig that firearms in the hands of law abiding Detroiters is a bad thing. Oh wait, the CSGV’s Josh Horwitz is doing just that . . .
“Our position is, more guns equals more crime,” Horwitz said “These are complicated issues, but the empirical evidence shows the states with the lowest gun ownership and the tightest restrictions have the fewest instances of gun violence.
Never mind that crime has dropped steadily since the early nineties as the number of guns in private hands has increased by about 50% in the U.S.. Doesn’t sound terribly complicated to us. But that kind of heresy thrown in the face of a gun control true believer like Josh will always be disregarded with extreme prejudice.
Speaking as someone with boots on the ground in America’s most violent city, though, Horwitz’s more guns equals more crime dogma flies in the face of Chief Craig’s real world experience.
“Criminals are getting the message that good Detroiters are armed and will use that weapon,” said Craig, who has repeatedly said he believes armed citizens deter crime. “I don’t want to take away from the good work our investigators are doing, but I think part of the drop in crime, and robberies in particular, is because criminals are thinking twice that citizens could be armed.
“I can’t say what specific percentage is caused by this, but there’s no question in my mind it has had an effect,” Craig said.
Sorry, Josh. Go peddle your civilian disarmament papers somewhere else. Maybe somewhere citizens haven’t yet discovered that armed self defense can be their first and best chance at deterring crime.
[h/t Dirk Diggler]
“Our position is, more guns equals more crime,” Horwitz said “These are complicated issues, but the empirical evidence shows the states with the lowest gun ownership and the tightest restrictions have the fewest instances of gun violence.”
Only if you count every defensive use of a firearm as an instance of “gun violence”, which I’m sure the CSGV does. Oh those poor criminals being victimized by armed citizens…
Josh is making thngs up again. A quick look at the FBI stats shows that the low crime states are dominated by the smaller states with few restrictions on guns. The states with the highest crime rates tend to have the toughest gun laws. If you have big cities run by Progressives for several generations Chicago is what you get.
No he’d not addressing violent crime in general but only gun related violent crime…”fewest instances of gun violence.”
“Our position is, more guns equals more crime,” Horwitz said “These are complicated issues, but the empirical evidence shows the states with the lowest gun ownership and the tightest restrictions have the fewest instances of gun violence.
It’s intentionally misleading when he says more guns equals more crime what he means to say is more guns equals more gun crimes not crime. If you called him on this he would say that’s what he was saying since he ends it on gun violence.
What you and I both know is that defensive gun use count against gun ownership since they add to the overall statistics. What are the overall violent crime statistics and how do guns impact those areas? Do more guns equal fewer violent crimes overall? Fewer guns are most likely going to mean fewer gun related incidents but statistically fewer guns also mean higher overall violent crimes since there are fewer deterrents for violent criminals.
Even that is wrong. There is more gun crime in places like Chicago and LA where there are lots of guns available but it is mostly the bad guys who have them.
Josh Wh0rewit. Get the spelling right, okay? He’s the American version of Pierced Organ.
He’s just mad that people aren’t buying the bull he’s peddling. Looks like his gravy train is about to be derailed soon.
You’d be pissed too. 🙂
Chief Craig, I love what you are saying and what you are standing for up there in Detroit, but I gotta say: I can’t help thinking you are painting a bullseye on your back.
And hats off for taking that stand despite this possibility.
I’m a bit surprised the MSM has not come out of the woodwork to try to discredit him…I mean, the full court press, nationally.
Sure wish more CLEO’s would grow a pair and follow his lead. It’s one thing to think private ownership of guns helps. It’s another say it in “official statements.”
“I can’t help thinking you are painting a bullseye on your back.
And hats off for taking that stand despite this possibility.”
I have had both thoughts. I commend Chief Craig and applaud both his courage and integrity.
+1. He’s got a huge amount of courage to make that stand. It will be interesting to see what negative press, character assassinations, personal threats and opportunities to move up and out follow.
True, but as long as crime is going in the correct direction (down) he is pretty safe. Renovation of the city and cheaper services thanks to the bankruptcy will also keep a lid on crime in the long term.
All the more so because he’s black. Nothing arouses media/progressive aggression more than a woman or black person who refuses to be pigeonholed. They must be viciously punished.
I know that “ad hominem” means “to the man,” and that we try not to engage in ad hominem attacks on this website.
In light of that disclaimer, I question Josh’s manhood. Real men readily take up arms to defend themselves, their families and friends, and their property.
So, Josh, you’re not a man. You’re a pansy.
And as Marvin said as he sat in the electric chair “Is that the best you can do you pansy?”
Or at least a whey-faced nestle-cock.
“Complicated Issues”?
Only if you’re trying to impose contrary notions that fly in the face of established legitimate data which disproves the anti-gun position on an ever more aware population.
The only thing empirical about their anti-gun evidence is that it comes compliments of the Bloomberg, et.al., empire.
Yeah, when they start talking about “complicated issues” or “nuances” you know they are making it up as they go along.
I have heard Police Chief Craig state this before. He has truly had a “come to Jesus” moment in his life from the time he worked with and for the Los Angeles Police Department for decades when he obstructed and delayed any requests for concealed carry permits. He has fewer police on the force now in Detroit, so he is using his resources more wisely to patrol and monitor high crime areas, rather than just a blanket coverage of Detroit with fewer officers. But, the big change was his encouragement for all his constituents to purchase firearms and learn to use them safely and accurately.
A local public school principal encouraged all his teachers and staff to take the state mandated Concealed Carry Permit course on gun safety and negotiated a much reduced price of $40 (regular price $125) and offered to help any for whom this reduced price was a hardship. It is anticipated that up to 1/4 of the teachers and staff will have those permits this fall, and most will conceal carry. Word has gotten out to the gang-infested neighborhood which surrounds the school.
There is one small problem with that school (whichever school it is) that is supposedly encouraging the teachers to be armed in school: Michigan law calls them criminals if they do it and will ruin the lives of those teachers for the “crime” of being armed in school. The fact that those teachers have no intention of illegally harming anyone doesn’t matter.
All states except Utah have statutorily created “criminal empowerment zones” where the state will ruin the lives of good people if they choose to be armed in said arbitrary zones. For the life of me I cannot figure out why all of the states persist in keeping such zones.
Do you mean that a permit holder can’t carry in a MI public school with the permission of the school administration?
Permission from school administration is irrelevant. Michigan has a long list of “pistol free zones” where concealed carry licensees cannot legally carry concealed.
The only people who can legally carry concealed handguns in “pistol free zones” are active and retired law enforcement, prison guards, (recently) prosecutors, and licensed private investigators.
IIRC, the school superintendents in Ohio can authorize specific individuals to carry on school property in their districts. It’s a little more complicated than that but this is the executive summary.
I like the “crazy old man shoots at reporters” followed by the interview of the 80 year-man with the pistol and shotgun. I suppose the planned reader reaction is supposed to be something in the vain of revoking the driving licenses of seniors. The AARP wont be any help when the politicians decide disarming the seniors is an easy win.
Right on man!
Kudos to the Sheriff and the Principal (and the average citizen taking up arms)
They are sending the clear message to the criminal element:
1) You’re not welcome here
2) Plying your trade in this area has substantial risks to your well being
Could the reduced crime statistics be related to the continued depopulation of Detroit?
If you were looking at the numbers from a quantity standpoint, yes. But crimes are typically measured in a “per capita” format; for example, the national murder average is something like 4.4 per 100,000, which means that 4.4 people of every 100,000 are murdered. That number will hold true, on average, whether your sample size is 100,000 people or 100,000,000 people.
That said, his quote doesn’t explicitly state which measurement they use, but my guess would be they’re using the “per capita” format simply because it’s the most commonly used measurement.
Kevin,
Even if Chief Craig is stating the absolute reduction in violent crimes (rather than crime rates per capita), I can assure you that Detroit did not lose 37% of their population in one year.
Either way, it is a dramatic decrease in violent crime.
Unless the criminals are moving out at a higher rate than the rest, the crime rate would not go down based on a reduced population. In fact, the crime rate would go up if the number of crimes committed stayed the same but the population decreased. Crime rates factor population so any reduction in the rate is a good one.
Chief Craig is applying the tactics developed by Gen Petraeus for the surge. Get the good guys with guns working for you and things can be brought under control. Let’s call this the Detroit awakiening.
“Our position is, more guns equals more crime,” Horwitz said. “These are complicated issues, but the empirical evidence shows the states with the lowest gun ownership and the tightest restrictions have the fewest instances of gun violence.
Did everyone catch what he did there? In the first sentence, he presents his hypothesis about crime. In the second sentence, he
distortsprovides his supporting “evidence”, about gun violence. This is an excellent example of the non sequitur fallacy, as he tries to equate gun violence and crime.It’s also popular with the gun-grabbers who quote European or Australian gun crime statistics to push for a gun ban, ignoring the fact that murder, rape, robbery, etc. rates either held steady or went up in the UK and down under when they implemented their bans, because criminals simply switched to different weapons.
Of course there’s also the fact that correlation is not causation…but that’s too much for one anti-gunner to understand.
Horwitz deliberately, deceitfully cherry-picks data and lies by omission to further gun prohibitionists goals of bans and total confiscation.
These countries had lower murder rates than the US when guns were freely available.
JasonM,
No particular correlation between crime rates and gun ownership here in the UK. We did sort of see a spike in murders shortly after the handgun ban, but that was because our Most Prolific Serial Killer Ever (Harold Shipman, a doctor who killed a couple of hundred elderly patients with morphine overdoses) had all his crimes reported in one year.
There just weren’t enough of us legal shooters to either have any political voice, or to have any impact on national statistics…
In Washington State, a few of the senior leadership LEOs in the rural counties have done interviews saying hey, as long as you follow the law, we’ve got no problem if you carry, and they’re generally supportive of armed citizens because response times are so long in rural Washington.
More guns = more crime? gotta love that. We don’t even have to point to UK or Australian policies. Whenever someone brings that up, I just say that crime rates were dropping before the Clinton AWB, they dropped during it, they dropped after it. No “blood in the streets” surge in shootings after the evil black rifles were back on the shelves.
It is true that overall crime spiked in australia and england after the gun bans.
One thing antis seem to not even think about is that criminals are not made by the weapon. If overall crime can be reduced without infringing on any rights of the innocent (IMO violent criminals don’t have full rights anyway) then go for it, but forcing criminals to find a different weapon doesn’t fix the problem.
If we ban all sedans in the effort to reduce drunk driving incidents (because, drying up supply right?) people just buy different cars and the same thing happens.
It’s insane that people can continue to think that way and not understand why we hate them so much.
Australia saw a 30% decrease in murder in the period since their gun ban and confiscation. The US saw a 52% decrease in murder during the same period.
If you google “Australia suicide undercount” you will find peer reviewed studies including at NIH site reflecting the fact that most Australians researchers believe that suicide there is actually up
“the empirical evidence shows the states with the lowest gun ownership and the tightest restrictions have the fewest instances of gun violence.”
The key word in that pile of excrement is “instances” which makes that statement a big “well duh!”. If you had one person with a gun and they committed one crime with it, you’d have 1 instance of gun violence. But now let’s introduce state population into the equation and start talking about gun-related crime rates and it paints a different picture.
Didja ever notice that people who say “based on empirical evidence…” actually have no idea what it is. On the other the hand Horwitz isn’t talking about facts or data what he is saying is that he believes the theory that more guns equals more violence and data selected from within a larger data base supports this. This is also known as cherry picking but among professionals it is called lying.
I have an interesting idea. I hope everyone agrees that a fairly small percentage of people in any population are responsible for all the violent crime. I might hazard a guess of 0.1%. If that is accurate, then there are roughly 650 violent criminals in Detroit. Now the fascinating question is: how many violent criminals did Detroit residents justifiably wound/kill last year? (I assume that wounding a violent criminal forces them to a hospital for treatment which guarantees their capture.)
If Detroit residents wounded/killed something like 30 violent criminals last year, that alone could explain a 5% decrease in violent crime because the pool of violent criminals decreased 5%. I know these are rough numbers with some fairly questionable assumptions … but it is fun to imagine.
And…
Desert populations have fewer instances of drownings.
Montana has fewer instances of shark attacks.
Antarctica has fewer instances of tornadoes.
Of course places with fewer guns have fewer instances of gun violence (not necessarily true in Chicago)…but do they have a lower violent crime rate? That is the question.
Maybe Detroit will make a comeback. How are all the gun stores & shooting ranges doing to help the economy?
Did I tell you about the time the ticket agent at the Detroit airport called the police to confiscate 30 rounds of Federal Premium ammo that were in two magazines locked inside a hard case? He said the primer could not be exposed or it could cause the bullet to fire. This is not the airline’s or TSA’s policy. This was just one jackwagon’s interpretation of the policy. I flew out of Atlanta with the same setup on the same airline and had no problem. I emailed the Detroit police to complain but they don’t have jurisdiction at the airport. The ticket agent was a real dickhead about the whole thing. I asked him for some cardboard and tape to cover the one exposed primer and he said “It is your responsibility to store your ammo properly, not mine”. Midwest Liberal Mother YOU KNOW WHAT!
Good for Chief Craig! While his comments might be viewed by some in Detroit as politically incorrect and controversial, his pro armed citizen position is shared by the vast majority of law enforcement officers across the U.S.
Hey, Rahm? You listening?
Hello???? Anyone there?
Comments are closed.