For the third year in a row, violent crime has declined in these here United States. Preliminary data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that the violent crime rate fell 5.5 percent in 2009, compared to 2008. All four categories of violent crime—murder, robbery, aggravated assault and forcible rape—experienced reductions. Violent crime went down four percent in metropolitan counties and three percent elsewhere. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms hailed the stat as proof positive that more guns means less crime. “This translates to one irrefutable fact,” said Alan Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “Gun prohibitionists have been consistently wrong. Higher rates of gun ownership have not resulted in more bloodshed, as the gun ban lobby has repeatedly forecast with its ‘sky-is-falling’ rhetoric.” Paging John Lott. John Lott. Will John Lott please refute claims that guns are not the key variable. And will someone else please read that blog for me? (That guy’s math scares me.) Much obliged.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
That may be true, but you have to do more than identify two sets of stats and say one led to the other. As the Village Voice notes in their NYPD tapes, police are being very crafty about reporting crimes:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-n…
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