Better to live in red than blue county!!

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Better to live in red than blue county!!
23
Tue, 08-24-2004 - 11:46pm
It Matters Where You Live

Many people are familiar with the work of Dr. John Lott. His massive research of our country's crime data encompassed all 3,000 plus counties for an 18 year period.

Lott presented his work in a book entitled More Guns, Less Crime. His work has subsequently corroborated by researchers in nearly four dozen of our country's institutions of higher learning.

Well, Lott's work has been corroborated by Al Gore. Actually, George Bush also helped.

Most people have probably seen the map of the country's voting by counties. The one most of us saw showed the Bush counties in red and the Gore counties in blue.

The Gore vote was primarily along both coasts as well as other urban pockets in the rest of the country. The Bush vote was the great expanse of the rest of the country.

Well, thanks to Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, we now know something else about those counties.

In the Gore counties, the murder rate is 13.2 per 100,000.

In the Bush counties, the murder rate is 2.1 per 100,000.

What do urban centers have in common around the country? Try to get a concealed carry permit and you will find out. In fact, in Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago and a few others, just owning a handgun will be impossible.

What had Lott found was the reason for the lowering of violent crime in various jurisdictions? Passage of concealed carry laws.

Indeed, the longer such laws have been on the books, the lower the violent crime rates go, including murder.

Where you live matters a lot. Thanks to Bush and Gore making this decision has been made much easier.



Who is John Lott?

A former chief economist for the United States Sentencing Commission and a fellow at the University of Chicago, Lott conducted the first comprehensive study of concealed handgun laws.

Far from relying on mere correlation, he used a sophisticated multiple regression analysis to control for variables such as demographics, arrest and conviction rates, and changes in gun laws. While previous researchers relied on data from cherry-picked areas and time periods, Lott studied 18 years of data from all 3,054 counties in the United States.

Being politically naive, however, he failed to anticipate the firestorm he ignited when he announced that not only do concealed handgun laws deter murder, rape, and aggravated assault, but that allowing licensed concealed handguns in all states could prevent 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes and more than 60,000 aggravated assaults each year.

The Liberal Establishment attacked Lott's study as biased, flawed and as slander, but were never able to name a specific problem with his methodology or his findings… they just weren't PC, so they were wrong.

While concealed handgun opponents are loath to mention it, John Lott is now a senior research scholar at prestigious Yale Law School... gun industry slander, "flawed" methodology, and all.



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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-11-1999
Wed, 08-25-2004 - 2:37pm
"Again, I am willing to venture that the crime rate and gun death rate is attributed to guns bought ILLEGALLY.

Again your argument is off base on the gun control issue."

Except that the standard Politically Correct gun argument is that an armed society will keep criminals so terrified they won't dare attack armed law abiding citizens.

So even if the gun violence in Detroit IS attributable to illegal guns, the fact that Michigan citizens have had 3 years to arm themselves is failing to deter the criminal element, in fact things are worse. Contrary to the First Commandement of the Gun Crowd.

Hardly sounds off base to me.



dablacksox


Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-11-1999
Wed, 08-25-2004 - 2:44pm
"Homicide in Detroit dropped for 2 years after concealed carry went into effect,"

Shootings didn't though, they were up last year. And this year.

"At best we can say homicide went down for the first 2 years, and it's unknown what happened the 3rd year after concealed carry went into effect."

But we DO know what's happening this year. Even if there weren't a single gun crime in Detroit for the rest of the calendar year shootings and murder would be up for the year, despite the concelaed weapons law that went into effect 3 years ago and despite the Conventional Wisdom that crime drops every year that a concealed weapons law is in effect.

The bottom line is that your sources that claim this are wrong and the statistics at the end of the calendar year will prove it. Whether they are spun away remains to be seen.

But shootings and murders in Detroit have skyrocketed this year despite a concealed weapons law that is 3 years old. That is undeniable.

dablacksox


Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Wed, 08-25-2004 - 3:56pm
For the most part that is true.

Look at the violent crime rate in Florida. Since they instituted the shall issue for Concealed Carry, the violent crime rate (especially against older people) has dropped significantly.

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