2 Points Tex!

davidg wrote: mark c wrote: JoeinNY wrote: Considering you live pretty close to a large liberal city you might consider disparaging that one instead of making assumptions about ones you don't have any real knowledge of.. your soda comment is also wrong as it is not illegal to buy or sell a big gulp in any part of NY, NYC or otherwise.. Not yet. It takes affect on March 12, and its a local NYC health department rule. Mark....do you know if that is the Big Gulp ban or the salt ban, or both? I can't wait to see the NYC'rs this coming spring. They are going to be looking fine just in time for swim suit weather. Thank you Mayor Bloomberg!

OK, before we get too carried away on the Bloomberg-bashing, have you ever been there (or lately?) NYC is a great city and consistently ranks very low on crime rates, in fact a recent "Chicago crime rate soars.." article stated in the first 1/2 of 2012 Chicago had 30 percent more murders than NYC with only 1/3 the population...

I grew up 30 miles away, and in the 70's NYC was a real pit. It's come a loooong way since those days of Abe Beame and Ed Koch and a lot of the credit goes to Bloomberg who has done a great job since 2001, and he does it all for $1.00 per year (forgoing the $225,000.00 salary).

OverMyHead wrote: Study after study show violent crime decreases with gun ownership. As the left says, If it can just save one life it is worth it.

Do they really? I ask In a less than smart ass than usual way - cause I haven't really looked into this but I doubt it really makes any difference one way or the other...or more to the point that a statistically relevant study is even possible- too many other variables - someplace would have to either dramatically increase or decrease gun ownership without changing any other variables to find out.   Maybe dc will someday show some trend ?

country to country is a lousy comparison ... And the only ones I have seen that compare America to similar countries show they have less guns and less violent crime... State to state also is a tough one cause no two states are similar enough demographically and yet dissimilar enough in terms of gun control.   If you go down to a personal level the only studies available show that gunownership increases your net risk of dying in a homicide although not much(certainly less if it isn't kept loaded and is kept locked) .... So I guess I will revert to smart ass mode and say show me the study, should be easy since it is study after study...

Riley wrote: I would bet that if you take violent gun crimes out of the equation, the USA is still high on the list for violence, so it is more cultural rather than gun related.

I am guessing crime rates are more cultural related, more poverty level related, more whether your football(futbal) team wins or loses related.. just about more everything related than levels of gun control related.

I would accept a wash - which is certainly no reason to restrict gun ownership because they do have positive value, realistically I expect a slight direct relationship ... which would be an acceptable risk in my community, but that there is study after study showing a documented reduction in crime levels with increased gun ownership with all other factors taken into account.. sounds like something that is repeated over and over but has no basis in fact.

Even the Earp brothers back in tombstone knew that having people check their guns on the way into town was a valid method of reducing violent crime, just as they knew that out on the range any cowboy without a gun was a fool..

I did some homework, and poked around in the primary literature a bit.

One study that tracked concealed carry statistics as they relate to social cohesion and policing says this;

"Most importantly, police should emphasize to citizens in these areas that hand-gun carrying has not been shown conclusively to reduce crime, and that there are other private crime-prevention techniques that carry more promise of keeping communities safer from crime."

Jacinta M. Gau, (2008) "A neighborhood-level analysis of concealed hand-gun permits", Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Vol. 31 Iss: 4, pp.674 - 693

And then there is this, from a synthesis of research carried out during the 1990s and 2000s;

"Ayres and Donohue, having tested more than 700 alternate
regressions, concluded that there is “no credible statistical evidence
that the adoption of concealed-carry (or ‘shall issue’) laws reduced
crime” (2003a, p. 1372). The leading reanalysis of Lott’s data
by quantitatively sophisticated noneconomists reached the same conclusion (Black and Nagin 1998)."Levitt and Miles (2007) review the literature on shall-issue laws and express skepticism. They note that other analyses, including one that Levitt coauthored (Donohue and Levitt 2001), identify a long series of problems that “raised questions” about the validity of the concealed weapons hypothesis."

Learning from the Limitations of Deterrence Research
Michael Tonry
Crime and Justice , Vol. 37, No. 1 (2008), pp. 279-311
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Article DOI: 10.1086/524825

If anyone wants to read more about what these authors say I have provided the the citation information. Also, I suggest using Google Scholar next time you want answers. You should always want to side-step the middle-man (i.e. media outlets) when really making up your mind about something.

Dave, based on my reading of the literature (yes, I read more papers than just these but I thought that they summed it up well) there is not much to support your claim that "study after study show violent crime decreases with gun ownership."

Doesn't mean I think you shouldn't be allowed to have concealed carry or own a gun (two things I am in favor of in fact), just that the notion that on average it will protect you from crime is not strongly supported.

How would carrying a concealed weapon ever affect crime rate. If no one can see it, it has no deterant affect. Walk around carrying a 16" fully automatic M4 carbine on your shoulder and see how respectful people are.

Of course it helps to be wearing a uniform of some kind.

Riley wrote: It has a deterant effect if enough people carry them because criminals then are afraid to screw with people.

I assume you meant to say...

"It could have a deterant [sic] effect if enough people carry them because criminals then might be afraid to screw with people, but the data don't really back this up. It is much more effective to lift people out of poverty and fight the root causes of violent crime than their symptoms."

...right?

Again, not saying that concealed carry is a bad idea. Just not a very good one if your goal is reduce crime rates.

It would be pretty hard to back up either claim , first of all as bruce said there is probably a certain deterrent effect if enough people carried.I conceal carry appr 50% of the time . if I was walking down the street in your average town / city and there were 2k people out walking in say a 2 block radius I would venture a guess there would also be no more than 30 or 40 others at most who would also be licensed .I bet that figure is a stretch and of those 30 ppl I bet they carry 20 to 50 % of the time .. I cant see how any reputable study could accurately form very concrete evidence either way.   it is our right , it is a grave responsibility , and it covers the first rule of a gun fight ...bring a gun

You must know the Chief! From what I hear from my brothers in Mass, it's all up to the chief and some won't give a license for protection.

Riley wrote: Hansel, I guess you might say that reducing crime begins at home. You're taking it a few steps too far. The idea is if people carry, they can defend themselves, not become vilgilantes. I've never heard the argument stretched to lifting people out of poverty, LOL. It's a persoanl matter and we should all have a choice. Choice is good, right?

Hi Bruce,

I don't actually think I am taking it too far, since in my concealed carry reading I also came across published literature that made that very point. Indeed, that is why I felt confident going there, so thanks for letting me share some of it with you now!

So you know where these come from I searched for "poverty and crime rates meta analysis" using Google Scholar. A "meta-analysis" is a way of combining the results of many papers together to see what they say and is commonly used to understand consistent outcomes in science.

First there is this...

"A "meta-analysis" was undertaken to determine the relative effects of macro-level predictors of crime. Indicators of "concentrated disadvantage"(e.g., racial heterogeneity, poverty, and family disruption) are among the strongest and most stable predictors."

Assessing Macro-Level Predictors and Theories of Crime: A Meta-Analysis
Travis C. Pratt and Francis T. Cullen
Crime and Justice , Vol. 32, (2005), pp. 373-450

...then this...

"The research presented here applies the procedures of meta-analysis to 34 aggregate data studies reporting on violent crime, poverty, and income inequality. These studies reported a total of 76 zero-order correlation coefficients for all measures of violent crime with either poverty or income inequality. Of the 76 coefficients, all but 2, or 97 percent, were positive. Of the positive coefficients, nearly 80 percent were of at least moderate strength. It is concluded that poverty and income inequality are each associated with violent crime."

Poverty, Income Inequality, and Violent Crime: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Aggregate Data Studies
Ching-Chi Hsieh and M. D. Pugh
Criminal Justice Review Autumn 1993 vol. 18 no. 2 182-202

...and this...

"Income inequality was strongly correlated with firearm violent crime as well as the measures of social capital: per capita group membership and lack of social trust. In turn, both social trust and group membership were associated with firearm violent crime. These relationships held when controlling for poverty and a proxy variable for access to firearms."

Social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime
Bruce P. Kennedy, , Ichiro Kawachi, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Kimberly Lochner, Vanita Gupta
Social Science & Medicine
Volume 47, Issue 1, 1 July 1998, Pages 7–17

...and finally for those of you who care so little for income inequality there is this...

"We observed a moderately strong correlation between poverty and homicide, though the relationship was weaker than that between income inequality and homicide."

Crime: social disorganization and relative deprivation
Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce P Kennedy, Richard G Wilkinson
Social Science & Medicine
Volume 48, Issue 6, March 1999, Pages 719–731

So Bruce, while you've never heard the argument made it has not only been made, I'd say that research that has been done strongly supports the tight link between poverty and crime. Just to be clear, I'm not just cherry-picking these studies you can do your own internet searches of the primary literature (again I strongly suggest using Google Scholar) and I'm confident that you will come up with the same results.

I didn't realize that this seemingly obvious relationship between poverty and crime was controversial. You must not worry one bit then when you stroll through poor neighborhoods. I hope after reading this you reconsider your behavior.

Peter, the fact that you "cant [sic] see how any reputable study could accurately form very concrete evidence either way" on the concealed carry issue says more about your understanding of science and its methods than it does what the reality is. To be clear I'm not calling you stupid or anything, but as someone who does statistics day in and day out I don't think any trained social scientist would agree with what you say. Just like you shouldn't trust me to fix anything underneath the doghouse of your boat cause I don't know what I'm doing down there, I doubt that you have any clue about what a professional scientist does and if not then you should leave study design to the professionals.

Again, just to make sure I don't get misunderstood I am all for people owning guns if they want to. But more guns don't reduce crime rates, while increased poverty and income inequality does increase crime rates. If you are truly interested in reducing crime you should work to reduce the actual causes not arm yourself to the hilt.

Hansel, You misunderstood me. No doubt poverty and crime go hand in hand. I've been around poverty. I just don't think there is a social aspect to someone wanting to defend themself. Sure, the big picture may be to lift people out of poverty, or drug use, or just liking to screw with people, and maybe people wouldn't need to defend themselves, but the near sited reality is when someone is about to do you harm, it is nice to have access to the equalizer. I once heard someone say that back in the early part of the 20th century when many people carried guns it was a polite society.

Depends on what her concerns are.

Riley wrote: I once heard someone say that back in the early part of the 20th century when many people carried guns it was a polite society.

I just showed you a bunch of published research that says guns don't reduce crime, but that other things like poverty increase it. You say that I misunderstand you, but you keep coming back to having guns as a way to create a "polite society." I agree with you that I'd want a gun on me if somebody was going to cause me or someone nearby grave bodily harm. Let's stop there. You had me with you until you ended your comment with the above statement that brings it back to the idea that "well if we just had more guns things would be safer around here."

I am very confident that your notion is false, and that Dave is going to have an impossible time showing otherwise. I'm even going to make a Bush-esque pre-emptive strike on Dave and disqualify him from using John Lott as a credible source since multiple papers that I have looked at consider he and his studies that promote these ideas to be unreliable at best.

Again, carry a gun if you want but don't promote it as a general crime fighting strategy. It doesn't work.

Peter, not exactly sure, the mace always makes it really hard too see.

Today on a talk show out of Milwaukee (not Fox), I heard the host talking about "A Tale of Two Cities". So I found it online this evening. It was an older study from the 80's comparing gun violence in Seattle vs. Vancouver. From just a brief search, what I can see is that the Brady Organization indicates that because Vancouver had stricter gun control standards, there was less gun violence. However, the talk show host indicated that there was more data beneath the details of the study.

The indication was that Seattle, at the time at least, has a much larger poor inner city area, and Vancouver had virtually no poor inner city areas. The ultimate conclusion was that if you pull out the inner city factor of the two cities, gun violence was similar.

The data that Hansel reported above seems to at least back up that data. Crime is much more predominant in inner city areas where poverty and income inequity are extreme.

Not wanting to upset anybody, I will forgo the thoughts on why the talk show host thought this was happening in the inner city areas, and that I happened to agree with.

The "summary report" below indicates this data can be used to lobby for stricter gun control laws.   


   A Tale Of Two Cities.....Seattle vs. Vancouver