{"id":1688,"date":"2007-11-23T05:18:56","date_gmt":"2007-11-23T10:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1688"},"modified":"2007-11-23T05:18:56","modified_gmt":"2007-11-23T10:18:56","slug":"free-fire-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1688","title":{"rendered":"Free Fire Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Parker <\/em>case – on the DC gun ban – wends its way to the Supreme Court, it’s worthwhile to note some Jhistorical and social context,<\/a> via John Lott:<\/p>\n

It is one of the benefits of being a politician. While handguns are banned for citizens in Washington, D.C., congressmen are allowed to have a gun for self-protection on the Capitol grounds. Well-known liberal politicians such as Senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy have armed bodyguards. The wives of politicians, such as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s wife, Linda, also have bodyguards. Undoubtedly, these politicians and their families have extremely good reasons for this protection, but many other Americans, especially those living with the high crime rates in D.C., also feel the same way…While these politicians have protection both in their homes and as they travel around in public, since September 24, 1976, other D.C. residents have lived under the nation’s most restrictive gun laws. Police enforce a citywide handgun ban, and local statutes require residents to keep long guns disassembled, unloaded, and locked up. Yet, with a murder rate of 46 per 100,000 people in 2002, the District easily holds the title of the U.S. murder capital among cities with over 500,000 people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I’m sure the ban solved an even worse problem – right?<\/p>\n

This was not even close to being the case prior to the ban.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Crime rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before Washington’s ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. During this same time, robberies fell from 1,514 to 1,003 per 100,000 and then rose by over 63 percent, up to 1,635. The five-year trends are not some aberration. In fact, while murder rates have varied over time, during the almost 30 years since the ban, the murder rate has only once fallen below what it was in 1976.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the bromides the left likes to throw out about the carnage in DC is that it’s all about the availability of guns in Virginia.\u00a0 But then, wouldn’t one think Virginia would have a gun death rate bordering on Stalingrad’s, too?<\/p>\n

These pre-law drops and subsequent increases were much larger than any changes in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. For example, the District’s murder rate fell during the same five-year period from 3.5 to 3 times more than in the neighboring states and rose back up after the ban to 3.8 times more…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How does one explain this?<\/p>\n

Surely the ban cannot be blamed for all the District’s crime problems. The police department has had severe problems over hiring standards and there have been management and morale issues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is it just DC? Of course not:<\/p>\n

But even cities with far better police agencies have seen crime soar in the wake of handgun bans. Chicago, whose ban on new handguns started in 1982, has police computer systems that are the envy of the nation, a bevy of shiny new police facilities and a productive working relationship with community groups. Indeed, the city has achieved impressive reductions in property crime in recent years. But the gun ban didn’t work at all when it came to reducing violence.<\/p>\n

Chicago’s murder rate fell from 27 to 22 per 100,000 in the five years before the law and then rose slightly to 23. The change is even more dramatic when compared to five neighboring Illinois counties: Chicago’s murder rate fell from being 8.1 times greater than its neighbors in 1977 to 5.5 times in 1982, and then went way up to 12 times greater in 1987. While robbery data isn’t available for the years immediately after the ban, since 1985 (the first year for which the FBI has data) robbery rates soared.<\/p>\n

…Proponents of the bans claim that the laws failed because guns leaked into the District and Chicago from neighboring areas, but there was not even the smallest reduction in crime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the conclusion?\u00a0 Same as the old conclusion:<\/p>\n

We all want to take guns from criminals. The problem is that gun bans appear to have disarmed only law-abiding citizens while leaving criminals free to prey on the populace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, with cops like these <\/a>running the show in the nation’s capital (via KB)…:<\/p>\n

Speaking on why it would be a terrible mistake to overturn Washington DC’s 31-year old ban on handguns, Assistant police chief Alfred Durham said today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The ban on handguns is a matter of life and death because 80% of the murders in DC are caused by handguns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Is it possible for a non-sequitur <\/em>to be so non<\/em> that it becomes an anti-sequitur<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Parker case – on the DC gun ban – wends its way to the Supreme Court, it’s worthwhile to note some Jhistorical and social context, via John Lott: It is one of the benefits of being a politician. While handguns are banned for citizens in Washington, D.C., congressmen are allowed to have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}