{"id":55601,"date":"2015-10-13T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55601"},"modified":"2015-10-13T07:20:13","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T12:20:13","slug":"more-guns-in-the-hands-of-the-law-abiding-and-fewer-liberals-less-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55601","title":{"rendered":"More Guns (In The Hands Of The Law Abiding) And Fewer Liberals = Less Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After every mass-shooting incident, both sides in the Second Amendment debate sound off. \u00a0The left believes &#8220;commonsense gun control&#8221; leads to less crime. \u00a0The right believes &#8220;more guns equals less crime&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Both sides tend to leave it at the level of chanting points, without ever really submitting evidence, much less proving anything [1].<\/p>\n<p>So I thought I&#8217;d give it a shot. \u00a0What brings more &#8220;gun safety&#8221;\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0more guns, or less?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Definition Of\u00a0Terms<\/strong>: \u00a0To start with, I took\u00a0crime data from the states and the the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate_(2012)\">70 or so largest US cities &#8211; places with over 250,000 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For lack of a better measure, I used each state&#8217;s governor s the bellwether of the city&#8217;s political makeup &#8211; which may not be academically perfect, but as a practical matter it&#8217;s as useful a measure of each state&#8217;s sympathies as we have.<\/p>\n<p><strong>States of Affairs<\/strong>: \u00a0And the murder rates break down like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Democrat States: 12.2 murders per 100,000<\/li>\n<li>GOP States: 11.0\u00a0murders per 100,000 (all figures henceforth will be per 100,000).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, that looks pretty even; that&#8217;s like an 10% variation. \u00a0Hardly outside the margin of error, really (although as we discussed some time ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?s=%22Notsosmartanalysis%2C+Part%22&amp;submit=Search\">there&#8217;s plenty of variation there, too<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The differences in violent crime, robberies and aggravated assaults and rapes and the like, are a tad more dramatic &#8211; but only just:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Democrat States: 841.18<\/li>\n<li>GOP States: 749.12<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Democrat states have 12% more violent crime. \u00a0Again &#8211; could be just statistical noise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Urbanity<\/strong>: \u00a0But if you&#8217;re from Minnesota, or most states with a large urban area that controls half the population, you know that state politics don&#8217;t tell you everything. \u00a0In places like Illinois, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Iowa, even New York and California, solid-blue cities float in\u00a0huge placid prosperous\u00a0lagoons of red.<\/p>\n<p>Again &#8211; I broke out &#8220;control&#8221; by the city&#8217;s current mayor, or in the case of the few cities using \u00a0Manager\/Commission government, the control of the commission.<\/p>\n<p>So when you break out the murder rates of American\u00a0<em>cities\u00a0<\/em>of over 250,000, they come out more like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Democrat Cities: 12.9<\/li>\n<li>GOP Cities 7.77<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So the murder\u00a0\u00a0rates in cities that have mayors from the Democrat Party are 60% higher than in GOP-run cities.<\/p>\n<p>OK, that&#8217;s significant. \u00a0And the violent crime rates are similarly skewed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Democrat Cities: 875.3<\/li>\n<li>GOP Run Cities: 561.0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There is 56% more violent\u00a0crime in cities run by Democrats.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More Guns, Less Guns&#8230;<\/strong>: \u00a0But when cornered by Gun Rights supporters, gun control activists punt to the line that &#8220;it&#8217;s all about the availability of guns&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The only true measure of the availability of guns is &#8220;can you find one that you can afford without breaking the law?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But I figured I&#8217;d meet the left and the gun grabbers halfway on this one; I measured all cities by the &#8220;Brady Campaign Scorecard&#8221; rating of the state in which they reside (which is a little unrealistic, since some cities have &#8220;tougher&#8221; gun laws than their states; I&#8217;ll work on that).<\/p>\n<p>The assumption: \u00a0A &#8220;high&#8221; Brady rating, an A or B, implies &#8220;tougher&#8221; gun laws and, by extension, fewer guns (for the law-abiding).<\/p>\n<p>And the numbers break out like this (&#8220;winners&#8221; will be in bold type):<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Brady Rating\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>All Cities<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Democrat Cities<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>GOP Cities<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><b>Difference<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>A<\/td>\n<td>12.48<\/td>\n<td><strong>\u00a013.3<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\u00a08<\/td>\n<td>Democrat cities rate 66% higher<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>B<\/td>\n<td>12.75<\/td>\n<td><strong>\u00a013.75<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>None<\/td>\n<td>No B-rated GOP cities.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>C<\/td>\n<td>14.16<\/td>\n<td><strong>\u00a016.1<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\u00a06.4<\/td>\n<td>Democrat cities have 251% higher murder rate.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>D<\/td>\n<td>10.22<\/td>\n<td>\u00a010.7<\/td>\n<td><strong>11.25<\/strong> (two cities)<\/td>\n<td>GOP cities 5% higher. \u00a0Skewed by Oklahoma City&#8217;s crime rate.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>F<\/td>\n<td>10.51<\/td>\n<td><strong>\u00a011.77<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>8.03<\/td>\n<td>Democrat cities 47% higher.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Violent Crime by Brady rating<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>\u00a0Brady Rating<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>All Cities<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Democrat Cities<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>GOP Cities<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Difference<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>A<\/td>\n<td>816.73<\/td>\n<td><strong>\u00a0909.88<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\u00a0499.5<\/td>\n<td>Democrat cities rate 82% higher<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>B (only Boston and Chicago)<\/td>\n<td>835<\/td>\n<td>\u00a0<strong>835<\/strong> (only Boston reported)<\/td>\n<td>\u00a0NA<\/td>\n<td>No B-rated GOP cities<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>C<\/td>\n<td>913.85<\/td>\n<td>\u00a0<strong>1032.2<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>440<\/td>\n<td>235% higher in Democrat cities<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>D<\/td>\n<td>727.97<\/td>\n<td>\u00a0<strong>770.35<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\u00a0558.45<\/td>\n<td>38% higher in Democrat cities<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>F<\/td>\n<td>758.1<\/td>\n<td><strong>805.75<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>673.56<\/td>\n<td>20% higher in Democrat cities.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>So the big variables seem to be not so much the availability of guns or the strictness of gun control laws, which doesn&#8217;t seem to be correlated with any rises and falls in murder or violent crime rates.<\/p>\n<p>But being controlled by the Democrat party? \u00a0There&#8217;s a straight line correlation there.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m not saying that Democrats cause crime. \u00a0Democrats bleed just like the rest of us do.<\/p>\n<p>But the pathologies that one-party &#8220;progressive&#8221; Democrat rule inevitably brings\u00a0<em>do\u00a0<\/em>seem to be correlated with higher murder and violent crime rates.<\/p>\n<p>Correlation doesn&#8217;t mean causation. \u00a0But it suggests a possible path to causation.<\/p>\n<p>[1] I know &#8211; the Second Amendment crew\u00a0<em>does\u00a0<\/em>submit evidence, and\u00a0<em>has\u00a0<\/em>proven its case to everyone but our idiot media. \u00a0I&#8217;m just saying it for purposes of argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After every mass-shooting incident, both sides in the Second Amendment debate sound off. \u00a0The left believes &#8220;commonsense gun control&#8221; leads to less crime. \u00a0The right believes &#8220;more guns equals less crime&#8221;. Both sides tend to leave it at the level of chanting points, without ever really submitting evidence, much less proving anything [1]. So I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,45,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-gun-free-zones","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55601","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=55601"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55667,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55601\/revisions\/55667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}