He’s reduced the violent crime rate:
…all violent crime rates dropped in 2009, murder rates by 7.4 percent, robbery rates by 9 percent: His election caused gun sales to skyrocket, and crime rates to plummet.
Not to mention that poverty is up as well, and we all know that it’s a prime cause of crime (not to mention terrorism). Errrr…wait. Gee, that’s two “progressive” myths about crime shattered.
To be entirely fair, this isn’t exactly a controlled experiment as the quote in your post suggests.
We can’t really say that poverty isn’t a prime cause of crime and terrorism, but we can say that polite citizens with guns trump poverty’s crime instigating effects.
So it does pummel the myth that more guns = more violent crime.
…either that or the spirit of HOPE has made the otherwise criminal into rights respecting citizens. hah.
I’m sure a lot of you have read Freakonomics; if not, then you should. One of the most provocative chapters proposes that the drop in crime during the Clinton years was not due to the 100,000 policemen he helped add to the city payrolls. Instead, the biggest factor in the drop in crime was legalizing abortion twenty years earlier…abortion rates were highest in the demographics that are associated with 20-year-old criminals.
I wonder if the data that gave birth to that proposition holds up a decade later.
It would be hard to that to be the case in this instance. This is a significant deviation from the norm, in only one year. Abortions would tend to decrease the crime rate slowly over time, rather than quickly and abruptly.
And yet Chicago seems to be as dangerous as Baghdad. Oh ya they don’t like people owning guns.
Ryan makes a good point but it is fun to get some partisan digs in 🙂
Nothing like near record gun and ammo sales over the last couple years to invoke the old Heinlein-ism: An armed society is a polite society.”
I’m sure a lot of you have read Freakonomics; if not, then you should. One of the most provocative chapters proposes that the drop in crime during the Clinton years was not due to the 100,000 policemen he helped add to the city payrolls. Instead, the biggest factor in the drop in crime was legalizing abortion twenty years earlier…abortion rates were highest in the demographics that are associated with 20-year-old criminals.
It also coincided with a decline in the young male adult populaton. A decline this big and fast especially with a recession, indicates something else is going on.
There is also a very large drop in childbirths this past year, despite the record long blackouts in the Northeast and in other locales (blackouts are proven to boost conception due to lack of other things to do). The blackouts should also have led to increases in crime according to the conventional wisdom.
I’d mention the papers tiptoeing around the reverse immigration numbers, but that would obviously be racist.
It also coincided with a decline in the young male adult populaton. A decline this big and fast especially with a recession, indicates something else is going on.
That’s pretty much what Jiminator said, Karl, although he didn’t do quite as good a job of saying it.
“the biggest factor in the drop in crime was legalizing abortion twenty years earlier…abortion rates were highest in the demographics that are associated with 20-year-old criminals.”
Translates to: “Legalizing abortions in the ’70s meant fewer 20-year-olds in the ’90s, especially in the demographic associated with lower incomes and high crime rates.”
He also went on to question whether or not abortions have continued to reduce future crimes.
Why he offered it up, of course, is beyond me, since it’s completely unrelated to “more guns, less crime”, but I suppose everyone’s just tossing out their own version of “against conventional wisdom” crime statistics.