Michigan sees fewer gun deaths — with more permits

[mvccd1000]

From The Detroit Free Press, January 6th, 2008.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080106/NEWS06/801060602/1001

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Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold.

But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics.

The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.

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Hard to believe you can actually see a report like that in the MSM these days. Congratulations to The Detroit Free Press for putting in print the facts that most reasonable people were already aware of.

[bluerum]

1. Well thats the answer then - more guns for all. A sure bet to reducing gun violence.

[L1A1Rocker]

2. As Robert Heinlein said:

An armed society is a polite society.

[Scout]

14. most people stop worshipping RH when they leave their teens ....

:eyes:

[krispos42]

3. More guns in the hands of the honest

Fewer in the hands of the career criminal.

Either or both are possibilities to reducing crime. Legalizing drugs, fighting poverty, bringing manufacturing back to this country, stronger unions, and universal single-payer health care would also help, but those are topic for a different forum.

Since stringent gun-control laws always, without exception, disarm the honest first and do little if anything to reduce the number of guns in the hands of the career criminal, exactly what do you thing tightenting up gun control laws will do to crime?

[silverojo]

4. Cities with the toughest gun laws

Tend to be the most violent. After all, if criminals know people are unarmed and defenseless....

[krispos42]

5. I think it's mostly poverty...

The people with enough money move out to the suburbs, leaving the cities usually to either the wealthy in posh apartment buildings or the poor and working-class in crappy apartments.

But there is also the crowding, which offers more opportunities for crime while simultaniously reducing the chances of being caught. It also seems to be a good business environment for gangs. After all, most murders and their victims are repeat criminals and/or gang-affiliated.

The attitude of many is that part of being civlized means demonizing violence and the implements thereof because such things, such emotions and language and tools, are brutal and uncivilized. And cities, being centers of civilization and learning and culture, should naturally be above being brutal and uncivilized.

The real problem is not violence, it's aggression. It is perfectly okay in my book to be violent in response to an aggressor. The important thing is to not be the aggressor, to teach self-control and other ways of dealing with problems besides pummeling people. But to also be ready and willing to be violent in self-defense.

[L1A1Rocker]

6. You may be on the right track

but I don't think poverty is the complete answer either. I'm thinking of the great depression, one of the most widespread times of poverty in this country. There was not the same kind of homicide rate as we have now so I'm thinking there are other factors involved. I find the "easy access to guns" argument to be a non-starter.

[krispos42]

7. Well, back then we were still pretty rural...

That might have been part of it. People were poor, but they were spread out. But back then a lot of people were moving around looking for work, so if he or she were killed by some angry locals, the police might never know.

Part of the Great Depression occured during Prohibition as well, so the homicide rate was higher than normal.

The country was bigger, too, in the sense getting around was much harder. Notice how nowadays when people ask how "far" a place is, the answer is often given in terms of time? "How far is it to Chicago?" "About 9 hours."

The time it takes to travel a distance is more relevent than the actual physical distance. Back then, running a major crime syndicate was much more complex than today, what with interstate highways and cellular phones.

[bluerum]

8. OK. Lets see some numbers to back that one up. Massachusetts has some

pretty tough gun laws and I don't see Boston as having a lot of violent crime.

[dmallind]

10. Well it's not a perfect correlation of course but bad example there

Boston ranks 16th out of 72 in violent crime here. Of course there are lax gun control places above it, and many more below it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

Cities - large ones - in general often have tougher gun control and higher crime rates than lower-population places though so I would be dishonest if I said there was a clean or even calculable single factor correlation. Much of the argument here comes from specific examples, and it is undeniable that the jurisdictions with the strongest gun control laws are MORE likely (please understand that's like saying mena re more likely to be murderers - absolutely true - and the hundreds of examples of female murderers and millions of examples of male non-murderers does absolutely nothing to refute that) to be bastions of high crime. DC has the toughest gun laws in the nation.

[sir pball]

11. Having spent a lot of time in Boston

It's a relatively (compared to other large US cities) well-off, culturally homogenous place, a decent economy and social services. There's definitely worse and better parts of town, but I can't off the top of my head think of any place I wouldn't want to be stuck in after dark. Quite unlike NYC, Chicago or LA (there's some numbers for you, Cali and Illinois have extremely strict gun control but I'd hardly call either of those cities peaceful paradises..)

New Hampshire has pretty liberal gun laws and Manchester (~120K) is nothing but pleasant. Hell, Vermont has virtually nil gun control, you don't even need a permit to carry, and they have the lowest murder rate in the country.

[bluerum]

16. Gun crime correlates to economic prosperity of a region. Manchester NH?

Vermont?

Need to measure violent crime based on population and economics. There are correlations.

More guns does not equal less crime.

[sir pball]

17. No, but neither

does more guns equal more crime.

I agree that population and economics are definitely correlated to violence, I don't honestly see gun laws affecting things either way.

[sir pball]

12. I think it's reverse causation actually.

Cities with loads of violent crime pass increasingly strict gun laws in the (mistaken) effort to control the crime.

Gun control doesn't cause violence, violence causes gun control. The less violent a state is the less likely it is to have strict laws, look at Vermont.

[Tejas]

9. Why is it that

"Since stringent gun-control laws always, without exception, disarm the honest first..."

this fact just seems to fly right over the heads of the antis or is completely and intentionally ignored by them?

I can understand the Brady Bunch, they have an agenda, why on earth is it so hard for the rest?

[krispos42]

19. Because they think that it will eventually disarm the criminals

Every day, guns that are being carried illegally are seized and taken from criminals during arrests or during the execution of search warrants. If the flow of guns into the criminal pool is drastically reduced, then, during such normal police work more guns should be seized than enter the pool.

Unfortunately, there are so many guns out there that this will not happen in our lifetime.

Furthermore, if the flow of guns into the criminal pool is drastically reduced, then guns seized during normal police work will also drop year-by-year until guns in = guns out, resulting in a smaller, stabilized pool of guns for criminals.

However, nature abhorrs a vacuum. As the pool shrinks and demand goes up, more people respond to market forces. Rather than turning in that now-banned pistol, they sell it to a criminal thinking "I'll be damned if I'm going to lose money on this gun". Smugglers will bring in guns from out-of-state or overseas. Robbing gun stores will become a bigger business.

That sort of thing.

And while all this is happening, the still-armed criminals will be preying on the freshly-disarmed population. And even if an otherwise-honest citizen illegally keeps a gun, he or she dares not fire it unless absolutely neccessary. And if they actually repel an invader while using the gun, they dare not call the police and report the crime because they don't want to be caught.

[slackmaster]

13. Straw man

[SteveM]

15. It may not be the answer, but there are other considerations...

(1) The ability to carry concealed weapons is preeminently an individual right; an effort for an individual to protect him/her self. In other words, it is not social policy designed to remedy a social ill. For this reason alone I support concealed carry permitting. (I realize that Lot and others have argued that where CCW is in place, violent crime has gone down. But the evidence is not convincing as yet.)

(2) Those now carrying concealed firearms have for the most part undergone training above and beyond other civilians who bear arms; hence, they are less likely to use their guns in an imprudent and dangerous manner. For this reason I have no real fears about the number of people on the streets who are packing. I have some concern about criminals and the unqualified who are packing.

[mvccd1000]

18. My point was not that crime didn't increase with more CCWs - that's a given.

I was pointing out that it's amazing to see a story like that in print in a major newspaper.

Anyone who takes the time to look at the statistics from places like the Michigan State Police or the Arizona DPS (or whichever agency maintains the records for the state you're interested in) will see that CCW holders commit fewer crimes than the general population, or, in most cases, even than the police. That fact cannot be logically argued against.

Apparently, more guns ≠ more crime. It's nice to see the media becoming cognizant of this fact, as well.

[SteveM]

20. MSM is very reticent to discuss their prohibitionism.

They have come around some in the War on Drugs, Inc. But they will be much slower to change with regards the War on Guns. Perhaps the move by MSM to actually be fair comes from the realization that they are losing readers, especially those stalwart readers who once favored gun control who have over the years seen the real results (and interrelationship) of both these prohibitionist schemes. I mean, how can MSM still run a pro-AWB editorial and not expect a vigorous and hostile response, on-line and on-paper? And that response is much more well thought out than in the past. The sheer volume and accuracy of the opposition has to give them pause.