strict gun laws = less crime

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Alan Fud

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In a debate with an anti and had this thrown at me ... ... Can anyone help me with a counter-argument?
 
Easy argument to counter (statistics 101): correlation does not imply causation.
 
my thoughts exactly

My stats professor did an equation where the number of prostitutes in a large city was directly proportional to the number of baptist ministers in the same city. Larger the city, more baptist ministers, more prostitutes. Smaller city, less baptist ministers, less prostitutes. Is there a relation? Not hardly. Like mikeBB said...just cause the numbers are there, doesn't mean that there is a relation.

Justin
 
Look at the crime rates over time. Typically when strict anti-self defense legislation is enacted (I say self defense as that includes non-firearm bans on knives, mace, etc) crime rate dips a bit, then grows at a faster then normal rate. See Washington DC and the UK.

In cases where self defense legislation is unchanged the crime rate grows or falls at about the national average rate.

Certain areas may be higher then national average, but usually it is due to economical and population density factors and not the amount of weapons available.

Basically a single year snapshot is more telling about other factors then it is about gun control.
 
Compare Chicago and Boston to Phoenix and Washington D.C. and San Francisco and San Jose

Phoenix looks overall better than either Boston or Chicago. Washington DC, with arguably the strictest gun laws in the country, looks worse than Boston or Chicago. Chicago and Boston each looks worse than either SF or SJ.

And who says California laws are not strict? Brady rates us A-! :barf:
 
Its easy to throw out stuff like that when you're cherry picking city comparisons.

For every one of theirs, you can provide your own comparison that refutes it.
 
Who cares?

The 2nd Amendment is primarily about defending yourself from the government, not common criminals. Anyone who focuses on common crime is missing the bigger picture.
 
awb and all sorts of stuff vs not
http://www.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=Philadelphia&s1=PA&c2=newark&s2=NJ
http://www.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=Phoenix&s1=AZ&c2=Newark&s2=NJ
hell just compare things to Washington DC
http://www.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=little+rock&s1=AR&c2=Washington&s2=DC
http://www.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=Phoenix&s1=AZ&c2=Washington&s2=DC

basically you can pick on high crime cities in very anti states, and compare them to cities in pro gun states. You can pick on cities like Compton CA and Camden NJ.

but the end is the same, it's difficult to compare two cities because so many other factors are different. What you need to try to do is look at how a city changes over time, the gun laws as well as the socioeconomic state of the city.
 
he's gotta be right just ask washington d.c., who has had a gunban for 30 years now, and they have no guncrime there at all , now.
 
A few ideas:

- Look at the unemployment, average income, and other economic factors. When times are rough people get desperate and are more likely to steal.

- Consider the location of prisons and number of inmates in a given city. Prisoners tend to not travel far from where they have been released. These people tend to fall back to old habits, ones that got them in prison to begin with.

- I've heard even the weather can have an effect on crime. People tend to spend more time outside when and where the weather is pleasant. The more people interact the higher chance of some of them doing bad things to each other. Here's a single sample point... I remember hearing on the radio that on the coldest day of the winter the Des Moines, Iowa police didn't have one phone call. Des Moines is a city of 200,000 in a metro area of 500,000, about the size of Little Rock. Arkansas is a "shall issue" state, Iowa is a "may issue" state with Polk County (where Des Moines sits) having a nearly shall issue policy on firearm licenses.

- Size and effectiveness of police force, laws (mandatory minimums for example), etc. Essentially, how does the city handle crime.

- Education level of the population. While it may not cut down on crime education might make more white collar criminals, people that perform less violent crime but walk away with just as much cash.
 
Being they don't show numbers in their graphs and I have to mull through all the data to see the relevant numbers myself, I would not grade this link with much more than a C, maybe a C+.

From the person arguing with you, he/she would be failed. You don't cherry pick in statistics, it's not sound math. I'm guessing he/she was a liberal arts college type that stumbled on this application and then found what they wanted. :rolleyes:
 
also, in the first link, legal gun ownership is way harder in chicago than it is in LA, but chicago has a higher murder rate. So they ruined they're own conclusion.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. In Chicago, handguns are freakin' illegal and California also makes it difficult to legally get a handgun. Plus, the first link showed both Chicago and LA have murder rates roughly twice the national average, despite extremely strict gunlaws in both places. The best these links can do for you is show how gun laws have nothing to do with crime rate.

Why would they send you a link that invalidated their own argument? Is your debate opponent another member of THR just fooling with you?
 
How about Chicago to Houston which is much more similar in size? Pre-Katrina refugees Houston had a much lower crime rate than Chicago. Post Katrina it is still lower just not so much.

But compare DC to just about anywhere and you get the word picture.
 
DCs gun ban was an abject failure with DC being the murder capital of the US ten of those years, now the lower court has ruled it unconstitutional and Scotus refuses to hear the city's appeal.
 
Here in the land of VA Tech carrying a gun on campus is against school policy.
Did it work?
Now the talk is making it law.
I’m sure that will work much better. Of course if they would just outlaw murder… :banghead:
 
Does LA have more strict gun laws than Chicago? Chicago requires a FOID card and there are no gun shops in the area, also you cannot own a handgun in the city or have more than a 10 round magazine yet i'm showing Chicago for the most part has more murder, rape and crime than LA. I thought LA only had restrictions on so called "Assault Weapons" and magazine capacity, are handguns banned in LA? I know criminals in Chicago favored handguns mainly because they were more portable and concealable.
 
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess, even to crimes it did not commit.

Throw these stats back in your anti's face:

Little Rock is 40.4 percent black.

Indianianapolis: 25.7

Boston: 25.3

New York: 26.6

Does anybody see a pattern here? It is a fairly well known but ugly secret that violent crime is much much higher in black communities. Any murder stats that do not compensate for this are useless.
 
Its easy to throw out stuff like that when you're cherry picking city comparisons.
Click to expand...

Isn't that the fundamental problem with playing the stat slinging games - both sides cherry pick.

Mike
 
Since we have been having so much rain and it has been cooler, I have noticed a decline in the number of pirates :)
 
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