Texas statistics

[2nd Amendment]

Got another Lefty on Phlog who just popped up with the massaged statistics about how Texas CCW holders are arrested at a rate 81% higher than the sheep for violent offenses. There was a thorough rebuttal of this somewhere that I kept for a while anticipating someone would pipe up like this. Typically, they finally did it a couple days after my main comp took a crap again and so I have nothing. Anyone remember the story on this? I'm pretty certain it came from HCI and was based solely on arrests and "crimes" like carrying in to a place marked no carry.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Check out TSRAs web page ( http://www.tsra.com/ ) - they have a rebuttal to this study. You can also go to Guncite ( http://www.guncite.com/ ) that has an entire section on this issue including direct links to the figures themselves.

I recommend you show him the actual figures (which show a large number of dismissals) and ask why the anti group feels a need to distort those figures to imply that CCW holders are responsible for some sort of crime wave.

 

[2nd Amendment]

Thx. For the life of me, though, I can't find the section on GunCite?

 

[foghornl]

......ask why the anti group feels a need to distort those figures to imply that CCW holders are responsible for some sort of crime wave.....

Because the TRUTH would not further their agenda.

Lieing Scumbags

 

[Monkeyleg]

Here's three paragraphs from our group's legislator brochure that addresses the VPC numbers:

"5,314 CCW permit holders have been arrested for crimes including murder in Texas. This argument is the result of a study by the Violence Policy Center. The VPC is a gun control advocacy group that releases dozens of studies annually.

The VPC used information freely available to the public from the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrive at their statistics. While their numbers are correct, they fail to distinguish between arrests and convictions. More importantly, they fail to compare the arrest rates for Texas permit holders to the public at large.

The best indicator of whether licensees pose an unusual threat to public safety is the number of licenses revoked. License revocations most often result from offenses having nothing to do with weapons, such as drunk driving, credit card abuse or even failure to repay student loans. In Texas the average revocation rate is fifteen one-hundredths of one percent annually. (Oklahoma's annual average revocation rate is ten one-hundredths of one percent, and Florida's is twelve one-thousandths of one percent). To put these figures into perspective, FBI Uniform Crime Report numbers show that five percent of the general public is arrested each year for offenses for which CCW permit holders would suffer revocation."

Where the VPC comes up with the 81% figure (last year it was 60% or so) is by taking various "weapons " offenses and creating their own Weapon Offense category (if they just published the stats as provided by the Texas DPS, they couldn't fudge numbers quite so easily). Included in that category are two offenses: failure or refusal to display a permit, and carrying where prohibited. Both are offenses for which pretty much only permit holders are charged. (Those without permits who carry in a prohibited place are charged with illegal concealed carry). Take those two offenses out of the numbers and--ta da!--permit holders commit weapons offenses far less often than the general public.