Current Events » in reply to Interesting editorial
Your first reference seems to indicate that there is more to this than meets easy analysis or that can be attributed to only one cause. Note that although the gun ban was passed in 1997, the references to skyrocketing crime show up in 2001-2002, as you pointed out. Does this mean the crime rate was related to the gun law or not? Is it simply a delayed reaction? Insufficient data. Conversely, the graphs in the above article show the crime rate beginning to dip in 1994-1995, two years BEFORE the gun law was passed, so that while it may be premature to blame the gun law for the rising crime rate based on these statistics, neither is it feasible to credit the gun law with the drop in the overall crime rate shown in the charts. The data we are given in these references seems to vary all over the place, and I suspect more than a little cooking of the statistics on both sides to get the desired results. I believe that there are other factors besides guns involved in the crime rates, including immigration, and studies would have to account for this to be more accurate. So, falling back on common sense, I, of course, support the maximum number of guns in the hands of honest citizens. As Phil pointed out, no gun law is going to disarm a criminal. That's why they call them criminals.
