TexasCHLforum.com

Thanks to Charles and Allison. I will peruse it this evening.

jlangton wrote:The entire point of my post,and the source of my interest was that this simple proves the "blood will run like rivers in the streets" attitudes that the gun-grabbing liberals have about handgun licenses is wrong and lacks credibility. JL

I agree that this data shows that the CHL program did not increase shootings as predicted by some people. I was just trying to show an example of how the same data can be used by different people to draw different conclusions. This has been discussed recently.

http://www.texasshooting.com/TexasCHL_F ... cs#p199442

Sorry, for the hijack.

Most people on this forum think that CHL holders have a lower crime rate than non-CHL holders. They probably attribute this to the background check required to get a CHL. I am just guessing, but I believe that most of the Texas population could pass the background check, if they applied for the license. I don't know the percentage, but I would think that it would be at least 80%. That is why comparing CHL vs non-CHL is misleading. I think you could conclude that most people in Texas are law-abiding and that repeat offenders account for most crimes.

Russell wrote:You should present those statistics with the total number of crimes committed by non-license holders.

I was not comparing two groups, only that there was a trend of increasing crime rate.

Rare events generally do not show trends.

That is why I was looking at total crime, not a specific crime.

Russell wrote:Population of Texas in 2006 was estimated at 23,507,783.

Remember that you need to be 21 years old to get a CHL. The crime rate for people between 0-10 years old is very low. Removing some of the very young population from your calculations would show a higher crime rate. As SeamusTx stated, people under 17 years old are rarely charged. That would also change the numbers.

I plotted this data in Excel and it shows a trend towards an increase in crimes.