Jump in crime in Houston

[billfromtx]

If its true, I'm sure its partially due to all of our friends from lowsyanna who showed up during the Katrine gaggle and decided that Texas was the land-O-plenty and stayed!!!!!!!!!!!!

[OldCannon]

Care to find the source on that? I'm not doubting it (if I were a BG, I'd be more scared of armed victims... they're already on the scene, and they're not bound by PD policies & regulations), but it'd be nice to be able to tell people where they can find the stats themselves if they don't believe me.

And the Googlizer spake:
In a survey of criminals (FELONS IN PRISON), Professors James D. Wright and Peter Rossi of the Social and Demographic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts conducted a study in 1982 and 1983 paid for by the U.S. Department of Justice. (Professor Rossi was a former President of the American Sociological Association.) The researchers interviewed 1,874 imprisoned felons in ten states.

• 88% of the criminals surveyed by Wright and Rossi agreed with the statement that, “A criminal who wants a handgun is going to get one.” (these felons are not obeying the gun laws and the anti gun politicians cannot figure this out!)
  81% of interviewees agreed that a “smart criminal” will try to determine if a potential victim is armed.
  74% indicated that burglars avoided occupied dwellings, because of fear of being shot.
  57% said that most criminals feared armed citizens more than the police.
  40% of the felons said that they had been deterred from committing a particular crime, because they believed that the potential victim was armed.
  57% of the felons who had used guns themselves said that they had encountered potential victims who were armed.
  34% of the criminal respondents said that they had been scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed citizen.

Based on this government-funded research by Wright and Rossi, it would appear to a reasonable and prudent man that armed citizens do have a deterrent effect on crime.


Amazon linky:http://amzn.com/0202305422

[fecnik]

Similarly, Pearland's violent crime rate climbed by 17 to 146 per 100,000 people

awesome...