Need some input here

[Mike from Texas]

I'm involved in a discussion on another board about carry vs non carry. This was posted by another member who is LEO because I had mentioned that statistically places with liberal gun laws typically have lower crime rates than places with restrictive laws. He threw up this response. My Google Fu is weak on this and I needed some feedback from you guys as I know several folks study this kind of stuff. I know this member is not anti gun so I do not feel he has that agenda to push.

Let's look at some hard numbers from the FBI. Let's try the crime rates for Houston with its fairly open gun laws against such liberal bastions as New York, NY where carrying is almost unthinkable.

I will post for the years of 2006, 2007 and 2008 which are the latest year of complete stats that I could find.

Houston__________________2006___2007___2008
Overall major crime index______659___631____573
Murders per 100,000 people_____18____16_____13
Robberies per 100,000 people___548___529____473

NY, NY___________________2006___2007___2008
Overall major crime index_____268____253____245
Murders per 100,000 people_____7_____6_______6
Robberies per 100,000 people__287___265_____265

TOTAL MURDERS IN 2008
Houston with a population of 2.2 million...... 294 murders
NY,NY with a population of 8.3 million.......523 murders

So NY, NY has 60% more murders while having almost 400% more population. Hmmmm.......

Again,

Statistically NY, NY has less half the crime rate, half the homicides and half the robberies as Houston. Which has the restrictive gun laws?

I also looked at Chicago, IL where the now famous McDonald case is in front of the USSC. A place where it is illegal to even possess a pistol in the home, much less carry it. Chicago has almost identical crime stats as Houston. Their crime rates are almost mirror images of each other. One has no pistol ownership in the city and one allows carry with a CHL. Why are they the same in stats? You would think that Chicago would be way worse than Houston with pistols not being allowed and everyone in Houston knows that pistols are allowed and often carried.

So in the several years since Texas has gone pretty much to concealed carry available to anyone that doesn't have a criminal record, why does NY have half the crime rate?

Now those stats don't prove that open carry or even concealed carry is bad.... but they don't hardly show that the ability to carry is good either.... or per the factual data that you asked for.

[davidtx]

I'm far from an expert here. I've been doing some research because of an exchange with one of my liberal friends (and his liberal friends) on Facebook. I believe that the argument is that introducing liberal carry laws causes the crime rate to decrease. To see this for Houston, you'd need to look at the data from before CHL was introduced, not just the last 3 years. Comparing Houston and NYC is also problematic in that NYC introduced a major crackdown on crime in the 90's. I'm not aware of a similar effort in Houston.

If you want to make your head spin around, just go look at the reviews for John Lott's book "More Guns, Less Crime" (http://tinyurl.com/yfpgpvc). I'm probably going to buy it and try to wade through all the arguments at some point, but its going to be a daunting task.

[TDDude]

One has to be careful when throwing around stats. For example, the Houston murder rate went up over 300 percent after Katrina and that has to do with the aftermath of that storm and nothing to do with CHL. The drug gangs that were primarily in N.O. are now here. That too has nothing to do with guns. There are lots of other examples and this applies to everything.

The point is, only a fool believes that gun laws keep guns away from criminals.

[Scott in Houston]

As was implied above, the only real srat that matters is a before and after CHL of the SAME location. Comparing one city to another is stupid. Let's see... We could compare Katy to any Texas border town. They both allow CHL, but is crime similar? Of course not. And that comparison is just as invalid and a logical fallacy as comparing NY to Houston. Apples and oranges.

FYI, highest gun deaths per capita is in CA with the most restrictive laws in all of the U.S.

[C-dub]

Wasn't there also some evidence somewhere that NYC police were under-reporting crimes to keep their stats down? Or is that somewhere else or everywhere else?

Edit:
I found that it was not just limited to the public. Schools have also been found or accused of underreporting crimes, possibly to not scare away applicants.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manh ... Ibct3KV62N" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/sc ... rting.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Arti ... -down.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.vdare.com/stix/040526_crime.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[GeekwithaGun]

Wasn't there also some evidence somewhere that NYC police were under-reporting crimes to keep their stats down? Or is that somewhere else or everywhere else?

Yes I also heard that NYC cops were not reporting or changing the classification of certain crimes

[C-dub]

I also found that Houston schools have also been accused of underreporting crimes.

[seamusTX]

First of all, you know that arguing on an internet forum won't change anyone's mind. The other guy will pull out ever more statistics and twisted logic.

It's impossible to draw a correlation between two variables like the murder rate and prevalence of legal concealed carry. There are too many other factors like unemployment, poverty rates, the number of LEOs, and how they are deployed.

John Lott has done more work on this topic than anyone else. He is qualified to do it. Nevertheless, some economists and criminologists agree with him and some have found fault with his arguments.

As you noticed, New York City is an anomaly among big cities. It has a much lower per-capita rate of homicide than other cities with similar demographics and gun laws.

These are the murder rates for 2008 from the FBI Uniform Crime Report:

New York City_____6
Chicago_________18
Wash, D.C. ______31
Newark, NJ_______23

Houston_________13
Miami___________16
Seattle___________5

New Jersey does not have a total handgun ban, but it is quite restrictive.

Houston and Miami are similar in demographics and gun laws.

Seattle has less restrictive concealed carry laws than Houston or Miami, and its murder rate is much lower. The demographics of Seattle are quite different.

I didn't look up Alaska, New Hampshire, or Vermont. They have nearly unrestricted conceled carry and much lower crime rates (typical of rural states).

Raw homicide rates are also too crude a number to make use of. Most homicides are between people who know each other, whether domestic or gang- or drug-related. In many of the latter cases, both parties are illegally armed.

The bottom line is not whether concealed carry reduces crime on a statistical basis. It is whether individuals who choose to carry weapons legally can protect themselves from criminals whom the government cannot prevent from carrying weapons.

- Jim

[gigag04]

One of the biggest gangs my dept deals with is of hispanic origin. I wonder how big of a problem the NE has with this?

[A-R]

One of the biggest gangs my dept deals with is of hispanic origin. I wonder how big of a problem the NE has with this?

I was going to mention something about this. Houston and much of the southwest has a HUGE Mexican narco gang problem that NYC doesn't have. Also, immigrants going into NYC wait patiently at Ellis Island while those entering Houston just swam across the Rio Grande a few days before (yeah yeah, I know this isn't exactly an accurate portrait - but it is a caricature intended to make point).

Of course, the only stat that matters is this:

If someone attacks me in NYC I have a LOWER PROBABILITY of effectively repeling/stopping that attack than I do if the same person attacks me in the same manner in any state that allows civilian concealed carry. Period.

[seamusTX]

New York City has Puerto Rican, Mexican, Salvadoran, Dominican, and other Hispanic gangs, the Sicilian Mafia, Russians, Irish gangsters, you name it. See page 16 of this document: http://www.fbi.gov/publications/ngta2009.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

[A-R]

New York City has Puerto Rican, Mexican, Salvadoran, Dominican, and other Hispanic gangs, the Sicilian Mafia, Russians, Irish gangsters, you name it. See page 16 of this document: http://www.fbi.gov/publications/ngta2009.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

Agreed, but are they as active or as violent in the last few years as the major Mexican narco gangs have been in Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Phoenix, and the LA/San Diego areas?

Could very well be that NYC police are just doing a better job of controlling their gang problem (I honestly have no idea), but you don't hear as much about gang problems up there as you did 10 or 20 or so years ago.

[seamusTX]

Could very well be that NYC police are just doing a better job of controlling their gang problem ...

That is what the NYPD claims; and they probably are telling the truth, or not stretching it much.

NYC has another phenomenon that is not common, though not unique in American cities: Areas that used to be slums so bad that the cops did not want to go there are now gentrified low-crime areas. In the case of NYC, the lower east side and parts of Harlem and Brooklyn have gone that route. The low-lifes who used to plague those areas moved to suburbs that are sliding downhill.

I don't pretend to know that much about NYC, but I saw the same kind of thing happening in Chicago in the 1990s.

- Jim

[CompVest]

It is important to know what is reported as murder. Suicides are quite often reported as murder as an example of why it isn't a good idea to put too much reliance of stats.

[seamusTX]

Some suicides may be reported as homicides, but that rate should be more or less constant in different areas.

The UCR statistics that I stated above are for all homicides, not just homicides committed with firearms.

You don't see many suicides that are shot in the back, shot multiple times, stabbed, strangled, beaten, bound and gagged, stuffed in the trunks of burned cars, or run over intentionally with vehicles.

- Jim