Murder rates: Constitutional carry vs may/no issue states

Are those laws effective, Constitutional, enforceable and unable to be manipulated to prevent the sane and law abiding from owning firearms?

 

Yep. And we will let scotus decide on that

 

No you don't

 

No you are

 

which they will, especially now that it only takes a simple majority to confirm a justice. Thanks Harry!!!

 

Facts aren't racist.

 

Clearly, stronger carry laws have not led to less murder.

 

Don't y'all love having a forum where people can talk freely about removing another's civil rights? I love the USA for that.

To those wishing to remove my civil rights: go try that stuff elsewhere. My civil right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

 

Your numbers are meaningless unless you have controlled for other factors that are known to contribute to murder rates, like population density, poverty levels, etc. Right now, you have a stat, but no idea if there is causation or what direction that causation runs.

For instance, most of the states with constitutional carry are rural, sparsely populated states that had relatively low murder rates to begin with. As such, constitutional carry neither created nor solved a significant problem.

One thing your link DOES show is that a large majority of homicides are committed using guns. Of 13,455 reported homicides, 9,616 were committed with guns -- 71.5%.

Do you consider that a problem worth addressing? Or is that a small price to pay for unfettered access to guns?

It is also interesting to compare California and Texas.

-- California has 43% more people than Texas, with a population density that is roughly 2.5 times Texas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density
-- California has more stringent gun laws than Texas:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jan/15/gun-laws-united-states

California has slightly more homicides per capita than Texas -- 45.8% more homicides, vs. 43% more people. That discrepancy is more than accounted for by California's higher population density (see below)
California has fewer gun homicides per capita than Texas -- 40.7% more gun homicides, despite having 43% more people.

The takeaway from that is that gun control works: California has fewer-than-expected gun homicides, while still having a lower-than-expected overall homicide rate for its population density.

POPULATION DENSITY
The correlation between population density and crime is interesting. Basically, crime rates increase with density -- up to a point. Once you get into very high densities -- more than 500 people per square mile -- crime rates DECREASE with density. So going from rural to urban/suburban increases crime rates, but having a densely populated city like Manhattan reduces crime rates.
https://blog.nycdatascience.com/stu...r-higher-population-densities-increase-crime/

(The reason is fairly simple. Areas of medium density (more than rural, but below urban core) are dense enough for anonymity, but sparse enough to provide plenty of isolated areas where crime can occur. But in major urban areas like Manhattan, there are lots of people out and about at all hours and in all places. So it is harder to find an isolated place to commit a crime.)

California is mostly the urban-sprawl kind of density. Outside the core of a few major cities, their population density is well below the 500-people-per-square-mile threshold. So we would expect California's much higher population density to translate into significantly higher crime rates than in Texas. But we don't really see that, at least in homicides.

 

The anti's just say we need more gun control. They don't control for any other factors.

So it's a population issue?

We don't have unfettered access to guns. We have a significant number of gun laws now, and the enforcement of those is exceedingly lax. What if more than 0.02% of those who lied on a Form 4473 were found guilty? What if we quit allowing gun charges to be pled away or simply dropped? What if the punishments for those found guilty of gun-related felonies were actually enforced?

If gun control worked, then the total per capita homicide rate in California should be lower. That just shows that those who wish to kill can find another means besides a firearm.

Show the effect on California's crime rate over time that their draconian gun laws have had on California crime. Then compare that to the reduction in crime that Texas has seen over the same time period.

 

Even if this were true, it's not an excuse to make unsupported claims in response.

As I wrote further down, it's a population DENSITY issue -- up to a point. All other things being equal, sparsely populated states will have lower per capita murder rates.

But that's not the ONLY factor that affects homicide rates. And there are negatives related to lack of population -- for instance, poorer access to services, education, technology, etc. There is a reason most of our world-class art, technology, education and commerce takes place in densely-populated cities. You get infrastructure, synergies and economies of scale you just can't get in rural areas.

I didn't say you did. I was just trying to ask where TOG would draw the line, given that he prizes gun rights, but guns account for nearly three-quarters of all homicides.

This seems to contradict your "we don't have unfettered access" claim. If enforcement is exceedingly lax, isn't that essentially "unfettered access"?

What does any of that have to do with what I wrote? Nowhere in my post do I call for more gun laws, or say we need more laws instead of stricter enforcement of what we have.

Your claim is directly contradicted by the evidence. On what do you base the claim that California's homicide rate should be lower than it is? I already explained that their slightly higher per-capita rate is easily explained by population density. You seem to think that gun-control laws are the only factor at play. They're not. As my post explained. You can't just say "well, California has a higher per-capita homicide rate, therefore gun control doesn't work." You have to compare apples-to-apples -- in this case, by taking population density into account.

Uh, okay.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state#MRalpha

California's murder rate has gone from 9.1 per 100,000 people in 1996 to 4.8 in 2015.
Texas' murder rate has gone from 7.7 per 100,000 people in 1996 to 4.8 in 2015.

So California has seen a 47% reduction in the murder rate, while Texas has seen only a 37% decline.

 

What that?
Population density and other demographics, not gun control laws, leads to more/less gun-related murder?
Who knew?

 

Regardless of gun control laws? Maybe we should move people to the countryside to make them safer.

Why is this relevant to the topic at hand?

When we look at other high population density states and districts, we see that Massachusetts, with strict gun laws like California, has a much lower homicide rate than California, or at the District of Columbia, with a high density population and strict gun laws has a much higher homicide rate than California. We see that Florida, with a higher population density and much laxer gun laws has a homicide rate about the same as California.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/

There were no gun laws enacted in 1996 in California. One major piece of California gun legislation was enacted in 1991, when all gun purchases had to go through a background check. California's homicide rate fell 62% from 1991 to 2015. Texas' homicide rate fell 68% over that same time period. California had a training requirement for gun purchases from 1994 to 2003. Homicide rate fell 43%; Texas' fell 42% over that same time period.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/
http://gunwiki.net/Gunwiki/LegalCaliforniaTimeline

I'm not seeing where the data supports unequivocally that California's laws have had a measurable effect as compared to states where those laws weren't enacted.

 

I never cease to be amazed at the hoops the anti-gun side will jump through when presented with facts that destroy their positions.

 

Yeah we need national laws

 

You seem to be (deliberately?) missing the point that there are multiple factors that affect homicide rates. Population density is one. The absence/presence of gun-control laws are another.

Because I was anticipating your response above, in which you suggested moving everyone to rural areas.

Did you even read the links I provided in my original post?

Increased density leads to increased crime rates -- until density hits about 500 people per square mile, at which point increasingly density REDUCES crime.

California has a population density of 246 people per square mile and a 2013 murder rate of 4.6 per 100,000.
Florida has a population density of 364 people per square mile and a 2013 murder rate of 5.0 per 100,000.
Massachusetts has a population density of 858 people per square mile and a 2013 murder rate of 2.4 per 100,000

Given that, we would expect California and Florida to have broadly similar homicide rates based on population density, with Florida slightly higher, and Massachusetts to have a much lower rate. That is exactly what we see. Florida's rate compared to California is somewhat lower than you might expect -- but maybe crime rates don't increase linearly with density, or there is some other factor affecting Florida that accounts for the difference.

DC is a weird case, being essentially a city state, with a weird governance structure and the largest income disparity in the country, and surrounded by states with far laxer gun laws that make keeping guns out of the city a difficult proposition:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-state-in-the-country/?utm_term=.a9a13b95ec02

For those reasons, I'm not sure it's possible to properly compare DC to the rest of the country. I think it mostly proves that other factors can outweigh gun control, and that gun control is one of those things -- like health-care reform or military spending -- that works better at the national level than it does at the local level.

Um, okay. That's kind of irrelevant. As long as the time frame in question is sufficiently long, you don't need to peg your start date to a specific law, because gun control is not a single law: it is a variety of interlocking efforts. And there can be a time lag between enacting/repealing a law and the full effects being felt.

See above.

Here is the basic fact, one that doesn't rely on picking a start date: Right now, California and Texas have the same murder rate -- 4.8 murders per 100,000 people.

Given that California's population density is double that of Texas, and squarely in the middle of the range where increasing density increases the crime rate, we would expect California's murder rate to be significantly higher than Texas.

It is not. That suggests that whatever measures California is taking to prevent homicides, they are working better than whatever Texas is doing.

Further, we see that California has much less gun violence than it should, relative to Texas.

That suggests that gun-control SPECIFICALLY is working to reduce gun homicides. And the surprisingly low overall rate shows that gun deaths are not simply being replaced by other methods of murder.

Can gun control be credited for all of that? Can't say for sure without more study to account for other factors affecting the homicide rate.

But it certainly SUGGESTS that gun control in California has been effective.

 

No, if gun control worked, we'd expect to have wide disparate homicide rates between Florida and California, as California has had strict gun control laws in place for decades while Florida consistently receives grades of F for gun control by the anti-gun organizations who rate the states.

How long do we have to wait for California's laws to make it a much safer place to live than Florida is?

Or, as you've stated, it's something else entirely, given that Florida and California have a similar population density and widely disparate gun laws. Perhaps it's demographics.

But not to Florida.

Interesting claim, given that non-firearm homicides in California, as a percentage of total homicides, has increased since 2004 according to FBI data.

Not in comparison to Florida it hasn't. It suggests that Californians are more violent that residents in other states, even those of similar population densities, and it's only their draconian gun laws that have kept that state from being a bloodbath.[/quote][/quote]

 

You simply cannot draw that conclusion. Maybe gun control works, but it is a smaller factor compared to others. Maybe gun control works in some situations but not in others. Maybe certain TYPES of gun control work better than others.

Clearly, you would need to study the situation in greater depth to reconcile the data between California, Florida and Texas.

Maybe you don't have to wait. Maybe California is already safer than it would have been without gun-control laws. We don't know without more information.

Could be. Maybe Florida's rate is artificially low because it's got more than its share of retirees, who as a group commit relatively few crimes. That's the sort of demographic difference that can overwhelm the effect of something like gun control.

If you reduce gun homicides, then by definition all other forms of homicide will increase as a percentage of total homicides. If there are 10 knife murders and 90 gun murders a year, and you totally eliminate gun murders, then knife murders will go from 10% of all homicides to 100%. It's just math.

LOL. No, the data does not suggest that at all.

 

I believe this is sufficient. Just make sure that the gun control laws are Constitutional, effective, enforceable and necessary.

 

I agree with that. The trouble, of course, is that opinions differ, especially in terms of what is Constitutional and necessary.

 

Amazing, isn't it? You'd think that every SCOTUS ruling would be 9-0 given that they are all reviewing the same legal documents and established precedent. Currently, gun control laws need to follow the standards in Miller, Heller, McDonald and Caetano, among others, to be Constitutional.

 

"Check your maths."

 

Unarguable truth:
If the constitution read "the right to an abortion shall not be infringed", "infringe" would take on an entirely new meaning to the left.

 

Not true at all. An entirely new ruling could come down that changes all that

 

Anything is possible... so is an earth killing asteroid in the next few years.