Guns do not cause crime - liberals do

[funkedup]

Originally posted by Dead Man Flying
I don't think this addiction is a matter of low intelligence, but perhaps it is related to a sense of helplessness (either real or imagined).

The number one indicator that someone will become an addict is that one of their parents was an addict.  It's almost certainly a genetic thing.

[Arfann]

Originally posted by lazs2
so everyone agrees?   women and big city dwellers should not be allowed to vote?
lazs

A lack of response to your suggestion means either:

A. Everyone agrees.
B. The point is too stupid to respond to.

I vote "B"

[funkedup]

PS, we're geeks

Noooooooooo we are cool guys!!!!
"We're all gonna be three little Fonzies.  And what was Fonzie?  Cool."

[MrLars]

OK...where's the stats on white collar crime and the demographics that include frequency/political affiliation/monitary amounts?

You can slant any survey by restricting the kind of data that is input.

The Libs may have a corner on violent crime but I wouldn't say that it's true of non violent crime.

How many innocent people are jailed/executed by corrupt police/prosecuters and what is their party affiliation?

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by funkedup
The number one indicator that someone will become an addict is that one of their parents was an addict.  It's almost certainly a genetic thing.

Well, that doesn't indicate genetics necessarily.  Parents' partisanship is the number one indicator of a person's partisanship later in life as well, but I doubt you'll find a party gene.  It's more a learned behavior, as addiction probably is as well.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[Dune]

As a prosecutor of juvenile crime in a poor, rural county, I see lots of indicators of enviroment causing kids to turn out one way or another.  Many of these kids never see anyone suceed.  Or perhaps even get out of their towns.  Their cousins and brothers are in jail so why not them?  It's a vicsous circle.  No hope, poor education (and what is provided is ignored because they can't see that it will help them), all lead to kids who I'll be seeing a lot of.  I can't say if it's becuase they are stupid.  I can say they are surrounded by poor, ignorant people and they are living their lives just like them.

Some come in with families that are so screwed up you just wonder why it took them so long to get into trouble with the law.  Others have what seems to be a great family system and still in up in court.

[miko2d]

Dead Man Flying: First, almost all of the factors listed by Miko (crime, illegitimacy and deviancy) linearly increase with population density.

 First of all, you are confusing cause and effect. It's the liberal welfare policies that prevent poor and ruin their families from work but facilitate breeding of the most unfit and attract the scum into high-density "cheap" housing of impersonal ilarge cities that both increases population density at thesame time.


They also linearly decrease with increasing income.  The chances are pretty good that you're not going to see a lot of petty crime among people making substantial sums of money,

 More BS. Some "red" counties are very poor but nowhere close in crime rate to urban inner-city areas.


 In a small town people know where their money is wasted on "welfare". When someone needs help, they are much more likely to obtain it through charity or some other personal way ratehr than "no-strings attached" government bureaucracy way.

 miko

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by miko2d
First of all, you are confusing cause and effect. It's the liberal welfare policies that prevent poor and ruin their families from work but facilitate breeding of the most unfit and attract the scum into high-density "cheap" housing of impersonal ilarge cities that both increases population density at thesame time.

[/b]

Which came first, the welfare or the poor inner cities?  Are you actually arguing that inner cities weren't poor and high crime before Lyndon Johnson pushed through rudimentary welfare policies?  Why do you think he was pushing for welfare in the first place?

Welfare in its original, flawed form may have exacerbated things, but to argue that welfare actually caused urbanization and high crime where they didn't already exist is ignorant.

More BS. Some "red" counties are very poor but nowhere close in crime rate to urban inner-city areas.

[/b]

And I wonder what their population densities are relative to urban areas.  Now compare those poor rural counties to other, wealthier rural counties with identical population densities and you'll find that the poorer county possesses relatively higher levels of crime almost every time.

In a small town people know where their money is wasted on "welfare". When someone needs help, they are much more likely to obtain it through charity or some other personal way ratehr than "no-strings attached" government bureaucracy way.

That's fine and dandy if it's even true (I know it's not here in North Carolina, but whatever), but it still doesn't make your point at all.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[Dune]

The amount of guns availible to the US public does not affect crime rates.

From Guncite.com

(Image removed from quote.)

Source: Data points from Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York 1997, and FBI Uniform Crime Reports. (Handgun homicide rates became available in 1966.) [More recent gun suppy figures are available here and here.]
Discussion

More guns more crime? More guns less crime? Without the entire picture, one could play all sorts of statistical games with the above data. Depending on the starting year and time frame, we could find "evidence" to support either position. However taking the long view it appears that the gun supply does not have a significant impact on total homicides or suicides. (Since 1945 the handgun per capita rate has risen by over 350% and over 260% for all firearms.)

Kleck in Targeting Guns commenting on the gun stock relationship:

"About half of the time gun stock increases have been accompanied by violence decreases, and about half the time accompanied by violence increases, just what one would expect if gun levels had no net impact on violence rates. The rate of gun suicide is correlated with trends in the size of the gun or handgun stock, but the rate of total suicide is not, supporting a substitution argument--when guns are scarce, suicide attempters substitute other methods, with no effect on the total number who die. Trends in the size of the cumulated gun or handgun stock have no consistent correlation with crime rates."
Incidentally regarding non-lethal violent crime:
Offenders were armed with a firearm in 10% of all violent crimes; a knife in 6% and some other object used as a weapon in 5%.
Offenders used or possessed a weapon in an estimated 27% of overall violent incidents, 8% of rapes/sexual assaults, 52% of robberies, and 25% of assaults.

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization in the United States, 1993, May 1996.

Why is violent crime decreasing?

The FBI lists many major contributing factors to violent crime in their 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Report.

As for the declining violent crime rate over the last several years:

"There is, at present, little consensus among criminologists, legal analysts and law enforcement officials about the explanation or causes of the decrease. Possible explanations include: increase in the incarceration rate; community based policing; changes in drug markets; aging of the criminal population; and cyclical trends in the homicide rate." (Conference announcement: Why is Crime Decreasing, Northwestern University School of Law).
Reporting a record 7-year plunge in crime rates a Los Angeles Times news article stated:

"Law enforcement experts credited a variety of factors, including a booming economy and declining unemployment, greater attention to community-based policing, more prison beds and tougher sentencing in some areas through measures such as California's 'three strikes' law. But they stressed that no one factor can explain the downward spiral" (May 17, 1999, p. A6)

Excerpted from the abstract of the Koch Crime Institute's paper, The Falling Crime Rate (April 1998):
"The consensus on the falling crime rate is that there is no singular event, policy implementation, or social action that can account for the decrease during the last six years. Individuals and organizations assessing the cause and implications of this decline are arriving at a unified theory attributing collective efforts and change as the reason or reasons."

The Chicago Tribune reported a surprising finding:
"Two widely respected scholars studying the causes of the declining U.S. crime rate, one of the intriguing social puzzles of the decade, have reached a provacative conclusion: Legalizing abortion in early 1970s eliminated many of the potential criminals of the 1990s..."

"Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donohue III, a Stanford University Law professor, conclude that legalized abortion may explain as much as half of the overall crime reduction the nation experienced from 1991 to 1997..."

"[T]he authors conclude that the women who chose abortion were those at greatest risk for bearing children who would have been most likely to commit crimes as young adults. These women are teen-agers, minorites and the poor--all groups of women who have abortions at higher rates than the overall population of women of childbearing age..."

t is not simply who has the abortion that leads to the lower crime rate...but the ability of the woman to choose better timing for childrearing that lowers criminality." (Los Angeles Daily News, August 8, 1999, pp. 1, 18)

What about the Brady Bill and other gun control measures?
Didn't the Brady Bill play a big part in reducing gun crime? See GunCite's analysis of that claim.

Four scholars discuss "Does Gun Control Work?" in PBS's moderated panel discussion, Think Tank (aired June 3, 1995).

What can be done about violent crime?

To read where enforcement of the numerous, already existing laws is working and achieving dramatic results in reducing gun related violence and homicide, without additional gun control laws, see enforcing the laws we already have.

[Dune]

PS, I'm not taking a position on abortion by posting this.  What I am showing is that guns do not equal crime.  I'll let the sociologists, criminologists and all the other -ologists argue about why.

[Sixpence]

Originally posted by Steve
It's no mystery really.  Poorly raised and educated people are more prone to violence and to vote democratic.

Or fly dweebstangs:p

Lol, I know, i'll pay for that.

Your right. I was raised by a single mom(god bless her, the things we put her through), and was always taught(is that a word?) right from wrong from a very young age. "God sees everything you do, and you can lie to me, but you can't lie to him, he is with you all the time". It must have worked. I grew up in a poor part of revere by the beach(which is now prime real estate) and knew alot of shady characters. The car theives even had their own union, CTA(Car Thieves of America). But I always knew better than to get involved with that and alot of the stuff that went on. And I think it had to with an involved parent. That and having the brains to know better.

[funkedup]

Originally posted by Dead Man Flying
Well, that doesn't indicate genetics necessarily.  Parents' partisanship is the number one indicator of a person's partisanship later in life as well, but I doubt you'll find a party gene.  It's more a learned behavior, as addiction probably is as well.

-- Todd/Leviathn

I should have been more clear.  There are a lot of indications that the addiction/alcoholism tendencies are genetic.  Some psych friends of mine worked for a few years on a project regarding this, and talking with them convinced me.

Basically you have a reward center in your brain which motivates you to feed it.  Normally it rewards you for doing survival related things.  Eating, sleeping, screwing, etc.  People with "the gene" have a very sensitive reward center.  They get a little bit of the drug and their reward center goes nuts.  The brain wants more, and motivates them (chemical) to get it.  The motivation is at such a basic and strong level that it surpasses the motivation to do the normal survival activities.

Obviously there are external factors (environment) which influence whether people try the drugs for the first time.  But for the people with "the gene", once they try it and get a little momentum going, they get hooked far more easily than a "normal" person.  And once all of the reward/survival systems in the brain are messed up like that, the only thing that can fix it is detox and recovery (e.g. 12 step).

[Dune]

I agree that there are some crimes that appear genetic.  Especially after watching a co-worker convict a juvenile who was a third-generation child molestor.

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by funkedup
I should have been more clear.  There are a lot of indications that the addiction/alcoholism tendencies are genetic.  Some psych friends of mine worked for a few years on a project regarding this, and talking with them convinced me.

Cool.  I have no problems with the idea that propensity toward addiction is genetic.  Couple that with an environment that breeds addiction, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[SirLoin]

Originally posted by funkedup
Noooooooooo we are cool guys!!!!
"We're all gonna be three little Fonzies.  And what was Fonzie?  Cool."

Sit on it Funked.