We all know that guns are an evil talisman that makes people do bad things. Why crime-ridden cities would be completely safe if they just got rid of those darn guns. Take Chicago, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. If only the guns laws were stricter, Chicago would see a drop in crime as big as say … uh … wait … Detroit?
Fed up with crime, some armed Detroiters have developed itchy trigger-fingers — and Police Chief James Craig said lawbreakers are getting the message.
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Detroit has experienced 37 percent fewer robberies in 2014 than during the same period last year, 22 percent fewer break-ins of businesses and homes, and 30 percent fewer carjackings. Craig attributed the drop to better police work and criminals being reluctant to prey on citizens who may be carrying guns.
“Criminals are getting the message that good Detroiters are armed and will use that weapon,” said Craig, who has repeatedly said he believes armed citizens deter crime. “I don’t want to take away from the good work our investigators are doing, but I think part of the drop in crime, and robberies in particular, is because criminals are thinking twice that citizens could be armed.
“I can’t say what specific percentage is caused by this, but there’s no question in my mind it has had an effect,” Craig said.
Craig has been making statements like this for a while and drawing erratic fire from the gun-grabber lobby, which has decided, in the face of numerous studies showing that gun ownership reduces crime, that damn the facts, guns cause violence.
“Our position is, more guns equals more crime,” [Coalition to Stop Gun Violence director] Horowitz said “These are complicated issues, but the empirical evidence shows the states with the lowest gun ownership and the tightest restrictions have the fewest instances of gun violence.
This is, strictly speaking, not true. If you look at the correlation between gun ownership and total violence, you’ll find it’s weak. There are huge outliers — much of the Midwest has high gun ownership and low levels of violence. And some of the most violent cities in America have tight gun control laws and low levels of gun ownership (Washington DC, Chicago). The worst you can say is that the literature is mixed on whether gun ownership prevents violence. The more accurate statement is that a significant amount of research shows that gun ownership does, in fact, prevent criminal violence. Just ask the people trying to restore some semblance of order to Detroit.
On Twitter, I’ve been referring to gun control as The Left’s Global Warming. This was in response to an article by Paul Krugman in which he said this:
Yes, liberals are sometimes subject to bouts of wishful thinking. But can anyone point to a liberal equivalent of conservative denial of climate change, or the “unskewing” mania late in the 2012 campaign, or the frantic efforts to deny that Obamacare is in fact covering a lot of previously uninsured Americans?
I listed a bunch of things liberals are in denial about but gun control is becoming more and more the issue where the dementia is most pronounced. I have written a series of articles on my own blog (here, here, here, here, here and here) illustrating the lengths the gun grabbers will go to make their point. It includes every trick in the denial book. They cherry-pick, they misquote, they obfuscate, they dismiss massive studies that dispute their points in favor of small ones that support them, they accuse researchers like John Lott of fraud while ignoring the proven documented fraud on their own side. They say things like “Australia banned guns and saw a sharp reduction in violence” while ignoring that the United States liberalized its gun laws and saw a sharper decline in violence. They excuse Chicago’s explosion of violence despite strict gun laws by saying guns are being brought in from other cities … as if the cities that have not seen an explosion of violence are situated on Mars with no neighboring cities of their own.
The fall in Detroit’s crime is not entirely due to civilian gun ownership. But if we believed the hysteria of the gun grabbers, all those guns in the hands of civilians should we making things worse, not better. It’s good to see one policeman who actually gets it and isn’t afraid to let people know.
