Crime up; guns blamed
Murders, robberies and aggravated assaults in the United States increased last year, spurring an overall rise in violent crime for the first time since 2001, according to
FBI data.Murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005. That would be the most since 1998 and the largest percentage increase in 15 years.
Murders jumped from 272 to 334 in Houston, a 23 percent spike; from 330 to 377 in Philadelphia, a 14 percent rise; and from 131 to 144 in Las Vegas, a 10 percent increase.
Despite the national numbers, Detroit, Los Angeles and New York were among several large cities that saw the number of murders drop.
The overall increase in violent crime was modest, 2.5 percent, which equates to more than 1.4 million crimes. Nevertheless, that was the largest percentage increase since 1991.
As to why, the experts seem to think it’s because cuts in free government money and the NRA:
Criminal justice experts said the statistics reflect the nation’s complacency in fighting crime, a product of dramatic declines in the 1990s and the abandonment of effective programs that emphasized prevention, putting more police officers on the street and controlling the spread of guns.
“We see that budgets for policing are being slashed and the federal government has gotten out of that business,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. “Funding for prevention at the federal level and many localities are down and the (National Rifle Association) has renewed strength.”
Is this person really intimating that the NRA’s activity has increased gun crime? I’ve seen no evidence that the NRA has done anything pro-criminal nor has it done anything to loosen restrictions on the availability of guns. The Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Justice have found that gun laws have no effect on crime.
I’m sure this is the impetus to blame the expiration of the assault weapons ban.
Update: AC encourages you to contact Mr. Fox. Mr. Fox has a whole heaping list of anti-gun credentials.
Update 2: David Hardy:
Hmm… NRA was pretty strong in 2004, too, when homicide rates fell by 2.4%.
And, strangely, in 2005, the FBI report notes, homicide rates fell by 3.9% in nonmetropolitan areas where gun ownership is highest.
And the lowest 2005 homicide increase came in the West, where gun ownship is also highest… 3.2% there, compared to 5.2% in the Northeast.
