Correlation
John Lott says that the murder rate drops as carry permits rise:
The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans now have permits to carry concealed weapons, up from 4.5 million in 2007. The 146 percent increase has come even as both murder and violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.
Here’s a link to the study.
July 10th, 2014 at 4:18 pm
Allow me to fix that last sentence;
“The 146 percent increase resulted in a drop in violent crime rates of 22 percent.”
Why can’t we come out and say it like it is?
July 10th, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Almost 5%? That sounds about right, using the Stats that Sean D. Sorrentino was compiling on various States. I guesstimated that there were about 238,000,000 eligible Citizens in the United States who could get a CHP (if all the States were Fair and Reasonable), once one eliminated the Underage, the Felons, etc.
The next Question is, how many Carry Every Day? I think MAYBE 50%. I’ve heard that a lot of People get their CHPs “Just in Case,” yet rarely carry.
But that still means that that there should be about 5 Million “Good Guys and Gals” out on the Streets every day with some sort of Firearm on or about them.
Every Day. Which is, I believe more than the Military, Police and Private Security Combined.
So, where’s all the “Blood in the Streets?” Oh, it’s in “Gun-Free Chicago.” And in the VolksRepubliks. I see, never mind. Silly me.
July 10th, 2014 at 4:57 pm
Lyle,
Because correlation does not equal causation and claiming it does hands the anti’s an opening to argue that issue, rather than forcing them to admit that *their* claim, that “more guns equals more crime” is impossible given the data.
There is no reason to overreach on our arguments, we start with a fundamental right and don’t have to justify anything. But, undecided people -like- us to support our argument, so we should do so using claims the anti’s cannot disprove nor try to distract from.
Never hand your opponent an “out” on a silver platter. You waste time defending and confuse the undecided audience we need on our side.
We just need a “win”, not a Germany-Brazil style beat-down.
July 10th, 2014 at 9:38 pm
Matthew beat me to it.
Saying two things happened one after the other or simultaneously does not indicate one caused the other. Claiming that, without a preponderance of evidence to support it, is not a good idea.
July 11th, 2014 at 8:23 am
Fox Butterfield would phrase it, “Despite crime rates continuing to decrease, more and more Americans are carrying weapons for self defense.”
July 11th, 2014 at 10:05 pm
There is no correlation statistic cited in the study nor is the fitness of the model or the confidence interval reported. Two lines that cross are meaningless without statistical support.