………but liars can figure. Actually, they’re not lying; they are choosing their data so carefully that it will give the desired result. And they omit data that does not support their cause. The information below comes from an article by John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Connecticut’s Gun Law NOT Responsible for Drop in Homicides
A study in the American Journal of Public Health states Connecticut’s 1995 gun licensing law reduced firearm homicide rates by 40 percent. It is true that from 1995 to 2005 the firearm homicide rate in Connecticut fell from 3.13 to 1.88 per 100,000 people. That’s a 40% drop over a ten-year period. But it didn’t happen because of the licensing law. Not mentioned in the study is that in the two years before the licensing law went into effect (1993-1995) the homicide rate fell from 4.5 to 3.13 per 100,000 residents. That’s more than a 30 percent drop in just two years! They homicide rate was already falling in Connecticut as it was the rest of the country. After the passage of the gun licensing law, the rate of decline slowed.
Considering it is 2015, why did they measure the change from 1995 to 2005? Why didn’t they measure it too 2013 or 2014? Because if the change is measured over a period just one year longer, between 1995 and 2006, Connecticut’s overall firearm homicide rate fell just 16 percent. Just adding one year, a year when homicides jumped up, changes the overall rate considerably. By comparison, the homicide rate for the U.S. as a whole fell 27% and the rest of the Northeast fell 22% over the same period. If Connecticut’s firearm homicide rate didn’t fall as much as the rest of the country, why should we think that the licensing law was so beneficial?
It’s plain to see why the authors of the study chose to use only Connecticut’s data, even though nine other States and the District of Columbia have had similar laws for some time. Massachusetts started its licensing rules in 1998 and has seen a large rise in firearm homicides relative to both the rest of the United States and other states in the Northeast. Between 1998 and 2010, Massachusetts’s firearm homicide rate soared by 88 percent. Michigan only recently got rid of its licensing law in 2012, but firearm homicides fell 15 percent the next year. After Missouri made it easier to buy a handgun in 2007, the growth in murders was cut in half.
Why did the authors chose to ignore other violent crimes and focus only on homicides? It becomes clear quickly when you look at the data on violent crimes. Relative to the rest of the United States, Connecticut’s overall violent crime rate as well as its robbery and aggravated assault rates were clearly falling prior to the prior to the 1995 law, but started rising afterwards.
In speaking of this study, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) noted that a gun licensing system was no different than requiring a license to drive a car. But a closer analogy would be comparing a driver’s license to a concealed handgun permit. People don’t need a license to drive on private property; you only need a license when you take it out in public. You also don’t need a license to carry a handgun on your own property, just if you are doing it in public.
Michael Bloomberg and the Joyce Foundation funded the research for this study. You can be darn sure that if the two biggest supporters of gun control pay for a study, it’s going to support their cause.
More information can be found at: Crime Prevention Research Center
Tons of raw Statistical data can be found at the FBI’s website: FBI Crime Reports