Guns Save Lives – by Dan Cannon
The FBI has released a report on crime rates for 2013. The results aren’t very surprising. Crime dropped – again, just like it has for many years of the last two decades.
One interesting thing to point out about 2013 though is that by all measurable standards it was the highest sales year for guns and ammunition in history (possibly outside of wartime sales to the government).
That’s right, even as gun sales soared to all time highs, crime continued to fall. Of course, to those of us who actually follow the news and crime stats this is no surprise.
According to the reports, 2013 saw a fairly substantial drop of 4.4% in violent crime and 4.1% in property crime.
Since 2009, the number of reported violent offenses has dropped form 1.325 million to under 1.175 million in 2013.
From the report:
The FBI released Crime in the United States, 2013 today, which shows that the estimated number of violent crimes in 2013 decreased 4.4 percent when compared with 2012 figures, and the estimated number of property crimes decreased 4.1 percent. There were an estimated 1,163,146 violent crimes reported to law enforcement last year, along with an estimated 8,632,512 property crimes.
The crime statistics report, issued by the Bureau’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, contains voluntarily submitted data from 18,415 city, county, state, tribal, campus, and federal law enforcement agencies on specific crimes brought to their attention. They include the violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
Based on this data alone it’s impossible to say that the presence of more legally owned firearms is the reason for a decrease in crime. However, it is clear that an increase in legally owned firearms has certainly not caused an increase in crime, something the anti-gun lobby likes to portray as true.
Well, TPTB can’t use gun violence as an excuse to infringe, that’s obvious!
Or are the reports of violent crime down because no one wants to deal with the psycho cops?