[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Danzig

violent crime is way down, lower than it's been in decades. and yeah, when people hear of things like this, the first thing they think of is defending themselves. after 9/11 gun sales went thru the roof-but there was no corresponding increase in crime.


"The last time the crime rate for serious crime – murder, rape, robbery, assault – fell to these levels, gasoline cost 29 cents a gallon and the average income for a working American was $5,807.




That was 1963.

In the past 20 years, for instance, the murder rate in the United States has dropped by almost half, from 9.8 per 100,000 people in 1991 to 5.0 in 2009. Meanwhile, robberies were down 10 percent in 2010 from the year before and 8 percent in 2009.


The declines are not just a blip, say criminologists. Rather, they are the result of a host of changes that have fundamentally reversed the high-crime trends of the 1980s. And these changes have taken hold to such a degree that the drop in crime continued despite the recent recession.

Because the pattern "transcends cities and US regions, we can safely say crime is down," says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. "We are indeed a safer nation than 20 years ago."


and here's this, from an article about gun violence:

http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/28/gu...gun-ownership/


Despite increases in gun sales, gun crimes continued to decrease in the United States for the fourth straight year in 2010, according to the FBI.

The FBI recently released its Crime in The United States statistics for 2010. Overall, murders in the U.S. have decreased steadily since 2006, dropping from 15,087 to 12,996. Firearms murders — which made up 67 percent of all murders in the U.S. in 2010 — have followed this trend, decreasing by 14 percent.

At the same time that firearms murders were dropping, gun sales were surging. In 2009, FBI background checks for guns increased by 30 percent over the previous year, while firearms sales in large retail outlets increased by almost 40 percent. The number of applications for concealed carry permits jumped across the country as well.


and note points in that article such as this:


Broken down by firearms murder rate per 100,000 people, the District of Columbia is number one, with 16 firearms murders per 100,000 people in the District.

D.C. also topped the list of firearm robberies per 100,000 people with 255.98.

Yet D.C. arguably has the tightest gun laws in the country. Although an outright ban on handguns was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2008, legislators ensured the new regulations for obtaining a registered handgun would be anything but easy.


or


The top three states for gun murders in 2010 were, in order, California, Texas and New York. While Texas has lax gun control laws, California and New York are among the strictest gun-control states in the country.

SO guns don't kill people, laws do!!!

I like it.