New (to me) Gun Blog
Via ridefast, comes The Wandering Minstrel. Despite his left-leaning bias, he asks:
Did you know that since 1991, the number of privately owned firearms in the U.S. has increased by 65-70 million, the number of right-to-carry states has increased from 15 to 40, and violent crime has decreased 38%?
December 20th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Thanks Bush! Thanks Karl Rove! For growing government and making the Republican party safe for big-government goons!
December 20th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Correlation and causation are but distant cousins. 🙂
December 20th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Aye, distant cousins indeed.
It does not prove that the increase in firearms ownership decreased crime. (There’s a running argument between two different sociologists as to whether abortion had an effect on these crime rates…for starters in looking at other factors that may affect the statistics.)
But if firearms ownership increased crime, then there must be plenty of defective goods out there under the name “firearm.”
December 20th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Correlation and causation are but distant cousins.
Absolutely, you can’t have causation without also having correlation, but you can certainly have correlation without having causation.
And yet, despite not even having correlation, anti-gunners still proclaim more guns cause more crime.
December 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
damninteresting has a piece on leaded gasoline, and notes that decrease in crime followed leaded gasoline ban by about 20 years.
http://www.damninteresting.com/index.php?s=lead
Way too many variables to ever know for sure.
Sam