El Paso, Texas where there are more guns than people. Pop:600,000. 10 months into 2010, 2 murders

[lawodevolution]

http://www.kvia.com/news/25645095/detail.html

So far that is a murder rate of

2 * 12/10 *. 100,000/600,000 or
0.4 murders per 100,000.

[HopeHoops]

1. Two guns were murdered by people?

:evilgrin:

[lawodevolution]

2. I thought there were three murders. There might be one in november

[kestrel91316]

3. Do you have a point?

[lawodevolution]

4. Yes, you can't blame guns on rate of violence.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DeadEyeDyck]

38. Maybe you can

More guns, less violence. Guns are the blame!!!

[cleanhippie]

10. The point seems fairly obvious.

Guns do not equal crime/death, no matter how badly many try and portray it that way.

[Lint Head]

6. There was just one maniac in the White House while 3,000

Americans were roasted in one day, 09/11/2001.

You can't blame all the people when one maniac commits violence but the people can let the maniac get away with it.

[PavePusher]

14. You're going to have to unwrap that a bit for some of us to get your point. n/t

[GreenStormCloud]

28. He appears to be a MIHOP conspiracy theorist.

He appears to believe that Bush planned and organized 9/11.

[PavePusher]

29. Ah, I should have recognised the tin-foil hat.... n/t

[matt819]

7. And there may be more Ford F-150 pick-up trucks than Dodge Durangos

But that doesn't mean there's a causal relationship.

How about this from KVIA from May 2010 - http://www.kvia.com/news/23602097/detail.html:

(snip)

EL PASO, Texas -- El Paso Police say, as of right now, the city's murder rate is the lowest recorded for the first five months of any year since 1987.
The murder-suicide of an east El Paso elderly couple stands as 2010's lone murder. This time last year, police were already investigating four murders.
Police add in the late 1980's and early 1990's, murders were already averaging in the double digits by May, thanks to rampant drive-by shootings.
They say a lot has changed since then.
"I think a lot of it has to do with the way we work with the community," said Crimes Against Persons Lt. Alfred Lowe. "The community has to get a lot of the credit."
Lowe says since regional command centers were set up all over El Paso, it's become easier for people to report crimes, taking criminals off the streets and dropping the rate of more serious crimes like murder.
He also credits local law enforcement agencies working together on things like warrant round-ups.

(snip)

Also, there's nothing in the article referenced in the OP concerning the number of guns in El Paso or its effect on the reduced crime rate.

So, yes, according to a reply, this may very well be an interloper. Or it could be someone with an agenda. Or someone who doesn't quite understand statistics.

[lawodevolution]

20. I never said the rate of gun ownership is at fault for the difference in crime rate

For example between Houston and El Paso. But given El Paso's high rate of gun ownership in which liberals are also very much interested in guns, given that gun laws are very relaxed and having a high poverty rate and a murder rate this low, it shows that access to guns is not the cause of violence in the US. The underlying cause is prohibition, the creation of a black market for drugs and failures in the education system. So if we could remove gun control as an option to treat the symptom, perhaps we could get politicians to address the underlying problem. It takes a lot more time and energy to address the real causes of violent crime and as long as the easy path to feeling good (gun control) is an option they will neglect the underlying causes.

I know the anti gun people would love to delete this thread, or hide the forum so no one reads this information, or have a law passed to ban expression of information they don't agree with, but you can't. Too bad. So the next closest thing you can do is try to discredit the OP calling me an "interloper", and that is pathetic.

Explain to me how I don't understand stats, this should be interesting.

[Euromutt]

30. I don't know that I can entirely agree with you wrt underlying cause

The underlying cause is prohibition, the creation of a black market for drugs and failures in the education system.

I think those factors do play a part, but I think there's underlying socio-cultural factors as well. Homicide rates in Europe went from being much higher in the late middle ages than any recorded American homicide rate, to being far lower than present-day American rates, even before the imposition of gun control measures.

My pet hypothesis is that a major factor is the cultural importance of self-image relative to the value of human life. When a female family member can "bring shame" on her family, and the culture requires that shame be erased with her blood, you get "honor killings." A corrosive influence on black culture in both the US and UK has been the influx of Jamaican "Yardies" for whom being shown "disrespect" was adequate cause to kill the offending party. A factor in why Japan's homicide rate is comparatively very low, and its suicide rate comparatively very high, may be to some extent the fact that in Japanese culture, shame is erased with one's own blood more readily than with the blood of another.

The idea that human life is worth more than one's perception of "honor" has really only been around since the Enlightenment, and its penetration is, to be blunt, very limited.

[DeadEyeDyck]

39. what would you expect him to say?

He is a cop so, of course he is going to credit the police!!

In the early 90'S, the CDC did a study on domestic violence. They employed a grad student by the name of Keck to conduct a study to prove the correlation between gun ownership and violent crime. When Keck began the study, he was anti-gun. He was using the data for his doctoral thesis. At point in the study, Keck switched position, based on the data he uncovered. He discovered that there was a direct correlation to violent crime and gun ownership but that it was inverse. Cummunities that had little restrictions on gun-ownership had less crime. It became interesting when Keck turned in his data to the CDC. Since the results of his study did not return the answers they were looking for, the CDC decided to halt the program and quashed the data. Since Keck's thesis depended on the data and he had already had his proposal approved, he sued the CDC under the FOIA and also for suppressing public funded information. He won and is now an advocate for gun ownership.

The CDC officially published their watered down findings to say that they can not definitively proved that gun owership increases or decreases crime but inside the article they admit that their are "unusual" indications...

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cleanhippie]

11. Liar?

Thats a strong word. Not sure it is applicable in this case.

[spin]

12. The article is from November 5, 2010, not May ...

El Paso Sees Double Digit Decrease In Murders, Other Major Crimes

POSTED: 9:25 am MDT November 5, 2010

EL PASO, Texas -- El Paso continues to see a decrease in overall crime, according to statistics released by the El Paso Police Dept. on Friday morning.

Through Saturday, October 30, 2010 overall crime is still down 1 percent, compared to this time last year. The crime categories with the largest decreases across the city are Murders, which are down 80 percent (10 in 2009 compared to 2 in 2010) compared to this time last year, Burglary of Vehicle's are down 24 percent (2,736 in 2009, compared to 2,085 in 2010) and Vehicle Thefts are down 15 percent (1,517 in 2009, compared to 1,297 in 2010).
http://www.kvia.com/news/25645095/detail.html

[Eagle_Eye]

13. Looks like November 5, 2010 to me

Data to the end of October

Are you sure you did not confuse the fifth day of the month with the fifth month of the year (which is May)?

[Celtic Raven]

9. Something in the water

If you haven't seen this it's worth reading:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=265159&mesg_id=265166

By legend Texans are a grandiose breed with more than the natural share of megalomaniacs. But University of Texas Biochemist Earl B. Dawson thinks that he detects an uncommon pocket of psychological adjustment around El Paso. The reason, says Dawson, lies in the deep wells from which the city draws its water supply.

According to Dawson's studies of urine samples from 3,000 Texans, El Paso's water is heavily laced with lithium, a tranquilizing chemical widely used in the treatment of manic depression and other psychiatric disorders. He notes that Dallas, which has low lithium levels because it draws its water from surface supplies, has "about seven times more admissions to state mental hospitals than El Paso." But state mental health officials point out that the mental hospital closest to Dallas is 35 miles from the city, while the one nearest El Paso is 350 miles away—and the long distance could affect admission figures.

snip

[safeinOhio]

15. Houston?

Being in Texas, it should one of the lowest in the country. I'm not sure what the current rate is but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston#Crime



Houston's murder rate ranked 46th of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 in 2005 (per capita rate of 16.3 murders per 100,000 population).<157> The city's murder rate was ranked in 2005 to be 3rd among U.S. cities with a population of over 1,000,000. This ranking could be higher as KHOU-TV found the Houston Police Department under-counted 2005 homicides; counting two more would have bumped up the rate to second place.<158> While nonviolent crime in the city dropped by 2 percent in 2005 compared to 2004, homicides rose by 23.5 percent.<159> Since 2005, Houston has experienced a significant rise in crime, which the Houston Police Department partly attributed to an influx of people from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.<160> After Katrina, Houston's murder rate increased 70 percent in November and December 2005 compared to levels in 2004. The city recorded 336 murders in 2005,<159> compared to 272 in 2004.<161> Houston's homicide rate per 100,000 residents increased from 16.33 in 2005 to 17.24 in 2006.<162> The number of murders in the city increased to 379 in 2006.<159> The Times-Picayune disputed that Katrina evacuees were to blame for the rise in crime, citing statistics that crime was rising in Houston before their arrival.<163> City officials claimed that though the majority of evacuees were law-abiding citizens, and noted that Houston's population swelled by 10 percent "virtually overnight," reducing the ratio of police officers to citizens.<164> A 2010 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice also disputed the assertion that Katrina Evacuees were the cause of rising crime in Houston around the mid-to-late 2000s, and instead pointed out factors such as growing population, rising unemployment, and decreased police patrol.<165>:sarcasm:

[lawodevolution]

24. Wait, you mean Houston, one of the areas of Texas with the strongest gun control in tx

Ok. Also Dallas has strong gun control compared to the rest of Texas.

[lawodevolution]

17. Although it is interesting that there is LI in the

Water the levels are very sub clinical. Juarez, one of the most violent cities on earth, will have the same lithium levels. I think drug money and greed are enough motivation to eliminate any inhibition of violence brought on by small levels of LI so putting it in the water in other cities will not have an effect on rates of violent crime because most of it is caused by the war on drugs.

I think the main reason the murder rate is so low is that most of the drug war violence does not occur in el paso because there is not a good market for drugs here. The market is supersaturated with drugs, so inside of el paso there isn't much profit in illegal drugs compared to taking them up north and to the east and west coast, so the main cause of violence which is greed is not sufficiently satisfied when drug dealers resort to violence. In Juarez there is a strong demand for exporting them into the US and the war on drugs inflates the prices at that point. Just canceling the war on drugs will save thousands of lives.

[SteveM]

40. Yeah, I've seen that hypothesis as well. "It's in the water!"

I am struck by the seeming isolation of a rather large city, and perhaps the lack of "exurban" development; hence, the large expanses of land for outdoor activities. Some "ecopsychologists" suggest that if more people spent more time in rural nature, they would become better adjusted, and this would result in lower violent crime rates. IIRC, El Paso has traditionally had lower violent crime rates, suggesting whatever causes the low murder rates has been at work for some time.

[sharesunited]

16. Widen the geography just a little.

Nidal Hisan, the Fort Hood shooter, bought his weapons at the Guns Galore store in Killeen.

He killed 13 people and wounded 30 others.

[lawodevolution]

18. Widen the geography to include gun free Nigeria

SU wants to make guns and ammo scarce because he thinks that is the solution to violent crime. Yet Nigeria is the one country on earth with no legal guns and few illegal guns. Nigeria doesn't even gather murder rates, but here is an example of a mass violence event in Nigeria, 500 dead. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/world/africa/09nigeria.html
Most killed by machetes.

[sharesunited]

19. I favor machete control in Nigeria.

Would that they had a strong enough government and political will to enforce such control.

But machete love just makes that impossible there.

Sound familiar?

[lawodevolution]

23. Yes your psychosis and phobias sound familiar

But a machete is very easy to make. So banning them will do nothing to reduce violence in Nigeria.

[Optical.Catalyst]

26. People kill people - sound familiar?

[one-eyed fat man]

27. Iklwa

The Zulu and other Nguni tribes of South Africa were renowned for their use of the assegai.

The Zulu invented a shorter-style assegai with a two foot shaft and which had a larger, broader blade of one foot length.



A thrusting weapon, the iklwa, so called because of the sound made by the spear as it impaled the body and the sucking sound it made as it was withdrawn from the body.

"Iklwa" may not sound familiar to you, but it is still a familiar sound in Africa. Has been for centuries

[Straw Man]

35. Machete control.

Because machetes have only one purpose, which is to kill.

Sound familiar?

[SteveM]

41. Umm, umm, umm. Just OCEANS of prohibition as yet unexplored.

[RSillsbee]

21. Killeen is quite a distance from El Paso NT

[sharesunited]

22. Is it my fault that Texas is so big? Texas law and gun regs apply. Why cherry pick El Paso?

He cherry picks El Paso for one reason only: To obfuscate.

[RSillsbee]

25. If your solution isn't feasible (and your's isn't)

It's not a solution. Next suggestion

[benEzra]

32. Ummm, maybe because El Paso right now is in the news for being the safest large city in America?

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_16675219

[Glassunion]

33. Unpossible!!! Blood... Everywhere!!! With all of those guns! The place must be chest deep blood!!

[jazzhound]

34. I'm personally scared to death that San Diego will become

a shall-issue county if Ed Peruta and his fellow plaintiffs win their lawsuit.

Well, at least I own firearms -- so if the horrifying happens I can get myself a permit to defend myself against all of those macho concealed-carry bozos. After all, we know that there will be shoot-outs in the streets and innocent bystanders will be slaughtered en masse.

I have a surfboard to traverse the rivers of blood which will most certainly begin to cross the county........but I'm thinking I'd better buy a canoe as well.

Based on a recent confusion I guess I'd better add:

:sarcasm:

[SteveM]

42. Impressive, too, considering the arid climate.

[Glassunion]

43. There is a solution for that.

I played football in high school. We lived in an arid climate. During some years of drought, the grass would get very dry and turn brown as the school could not water it. During one year, when our football field was more dirt than grass, the crowd would chant "Go! Go! Go! Blood makes the grass grow!" to get us going if we were losing.

Of course today, if someone started that chant at a high school game, they would be arrested.

[slackmaster]

31. Or you could widen it much less than that, and include Ciudad Juarez

And your "point" would be equally meaningless.

[Kennah]

36. Someone should have reported him to the Department of Pre-Crime

[cleanhippie]

37. IOW, "let me move the goal posts...again." EPIC FAIL on your part

as usual.