Dispelling the myth of the “wild west”
In his book, Frontier Violence: Another Look, author W. Eugene Hollon, provides us with these astonishing facts:
In Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell, for the years from 1870 to 1885, there were only 45 total homicides. This equates to a rate of approximately 1 murder per 100,000 residents per year.
In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, not a single person was killed in 1869 or 1870.
Zooming forward over a century to 2007, a quick look at Uniform Crime Report statistics shows us the following regarding the aforementioned gun control paradise cities of the east:
DC 183 Murders (31 per 100,000 residents)
Baltimore 281 Murders (45 per 100,000 residents)
Newark 104 Murders (37 per 100,000 residents)
It doesnt take an advanced degree in statistics to see that a return to wild west levels of violent crime would be a huge improvement for the residents of these cities.
The truth of the matter is that the wild west wasnt wild at all not compared to a Saturday night in Newark.
http://www.examiner.com/article/dispelling-the-myth-of-the-wild-west
Thanks for posting the old west data.