Posted on 08/30/2009 6:24:38 AM PDT by marktwain
Gun control organizations claim that shall-issue concealed carry laws are a menace to society. For example, in License to Kill IV: More Guns, More Crime, Violence Policy Center (VPC) cited Texas Concealed Handgun Licensee (CHL) arrest data to insinuate that CHLs were violent criminals, and that these laws are a failure. However, such reports ignore the fact that our justice system is based upon the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” because arrests do not prove that a crime was committed. Also, the VPC report made no attempt to compare CHL arrest rates to corresponding rates for the non-CHL population. To address these concerns, some states publish conviction reports for both CHLs and the non-CHL population, enabling a direct comparison that illustrates the relative criminality of both groups. Convictions are more accurate for the purpose of determining relative criminality, because they remove doubt surrounding arrests and report identical criminal justice system outcomes––found guilty of committing a crime––for both population groups. Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) began publishing conviction reports in 2002, covering a broad array of violent and property crimes committed by individuals over 21. (Earlier reports became available recently, but there are no corresponding demographic data, so conviction rates cannot be calculated.) These reports separate out conviction data for those 21 years of age and older, offering an “apples-to-apples” comparison between the two population groups, because Texans must be at least 21 years of age to obtain a concealed handgun license. Overall ratios between CHLs and general population The table below summarizes six complete years of conviction data. Overall, CHLs are over 9 times more law-abiding than the non-licensee population, and non-licensees are over 10 times as likely to commit a major FBI violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault).
Annual Conviction Non-CHL:CHL Ratios Year
FBI Violence
Burglary (FBI)
Total FBI
All Convictions
Non-FBI Convictions 2002
10.96
27.22
15.48
11.34
10.01 2003
21.27
N/A*
41.34
13.69
10.18 2004
13.44
87.07
23.25
10.25
7.93 2005
4.87
32.21
8.38
6.45
5.79 2006
7.00
38.60
11.51
7.17
6.08 2007
4.79
156.05
8.77
6.86
6.26 Average
10.39
68.23
18.12
9.29
7.71 * CHLs had no burglary convictions in 2003. Removed divide-by-zero value. While overall ratios decreased noticeably in the last 3 years, it is important to keep some things in mind. Very small numbers of CHLs were convicted. In 2007, 37 CHLs were convicted of FBI violent crimes, compared to 9,876 non-licensees. The smaller CHL population means that very few convictions affect rates dramatically. In 2006, 2 CHLs were convicted of murder out of a population of 258,162, for a rate of 0.77 (per 100,000 population). In 2007, 7 CHLs were convicted out of 288,090, for a rate of 2.42, the highest annual number and rate to date. Conviction rates for murder trended up for non-licensees fairly steadily, while CHL rates bounced around but also rose. The chart below shows murder conviction trends. The non-CHL group’s data points lie closer to the trend line, and the R-squared value is higher. The CHL conviction rates bounce between a low of 0.00 in 2004 to a high of 2.42 in 2007.
An armed society is a polite society. There is a reason our crime rates down here are lower than most states, and it’s not for lack of idiots.
My standard on this issue is to invite the gun-control person to post a sign on his front lawn “This House is a Gun-free Zone”. As I tell them, your neighbors will thank you, standard issue burglar worries more about trigger-happy home-owners than cops.
Do I detect a Heinlien fan here? Never mind, there is a reason Colt used the term “equalizer” in advertisements.
My handle is from experience. Not really legal, but on the one happening when “barkeep” thumped the bar and displayed an 18 inch double barrel 20 guage shotgun, the escalating riot shut down.
Judgement call,I got away with it, but it worked.
Time to renew
>> Click to the link for som really nice charts and graphs.
I totally get the author’s point. But the table of annual non-CHL/CHL conviction ratios makes no sense.
For example, in the text below the table, he says and I quote:
“Very small numbers of CHLs were convicted. In 2007, 37 CHLs were convicted of FBI violent crimes, compared to 9,876 non-licensees.”
9,876/37 is 266.9. But in the table he gives this same ratio as only 4.79!
What’s up with that?
By the way, he gave a link to the 2002 texas CHL crime stats. The 2007 ones are similarly excellent. All of the Texas CHL crime stats can be found here:
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm
[I AM UNARMED PLEASE DO NOT ROB OR HURT ME]
tee hee! He loves it.
“This is a Drug Free, Gun Free zone”
Our schools do have such signs, talk about an invitation, I want to go take them down in the middle of the night.
I’d pretty much bet that except for the grade schools that they aren’t drug free but I’m pretty sure, until a maniac brings one in to do harm, they are gun free.
He's not explaining the methodology very well.
This is a comparison of rates per 100,000. You can't compare absolute numbers of convictions, because the size of the population (CHL holder vs. non-CHL holder) is so large.
So he’s normalizing for the difference in population size between CHL and non-CHL. OK, duh. And it does makes sense to do that. My bad.
Thank you for clearing that up.
CCL holders are the most law abiding of citizens. In fact, they MUST be in order to obtain the license in the first place. Here in KY, the state police run a background on every applicant.
The reason that you and the examiner get different ratios is that he is comparing crime rates, and you are comparing actual crimes. Crime rates is the proper comparison because of the different population sizes.
Roger. See “mea culpa” in post #10.
That may be why my mother taught me to say "Sir" to gentlemen older than me, and "Ma'am" to all ladies.
"Senator" Boxer would likely complain about that...but then she may not consider herself a "lady"!
≤]B^)
However, given where she works and who her clientele is, she certainly is a “Madam.”
I think ya got a formatting problem there, dude.
Ya say the ladies were all armed when you were a kid?
LOL!
One notable fallacy in this report is that the author attempts to linearize and draw trending conclusions from data that is clearly experiencing a long-cycle variation, thus giving the very misleading impression that overall crime rates are trending upwards for both the CHL and non-CHL populations.
You never knew.
Take no chances, and all that.
That's an interesting observation.
She hasn't had the title "lady" conferred on her, and I don't know if she's a ma'am.
But she has been designated a "Senator", and she's really clinging to that one.
Mizzzz Boxer is certainly no lady but he will still get called m’am here in Texas, she will just have to like it or lump it.
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