[Jim Noble]

I’m not sure 1862 is the perfect example of public gun handling in the US.

There was a lot of shooting going on that year.

[ought-six]

“I’m not sure 1862 is the perfect example of public gun handling in the US. There was a lot of shooting going on that year.”

And aside from the Civil War, there was that “trouble” in southern Minnesota that started 160 years ago this month. I bet the victims wish they would have had more guns...or ANY gun.

[Nifster]

Almost as bad as a weekend in Chicago

[Red in Blue PA]

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 doesn’t 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” wasn’t wild at all … not compared to a Saturday night in Newark.