Cowboy Confessional

I love the gun control industry.  They’re more predictable that a politician lying.

(Speaking of which, I’m enjoying the sweet sound of silence now that John Edwards has mysteriously shut-up)

Whenever laws are loosened, the gun control industry predicts bloodshed in the streets.  I witnessed such first hand in Florida and later Virginia when those states respectively enacted concealed carry laws, letting honest folk tote weapons in public.  The Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center, the Joyce Foundation (if I may be redundant) in a single voice said Hell itself would erupt and swallow those states whole.

Didn’t happen.  Not in Florida.  Not in Virginia.

Not in the 28 other states that followed FLA, rescinding restrictions on packing a heater.  In fact, Professor John Lott notes that not a single peer-reviewed criminological study on concealed carry has found a rise in violent crime compared to national averages.  A hand full of studies show minor declines in violence, and a few show major drops in select categories of bloody bad behavior.

Yet in 2008, when the Supreme Court told the District of Columbia that their handgun ban was history, the gun control industry resurrected the same claims concerning carnage.  They predicted (again) that gutters would run red with blood, which for D.C. meant nothing much would change.  The gun control industry said with certainty that death was inevitable for every living being in that city.

Guess what.

Crime statistics are in for 2009, the first full year in which D.C. citizens have been allowed to keep handguns at home, the overall violent crime rate fell.  Though much higher than most everywhere else in America, the rate of violence in The District plummeted.  Based on Census Bureau population estimates and D.C.’s own online crime statistics reporting system, violent crimes fells 6% in the first full year of liberated handgun ownership and homicides dropped 23% (if you want to check the math, here is a spreadsheet with the raw numbers).

It is unimportant to wonder why the crime rate dropped – there will be plenty of time for criminologists to analyze the dozens of potential variables.  However, private gun ownership did not cause violence to increase and may be the magic variable to explain why it tumbled.

Helmke, Sugarman, Brady, Feinstein … time to pipe down.  Your chorus is off key, again.

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