More on whether violent crime is increasing

The FBI UCR numbers were just released. I am sure that the normal academics who the media goes to on this will claim that violent crime is going up, but I hope that people will realize that there is no real change in the rates. There is a one year increase in murder and robbery rates but both are still below what they were in 2003.

. . . . . .violent crime rate . .murder rate . . robbery rate
1998 . . 567.6 . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 . . . . . . . . .165.5
1999 . . 523.0 . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 . . . . . . . . .150.1
2000 . . 506.5 . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 . . . . . . . . .145.0
2001 . . 504.5 . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 . . . . . . . . .148.5
2002 . . 494.4 . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 . . . . . . . . .146.1
2003 . . 475.8 . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 . . . . . . . . .142.5
2004 . . 463.2 . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 . . . . . . . . .136.7
2005 . . 469.2 . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 . . . . . . . . .140.7

I decided to look at the breakdown in the increase in states with and without state assault weapons bans. The states with AWB saw a 2.9 percent increase in murder rates and a 3.5 percent increase in robberies. The states without AWB saw a smaller increase of just 2.2 percent for murder rates and 2.7 percent for robbery. Thus going back to the sunsetting of the federal ban in September 2004, changes in murder and robbery rates have been worse in the states with the ban than those without the ban. The states with the ban are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

Note that the previous numbers that I posted were from the NCVS.