Kansas CIty murder rate down in first year of right-to-carry law
I am not going to argue that by itself this is evidence that right-to-carry laws are good (many other things can happen in a year), but at least the fears put forward predicting problems were proven false.
What is disappointing is that the article completely left out the fact that last year was the first year of the right to carry law in the state.
Thanks very much to David Cooper for sending me this link.
Crime down in KCK last year
By ROBERT A. CRONKLETON
The Kansas City Star
After two years of seeing reported violent crimes increase, Kansas City, Kan., saw the number of such crimes drop 5.5 percent last year.
More notably is that homicides fell 45.7 percent, from 46 homicides in 2006 to 25 last year. The last time the number of homicides was this low was in 1986, Brown said.
“We are very happy with (2007) stats,” said Capt. James Brown, a Kansas City, Kan., Police Department spokesman. “However, for those of us who have been in the business long enough, we know that there are curves that occur.” . . .
What is disappointing is that the article completely left out the fact that last year was the first year of the right to carry law in the state.
Thanks very much to David Cooper for sending me this link.
Labels: ConcealedCarry, Crime
posted by John Lott at 10:34 AM
5 Comments:
But what happened over in Wichita, Kansas? According to FBI figures, murders in Wichita jump from 10 in 2006 to 22 in 2007. That's a 120% increase.
Since the Kansas concealed carry law affected the entire state, shouldn't we be looking at state-wide figures and not cherry-picking figures from individual cities?
Another important data point, of course, is how many citizens are actually taking advantage of the new law? Do any statistics existing for how many gun-toting folks there are in Kansas who actually carry around a weapon most of the time for protection?
Also the headline of the post is wrong. The word "City" is missing after word "Kansas".
Dear First Anonymous:
That is exactly right, but the article here only dealt with KC. My guess is that the state's murder rate was constant or fell. Two other points. My research shows that the biggest drops in violent crime should be in the most urban areas. KC was also where most of the concern and opposition came from, If you have the overall murder rates handy, you should have provided it.
Dear Second anonymous:
Thanks. I will fix it.
Hi John,
I wasn't able to locate state-wide murder numbers for Kansas for 2007.
However here are the numbers for 2000-2006:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/kncrime.htm
2000 169
2001 92
2002 78
2003 125
2004 122
2005 101
2006 127
As you can see, they vary a lot from year to year. I don't see how one separates out the effect of a concealed-carry law versus other factors which are making the murder rate jump around.
Dear Anonymous:
Well, as I stated, I wouldn't claim that a one year or even a few year drop in one state proved much of anything. But I feel very comfortable believing that the number of murders (it should really be the murder rate), diid not increase dramatically last year and that at least rejects the claims of the opponents. My guess is that the number of murders probably feel there last year.
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