Say Anything Blog

Can you spot the total lack of logic?

NEW YORK — After many years of decline, the number of murders climbed this year in New York and many other major U.S. cities, reaching their highest levels in a decade in some places.

Among the reasons given: gangs, the easy availability of illegal guns, a disturbing tendency among young people to pull guns when they do not get the respect they demand, and, in Houston at least, an influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

In New York, where the city reported 579 homicides through Dec. 24 — a nearly 10 percent increase from the year before — the spike is mostly the result of an unusually large number of “reclassified homicides,” or those involving victims who were shot or stabbed years ago but did not die until this year. Thirty-five such deaths have been added to this year’s toll, compared with an annual average of about a dozen.

At the same time, Police Department spokesman Paul Browne noted that this year’s total is only slightly higher than last year’s 539 homicides — the city’s lowest death toll in more than 40 years.

Browne blamed the rise in part on the availability of guns, particularly weapons from out of state. The city this year sued dozens of out-of-state gun shops that it says are responsible for many of the illegal weapons on the streets of New York.

OK first of all what changed?  Guns didn’t get all of a sudden more easy to get.  If last years murder rate was a 40 year low did you credit the fact that there were illegal guns for the reduction in crime.

Another point would be that most illegal guns do not come from gun shops.  They are stolen by citizens, policeman, national guard armories.  If we were to shut down every gun store and remove all guns from lawful sources the criminals would merely smuggle their guns in.  One method they could use is have every illegal alien carry a couple over or disguise them as a bale of marijuana.

Of course the AP writer ignored the great body of work that shows that crime drops when honest citizens can protect themselves.  That just doesn’t fit his agenda.

I got a kick out of this paragraph:

Andrew Karmen, a criminologist at John Jay College in New York, said that while there are various theories for the drop in murders in New York and other cities in the 1990s, no one knows for sure why it happened. And if they are going up again, no one knows the reason for that, either, he said.

Umm could it be that we had more criminals locked up in jail where they aren’t a threat to the decent members of society?  Could our rise in murder rate be illegal aliens that have filled in for the reduction of domestic criminals on the streets?  Just a couple of theories of mine.