This shows how out of control "gun violence" is right now...

Michael Bush · January 05, 2016, 10:20:56 AM

Michael Bush · January 05, 2016, 10:26:39 AM

Here are the numbers from the FBI web site where you can see how crime is skyrocketing all the way from 757.7 violent crimes per 100,000 in 1992 to the skyrocketing number of 386.3 in 2011... 9.3 murders per 100,000 in 1992 to 4.7 in 2011... and gun sales are at an all time high. Oh wait, I guess violent crime is going down... drastically... and have been for decades now... my mistake...

BeeMaster2 · January 05, 2016, 12:26:39 PM

Thanks for sharing.
It isn't that the president wants to reduce gun crime with his unconstitutional rulings, it is that he just doesn't want average American citizens to have the guns.

divemaster1963 · January 05, 2016, 01:39:49 PM

Next he will want to be like England. You have to be 21 to but silverware. If you have a stick bigger than 3 cm diam . And 100 cm. Long its a felony and considered a weapon.

John

deknow · January 05, 2016, 01:55:01 PM

Michael, that graph means very different things depending on what the unlabeled Y axis represents. Is that per capita or total number homocides? I also don't know what was and what was not considered a 'homocide' at different times....certainlty 1900 forensics wasn't able to detect poisons, fingerprints were maybe just starting to be used, and staging a suicide or accident was much much easier than it is today.

But the main point is that in 1900 there were about 76 million people in the us...and today there is over 300 million...looking at the graph and comparing the pre-1900 numbers with todays numbers, it looks aproximately like the same 4x increase in population.

Michael Bush · January 05, 2016, 05:05:36 PM

> Is that per capita or total number homocides?

Murders per 100,000. i.e. per capita divided by 100,000... Try the FBI link posted above for verification of the last two decades worth of numbers and I'm sure you can go back further. The murder rate, violent crime rate etc. has halved over the past two decades according to the numbers by the FBI.

deknow · January 05, 2016, 06:37:29 PM

....although I recognize that it isn't entirely relevent to the point (or it may be), I would have to wonder if killing native americans was considered a homicide in 1890...with gun or with pox infested blanket.

Michael Bush · January 06, 2016, 09:07:54 AM

>I would have to wonder if killing native americans was considered a homicide in 1890...with gun or with pox infested blanket.

I assume it was not. That might skew the numbers a bit... They probably didn't count the Cheyenne who died at Sand Creek, but they probably counted the white people who died in the Battle of Julesburg...

deknow · January 06, 2016, 01:30:31 PM

Quote from: Michael Bush on January 05, 2016, 10:26:39 AM
Here are the numbers from the FBI web site where you can see how crime is skyrocketing all the way from 757.7 violent crimes per 100,000 in 1992 to the skyrocketing number of 386.3 in 2011... 9.3 murders per 100,000 in 1992 to 4.7 in 2011... and gun sales are at an all time high. Oh wait, I guess violent crime is going down... drastically... and have been for decades now... my mistake...

It may well be that those numbers are influenced by gun laws...but it seems to me that it is also measuring a drop in violent crimes and murders between the peak of the crack epidemic to the popularity of downers (opiates).

Michael Bush · January 07, 2016, 12:51:27 PM

>...but it seems to me that it is also measuring a drop in violent crimes and murders between the peak of the crack epidemic to the popularity of downers (opiates).

...can't disagree. There is an easy comparison on the issue of drugs of choice. Look at the first Woodstock (grass) and the second Woodstock (meth, crank, coke, etc.)