The city of Chicago registered more homicides than any city in the nation in 2012, surpassing even New York — despite the fact that the Second City has only one third as many residents as the Big Apple.In new crime statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012, up sharply from the 431 recorded in 2011. New York reported 419 murders last year, compared with 515 in 2011.
On September 12, 2013, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled a law passed in Illinois which effectively banned carrying a loaded weapon violated the Second Amendment and struck it down. In January, the Illinois State Police began issuing concealed carry licenses.
The usual suspects predicted dire and cataclysmic outcomes:
But other city officials aren’t so assured. Superintendent Garry McCarthy calls a requirement that people go through only 16 hours of training before they are issued a concealed carry permit “woefully inadequate” because about the only thing people can learn in that time is how to “point and fire a weapon” and not when they can legally do so.“Our officers receive six months of training in the police academy and then three months on the streets and at the end of the day we make mistakes frequently,” he said.Another concern by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is the provision in the bill that calls for law enforcement and prosecutors to object to a governor-appointed panel if they suspect applicants are dangerous. In Cook County, where there are 358,000 registered gun owners, Dart said he’s worried gang members and others who shouldn’t have guns will slip through the cracks and be granted permits.
(WTF Sherriff Dart: how did the gang members manage to kill so many people last year without applying for concealed carry permits?)
When new crime statistics were released covering the first quarter of 2014 an amazing thing happened
Chicago’s first-quarter murder total this year hit its lowest number since 1958, police say.The first three months of the year saw 6 fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a 9 percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, according to a statement from Chicago Police.
Why is this? Divining causation is fraught with danger but so long as we are considering global warming to be science I suppose anything goes.
The issue of concealed carry and crime should be settled science. The NRA has a substantive paper on the subject which concludes:
Studying crime trends in every county in the U.S., economist John Lott and David Mustard concluded, “allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes. . . . [W]hen state concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by 5 and 7 percent.”
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