University of Baltimore Professor Suggests Gun Manufacturers Pay for Security Measures at Public Buildings

The Hill has this op/ed from Jeffrey Ian Ross, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Baltimore, that suggests improved access control to public places is the best short term solution to violence committed with firearms:

Pro-gun advocates seem to support better mental health screening and therapy, enhanced training in the use of firearms, and better and safer methods of storing weapons. These suggestions are directed toward the saner and law-abiding people of our society. But the anti-gun-control advocates have no solution to the gunman, either motivated by malice or suffering from a major mental illness, who walks into a crowded movie theater and opens fire on the crowd.

Then there are those who dislike the suggestion of installing access controls (the range of security measures used to monitor and prevent unwarranted entry into a room, floor, building, etc.) at vulnerable locations, like our college and university campuses, improving the methods and technology to detect and deter individuals who may open fire on the defenseless public.

Ross then runs through a litany of reasons why people oppose such increased controlled access.  The bottom line is, he thinks that gun manufacturers should have to pay the cost of installing these measures, and having to do so would induce them to finally agree to the various gun control proposals that have floated around for years:

In the end, once the gun manufacturers — wholesalers and retailers — and the pro-gun lobby realize how much money they are spending on access control, perhaps they will take the wider issue of gun control more seriously and consider the ways that the American public gets access to guns, how many they can own and how to better monitor their use.

I keep thinking about how Virginia's crime rate is at it lowest level in decades, at the same time gun sales have increased over 100% since 2006, and wonder why these people can't see that maybe instead of infringing on our rights, they actually get serious about targeting criminals.

Obama Gets Two Pinocchios for Claim that ‘States with the Most Gun Laws Tend to Have the Fewest Gun Deaths

Well this didn't take long.  The Washington Post Fact Checker has taken Obama's claim that states with the most gun laws have the fewest gun deaths and found it's not as simple as Obama would have us believe:

But this is also an issue about scope. Most gun deaths — more than 60 percent in 2013 — are actually suicides. The president made his remarks in the aftermath of the tragic shooting rampage at an Oregon community college, and so it’s a judgment call as to whether counting suicides is appropriate. After all, Obama wants to thwart mass shootings by enacting universal background checks aimed at people with criminal histories.

Some might argue that it is wrong to exclude suicides from the data, as less access to guns might result in fewer suicides. The data on that is mixed. Gun-related suicides might decline, but studies have shown little connection between suicides and access to guns. A 2004 report published by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that “some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.”

Japan, for instance, has among the world’s most-restrictive gun-control regimes — and yet also has among the world’s highest suicide rates, almost double the U.S. suicide rate.

As we will show below, the numbers change, sometimes dramatically, when suicides are not counted.

When the Post contacted the Administration to find out where they got the information for their claim, the "official" responding said it was based on a chart published by National Journal in August.  That chart calculated the number of gun-related deaths per 100,000 people by including all gun deaths, including homicides, suicides, accidental gun deaths and legal intervention involving firearms.  By doing so, according to the Post, the states at the top of the chart — Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey — are listed as having tough restrictions, based on seven kinds of criteria. The states at the bottom — Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Wyoming — have virtually none of the these restrictions.  The Post went and extracted the suicides and their findings were quite different:

Alaska, ranked 50th on the National Journal list, moved up to 25th place. Utah, 31st on the list, jumped to 8th place. Hawaii remains in 1st place, but the top six now include Vermont, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Iowa and Maine. Indeed, half of the 10 states with the lowest gun-death rates turn out to be states with less-restrictive gun laws.

Meanwhile, Maryland — a more urban state — fell from 15th place to 45th, even though it has very tough gun laws. Illinois dropped from 11th place to 38th, and New York fell from 3rd to 15th.

This is not the first time that the Post has called out Obama for using the gun ban lobby's talking points. The first time was in April 2013 when he trotted out the oft repeated claim that 40% of gun sales are completed without a background check.

We wavered between Two and Three Pinocchios, but in the end settled on Two. Most of the states at the bottom appear to have less-restrictive gun laws even when calculated without suicides. So that’s an interesting data point. But the evidence is not as clear cut as the president claims.

The Post is much more diplomatic in their conclusion.  Most people would just say Obama is not being honest (i.e. lying).  But the Post simply calls it a classic situation of a politician exaggerating a study's conclusions to justify a policy.

Nation's Crime Rate Half of Rate in 1991, Public Still Thinks it's Rising

On Monday, the FBI released the new crime numbers for 2014 and they once again are good news.  The new FBI reported that there were only 366 violent offenses in 2014 year for every 100,000 U.S. residents  This is less than half the rate in 1991. The property crime rate also fell in 2014 to levels not seen since 1967.  Additionally, murders committed with firearms fell by 4 percent to just over 8,100, down by nearly one-fifth in the last 10 years.  But as the Washington Examiner notes:

...Yet non-existent increases in gun violence are cited often to gin up support for new limits on the right to bear arms. Panic is used to justify solutions that limit freedom and have never been proven to work.

The Gallup Organization annually polls the public attitude on crime and the responses they get do not mirror reality.  That is likely because the gun ban crowd uses every opportunity of a high profile shooting to make the claim that "something must be done" to stop these crimes.

No matter what the gun ban lobby would have you think, crimes committed with firearms continue to fall as we have a record number of firearms in the hands of the American citizens.  Breitbart News' Dr. AWR Hawkins talked about this with NRANews host Cam Edwards on Wednesday.

Another Anti-Gun "More Guns Equal More Crime" Study

Tuesday, Live Science touted a new study by Harvard Injury Control Research Center Director David Hemenway and fellow researchers Michael Monuteaux, Lois K. Lee, Rebekah Mannix, and Eric W. Fleegler that makes the claim that guns don't deter crime:

"We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite."

The Crime Prevention Research Center got a copy and found that the study did not test the theory that it claims to have studied.  CPRC notes that the study doesn't test whether increased gun ownership causes crime rates to increase, and is "far too simplistic and doesn’t include even the basic control variables that are typically included in other crime studies."

Here is a simple example.  Many people point to the fact that the UK has both a lower homicide and gun ownership rate than the United States.  The claim is often made then that the reason that they have a lower homicide rate is because they have fewer guns.  However, this ignores the fact that the UK homicide rate actually went up after their 1997 handgun ban or after their other very strict earlier gun control regulations.  The UK homicide rate still remained low relative to the US, but it was higher than it otherwise would have been.

The point here is simple: there are lots of reasons why the UK homicide rate was lower than that in the US before they even had gun control.  The question that needs to be asked is how the UK homicide rate changed relative to that in the US after its gun control regulations went into effect.  To do this, you have to control for the fact that the UK had a much lower homicide rate to begin with.  Statistically you do that by having what are called geographic “fixed effects” (dummy variables that pick up the average difference in each jurisdiction that you are examining).  Any test would also do the same thing by year so as to account for any national trends in crime rates.  So, for example, crime might have been falling nationally, but was it falling relatively more in those states that were getting more gun ownership.

And that's not all.  Anti-rights researchers tend to cherry pick the data they use to prove their hypothesis and this study is no different:

The controls that are being used in this paper can’t begin to account for the differences in crime rates.  The regression estimates reported in Table 2 don’t tell what percent of the variation in crime rates are being explained by the variables used in these regressions, but I am willing to bet that it is less than 10 percent.

Yet, this paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine doesn’t account for either of these factors.  It is essentially making a purely cross-sectional comparison across states.  On account of that, if they had included Washington, DC in their estimates (with its high crime rates and low gun ownership), it would have dramatically altered their results.

This is another study that appears to be swimming up stream as public opinion is firmly on the side of gun ownership.  Even cherry picking data probably won't change that fact.

Dr. John Lott Responds to "More Guns, More Crime"

In a November 25 letter to the editor of the Washington Post, Dr. John R. Lott, Lloyd Cohen, professor, George Mason University School of Law, and Carl Moody, professor, College of William and Mary Department of Economics, responded to Christopher Ingraham’s “More Guns, More Crime” Wonkblog post that appeared on the Washington Post web site in mid-November, and discussed here.  In that post Ingraham reported on a "slightly updated paper" by law professor John Donohue and two graduate students that purported to show that by adding additional data to a previous study, their research shows that concealed carry laws actually increased crime on states with such laws.  Lott and his colleagues disagreed by pointing out:

Their revised paper’s “preferred” results supposedly show violent crime rates increase after states pass right-to-carry laws. Among the problems: 

— They rely, without explanation, on estimates Mr. Donohue has previously claimed were unreliable and misleading. Measuring simply the average crime rates before and after the law can miss an upward trend in crime before the law and drops afterwards.

— They focus on the period from 1999 to 2010. But later-adopting states were often reluctantly dragged into passing these laws. Their laws were more restrictive — higher fees, longer training requirements and more gun-free zones. The authors compare the drop in violent crime for these late adopters with other states — primarily earlier adopters who issued many more permits — who experienced larger drops in crime. But smaller drops for more restrictive states is exactly what the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis predicts.

— Even relying on these flawed estimates, Mr. Ingraham ignored that most of the authors’ results still provide no evidence that violent crime increases.

On Monday, Lott spoke in more detail with Cam Edwards on NRANews' Cam and Company where he discussed not only the letter to the editor but the flaws in the Donohue paper.

Washington Post More Guns Equal More Crime Blog Post Misses Important Facts

Last weekend, Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post's Wonkblog had this post reporting on a September piece by Stanford law professor John Donohue and his colleagues that purports to discredit Dr. John Lott's work More Guns Less Crime. That in and of itself is not new. A number of anti-rights academics have sought to show Lott's work is flawed since it was first published.  According to Wonk Blog, Donohue has added another decade of data to support their thesis:

Now, Stanford law professor John Donohue and his colleagues have added another full decade to the analysis, extending it through 2010, and have concluded that the opposite of Lott and Mustard's original conclusion is true: more guns equal more crime.

"The totality of the evidence based on educated judgments about the best statistical models suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates" of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder, Donohue said in an interview with the Stanford Report. The evidence suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with an 8 percent increase in the incidence of aggravated assault, according to Donohue. He says this number is likely a floor, and that some statistical methods show an increase of 33 percent in aggravated assaults involving a firearm after the passage of right-to-carry laws.

On Sunday, Lott's Crime Prevention Research Center had a post pointing out where Ingraham is wrong. The post notes that Lott had already used the additional data in his most recent updated edition of More Guns Less Crime:

There are many errors in Ingraham’s article.  For example, “Stanford law professor John Donohue and his colleagues have added another full decade to the analysis.”  Yet, the third edition of “More Guns, Less Crime” has data from 1977 to 2005.  Moody, Marvell, Zimmerman, and Alemante have a new paper earlier this year that looked at data from 1977 to 2006.  Gius (2014) looked at data up through 2009.  Zimmerman (2014) looks at crime data up through 2010.   Previously even in the Washington Post, Emily Badger’s misleading column also discussed an earlier version of Donohue’s paper with data through 2006 (7/29).

And, CPRC even used a graph from the 3rd Edition of More Guns Less Crime that uses the very data that Donohue says should be used, the way they say it should be used.

So you tell me, do more guns equal more crime?

Guns, Crime, and Bloomberg's Lies

Last week, Dr. John Lott and Fox News' John Stossel discussed the myth that crime committed with a firearm is increasing and other lies that Bloomberg and his affiliated groups spread.

Gun Ban Researcher Daniel Webster: Lott's Scholarship Has Been Completely Discredited

With the weekend decision in Parker vs. District of Columbia, a lot is being written about concealed carry.  The Washington Post had a blog post yesterday titled More Guns, Less Crime? Not Exactly.  In the post, Emily Badger writes:

That prediction — Washington will be safer without the gun ban — stems from what's known as the "more guns, less crime" hypothesis. It argues that violent crime declines in places where more legal gun owners carry the weapons in public, both because those people are capable of self-defense, and because would-be criminals know they're out there. "More guns, less crime" has been an incredibly potent idea in local policy debates over gun laws. But is there evidence that it's true?  

The District, which is appealing the decision, isn't buying it.

The theory has largely been fueled by a deeply contested 1997 paper by economists John Lott and David Mustard, who concluded that "concealed handguns are the most cost-effective method of reducing crime thus far analyzed by economists." If states without concealed-carry laws had them back in 1992, Lott and Mustard calculated, that year they could have avoided hundreds of murders, thousands of rapes and tens of thousands of assaults.

In the next paragraph you get a sense of where that term "deeply contested" may have originated.  Badger went to Johns Hopkins University gun ban researcher Daniel Webster.  Webster was part of the Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy that held a "summit" at UVA at the end of last year.  Webster is currently involved in a project of the Police Executive Research Forum funded by the U.S. Department of Justice where he is studying a City of Sacramento ordinance requiring purchasers of ammunition in the city to sign a log and leave a fingerprint at the time of purchase and what impact it may have had on reducing crime.

Webster told Badger:

"John Lott’s research was in my opinion very instrumental over decades in having more states pass laws to make it easier to get permits to carry concealed loaded guns, and to lessen the barriers for those permit holders to take guns in ever more places, whether it's bars, or places of worship, or schools," says Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "It’s all based upon Lott’s scholarship that has been completely discredited."

In fact, the very study that Webster sited to Badger as proof that Lott's research on concealed carry is flawed was itself challenged in the research paper, Trust But Verify: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy.  The Abstract to that paper notes:

In a recent article, Aneja, Donohue and Zhang claim that they are unable to replicate the regressions published by the National Research Council in Chapter 6 of Firearms and Violence. They conclude that the NRC regressions must have been based on bad data supplied by John Lott. The implication is that earlier studies that found that right-to-carry laws reduced crime were flawed because of bad data. However, we can replicate the NRC results with Lott’s original data and with the data set used by the NRC. The earlier studies are not flawed by bad data.

But even more important. Webster's quote in the blog post that "My opinion is that I think there’s greater evidence that they probably have had some harmful impact" just doesn't hold up when you look at the numbers.  For instance, between 2006 and 2012, the number of firearms sold in Virginia increased 101% while crime committed with a firearm decreased 28%. Firearm related crime has dropped in Virginia for four consecutive years.  A VCU criminal justice researcher put it this way:

“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.

Those who question Lott's research usually are on the side of the argument that wants to place more restrictions on law abiding gun owners. So, why doesn't the media openly question the bias that a proponent of gun control may have in their research?

Roanoke Times Op/Ed: The Fault in Ourselves, Not Our Guns

A Virginia NRA member and hunter had this op/ed in today's Roanoke Times as a response to a previous letter to the editor.  The writer, Glenn Watson, pointed out what was wrong with the opinions laid out in that letter, then pointed out that while firearm sales have increased, crime has decreased.  He closed with:

People make choices their entire life and have to live with those choices and accept responsibility for their actions.

Kyle Scott, who teaches American politics and constitutional law at Duke University and the University of Houston,  referred to it as a lack of a moral compass.  Watson would probably agree.

Let me just add to the points Watson made related to gun sales, between 2006 and 2012, firearm sales in Virginia increased 101% while at the same time, crime dropped 28%.  And last year, murders were down in the City of Richmond to levels not seen in 30 years.  The total for 2013 was 37.  Within the first four months of 1994, 60 murders had been committed.

While a number of factors lead to a reduction in crime, it is clear, that more guns do not equal more crime.

Crime Declines Again While Gun Ownership at All-time Highs

The  FBI’s Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report released today reveal declines in both the violent crime and the property crime reported in the first six months of 2013 when compared with figures for the first six months of 2012. The report is based on information from 12,723 law enforcement agencies that submitted three to six months of comparable data to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for the first six months of 2012 and 2013.  At the same time, self-reported gun ownership is at the highest levels since 1993.

According to the FBI report:

All of the offenses in the violent crime category—murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, and robbery—showed decreases when data from the first six months of 2013 were compared with data from the first six months of 2012. The number of murders declined 6.9 percent, the number of forcible rapes declined 10.6 percent, aggravated assaults decreased 6.6 percent, and robbery offenses decreased 1.8 percent.

Violent crime decreased in all city groupings in the first six months of 2013 when compared to figures for the same period in 2012. The largest decrease, 9.2 percent, was noted in cities with fewer than 10,000 in population.

Violent crime decreased 10.5 percent in nonmetropolitan counties and 3.6 percent in metropolitan counties.

Violent crime decreased in each of the nation’s four regions. The largest decrease, 7.4 percent, was noted in the Midwest, followed by 5.9 percent in the South, 4.3 percent in the Northeast, and 3.7 percent in the West.

Kind of puts the lie to the gun ban lobby's claim that more guns equal more crime.

Christian Science Monitor Apparently Among 88% That Don't Know Firearm Related Crime is Declining

The Christian Science Monitor had this article yesterday asking "Is price of an armed America a more dangerous America."  You get the message from the story's title that America is an increasingly dangerous place.  Fact: Over the last twenty years homicides committed with a firearm have declined 49%.  However, the Pew Research Survey that found that little factoid also noted that only 12% of the public knew crime had decreased.

At the same time the Monitor article notes more women are target practicing and taking concealed carry classes (complete with video of a news story on home invasions targeting women), they also trot out this comment from the gun ban lobby:

Gun-control advocates consequently see the gun-carry movement as populated at least in part by white men who feel politically unempowered and who may be inclined to indulge in displays of extra muscle and power over their fellow citizens.

Professor Glenn Reynolds notes in the article that U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Heller "defined new parameters of self-defense and the carrying of firearms, making it more acceptable." And it is the broader acceptance that has likely lead to a 101% increase in firearm sales in Virginia between 2006 and 2012.  For those who think more guns equal more crime, with all those new firearms in the hands of Virginian's,  the Commonwealth's violent crime rate is the 4th lowest in the nation.  Maybe the Monitor should have looked at those numbers before asking if the trade off for a more armed America is a more dangerous America.

Congressional Study Shows Firearm-related Murder Cut in Half While Number of Firearms Increased

A new Congressional Research Service study notes:

Reports submitted by state and local law enforcement agencies to the FBI and published annually in the Uniform Crime Reports indicate that the firearms-related murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate per 100,000 of the population decreased from 6.6 for 1993 to 3.6 for 2000. The rate held steady at 3.6 for 2001 and fluctuated thereafter between a high of 3.9 for 2006 and 2007, and a low of 3.2 for 2010. For 2011, it has remained at 3.2.

It's just one more example that more guns do not lead to more crime despite what the gun ban lobby would like us to believe.  Dr. AWR Hawkins, of Breitbart News was on NRANews.com's Cam and Company and talked about the report.

Public Concern About Crime Falls with Crime Rate

The Washington Post included this graphic in an article that purports to show a "broad evolution in Cuccinelli’s views on crime and punishment."

Rather than focus on the article, which is more of a thinly veiled swipe at Cuccinelli charging he has become the "kinder - gentler" Republican when it comes to crime, let's focus on the chart.  You'll note the continuing theme of the last couple of weeks - that crime has reduced dramatically in Virginia.  Over the last 18 years, the crime rate has reduced 42%.  At the same time, we know that over the last 6 years, the sale of firearms in the state has increased 75%.

So while Bloomberg wants to claim that his crime problems are due to Virginia guns, it would seem that the large number of firearms in the Commonwealth has not negatively impacted the safety of Virginians.

Piers Morgan Gets His Stats Wrong on Virginia Crime

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is famous for saying if only Virginia had New York City's gun laws, New York City would be a safer place because, as he tells it, all those firearms used in crimes in New York come from Virginia.  Piers Morgan picked up the storyline during an appearance Tuesday night when Breitbart News' A.W.R. Hawkins was on the show and mentioned Virginia as an example of more guns equal less crime.  Morgan countered that Virginia had the highest murder rate in the country. Morgan's assertion was entirely false, according to the FBI's 2009 report on crime.

Cam Edwards and Tabitha Hale set the record straight on the August 14th edition of NRANews.com's Cam and Company, noting that while Richmond had a high number of murders in 2009 for cities with a population over 100,000, the current number is at 30 year lows.

Trying Times In Virginia for Gun Control Advocates

Picking up where the paper left off on Sunday,  today's Richmond Times Dispatch (RTD) editorial page points to the huge increase in firearm sales in Virginia and the reduction in gun related crime and notes it is indeed trying times for gun control advocates:

Time after time, progressives have greeted expansion of gun rights with dire warnings that the expansion would turn society into the Wild West, and the streets would run red with blood. They said so after the Supreme Court’s two major gun-rights rulings in Heller and McDonald. They said so after the expansion of concealed-carry laws across the country. They said so after Virginia eased restrictions on guns in bars and restaurants.

In every case, gun-related crimes fell.

The RTD points out that facts are stubborn, and the facts show that the liberal claim that mores guns leads to more crime is wrong.
However, the RTD should do a little more homework when it comes to determining just who is buying all those firearms.   

Foes of gun rights might point out, correctly, that the percentage of Americans who own firearms is declining — therefore, the increase in gun sales is owing to existing owners who are buying more guns, not more people buying a gun for the first time.

They should go up the road to Hanover just outside of Richmond and ask Green Top Sporting Goods, the retailer that the paper's database shows sold the most firearms in the seven year span, and ask them just how many were first time buyers.  Or go to Colonial Shooting Academy in the west end of Richmond, and ask just who is taking all of those firearm training classes they teach.  The RTD will likely find what those of us who pay attention to such things know, that, based on information from manufacturers who have compiled data from firearm warrenty registration cards, say that about 25% of the sales are to first time buyers.  That has also been a big reason why you can't find ammo - more people owning firearms mean increased demand for ammo.
WRIC Richmond News and Weather -

Virginia Gun Sales Increase 100 Percent in Seven Years, Crime Decreases

Yesterday, Fox News picked up this Richmond Times Dispatch article (RTD) that followed up on its article from last year that detailed research by Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.  The RTD asked Professor Baker to look at six years of gun sales and crime data.  What he found was while Virginia's firearm sales had increased by over 70%, crime had decreased by 23%.  In yesterday's article, Baker was able to get the final sales numbers for 2012, and found that since 2006, Virginia's gun sales had increased a whopping 101% while Virginia's crime rate had decreased 28%.

The newspaper recently obtained updated firearm transaction figures and gun crime data for 2012 to compare them with the years originally reviewed by Baker. The new figures show a continuation of a pattern of increased gun sales not contributing to an increase in gun-related crime.

But Baker cautioned against drawing any conclusions that more guns in the hands of Virginians are causing a corresponding drop in gun crime, as some academics and gun-rights supporters have argued.

“To substantiate (that) argument, you would need to eliminate a number of other factors that could potentially explain away the relationship of more guns, less crime in Virginia,” Baker said. “Only if the relationship remained after controlling for additional factors could a researcher be more comfortable making the claim that more guns lead to less crime. But what the data does show is that the ‘more guns, less crime argument’ is certainly possible.”

But he Baker did have this to say:

“It’s a quite interesting trend given the current rhetoric about strengthening gun laws and the presumed effect it would have on violent crimes,” Baker added. “While you can’t conclude from this that tougher laws wouldn’t reduce crime even more, it really makes you question if making it harder for law-abiding people to buy a gun would have any effect on crime.”

This news hit just two days after  New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and a New York Daily News article started a spitting match with Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell over Bloomberg's claim that most of the firearms recovered in crimes in his city come from out of state, including Virginia.

Bloomberg railed that 90% of all guns used in city crimes in 2011 came from other states — and that more of them came from Virginia than anywhere else, including the weapon that killed NYPD officer Peter Figoski in December of that year.

McDonnell's spokesperson's response was too cute by half  responding that Virginia’s murder and robbery (rates) are significantly lower than New York City’s then adding:

“We wish the mayor well as he attempts to address these issues within his home state and we hope he won’t hesitate to call on us if our law enforcement agencies can be of assistance in ensuring public safety in New York City,”

This just begged for the Daily News to go fact checking then piled on by contacting criminologists to explain why the comparison between a city and a state are not correct for statistical purposes.

Maybe the Governor's office should have contacted Professor Baker for a response.

Crime Continues to Decline in Virginia Despite Increased Firearms Sales

Continuing a trend that was noted late last year by a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University, while the sale of fireams continues to be brisk and are at all time highs, the Richmond Times Dispatch reports both violent and property crimes fell about 3 percent in Virginia in 2012 compared to 2011.

State police say drug and narcotics offenses rose 9.4 percent and increased for the third straight year. Crimes such as burglaries, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts fell 3.3 percent, while murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assaults dropped by 3 percent. Specifically, there was a 13.2 percent decrease in robberies. Motor vehicle thefts and attempted thefts fell 8 percent.

So, it would appear that once again, the gun ban lobby is wrong.  The availability of firearms does not lead to a more dangerous society.

Wall Street Journal Interview with John Lott

The Wall Street Journal posted this video yesterday where John Lott talks about the President's gun ban proposals.

Virginia Has Largest Year to Year Rise in Firearms Sales in 20 Years

The Richmond Times Dispatch (RTD) reports that Virginia set a record in firearm sales in 2012.

Virginia gun sales soared to a new high in 2012, fueled in part by the repeal of the state’s one-handgun-per-month law and fears of increased gun restrictions after December’s school massacre in Connecticut.

Gun transactions in Virginia totaled 432,387 last year, a 35 percent jump from the 321,166 transactions in 2011, according to the latest Virginia State Police figures of mandatory criminal-background checks of gun buyers.

The RTD notes that this represents the largest year-to-year increase in 20 years and the third-largest increase overall since 1989 when Virginia’s background check program was implemented.  The RTD also noted that Virginia's sales outpaced the nation as a whole.  According to FBI NICS data, a record 19.6 million transactions were conducted in the U.S. last year through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, up from 16.4 million in 2011 — a 20 percent rise.

The above data is based on background checks for 2012.  There is not a one-to-one correlation between background checks and the number of fireams sold because some customers buy multiple firearms and some of the checks involve people reclaiming a firearm they previously had pawned. There is also a small percentage of background checks in Virginia that are denied approval to buy a firearm.

The RTD reports that firearm transaction data obtained from Virginia State Police provides a more accurate picture of how many firearms are sold in Virginia by federally licensed firearms dealers. In 2011, firearm dealers sold an estimated 420,829 firearms of all types in Virginia based on 321,166 background checks, according to the state police data.  The transaction data for 2012 is not yet available.

The RTD did an indepth report on Virginia firearms sales during Thanksgiving weekend that showed over a six year period, firearm sales increased over 70% while crime decreased by over 20%.