By Dr. Ray Kessler, who is, incidentally, a retired Prof. of Criminal Justice, former defense attorney and prosecutor is your host. I am also a part-time instructor in Criminal Justice at Richland College, an outstanding, 2-year institution in Dallas, TX.
https://richlandcollege.edu/
Note that I do NOT select which ads run on the blog.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Violent Crime Rates Fall Again
In recent years we have seen a surge in gun sales, but violent crime rates (including homicide) continue to move in the opposite direction. The case for gun control aimed at ordinary citizens gets weaker and weaker every year!
Let's not get too far into questionable logic here . . . the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy could be alive and well. While I support reasonable gun freedom, there could be many causes for this outcome, some of which are very likely.
Ridgway: Thanks for the post and excellent point. If gun ownership causes violent crime then the two should be positively correlated. As one goes up, the other goes up. However, the trend suggests that the correlation is negative. However, correlations, or lack thereof, are not necessarily indicative of causality. It is difficult to control other variables in this scenario and you could be right--it could be some other variable that is at work.
Let's not get too far into questionable logic here . . . the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy could be alive and well. While I support reasonable gun freedom, there could be many causes for this outcome, some of which are very likely.
ReplyDeleteRidgway: Thanks for the post and excellent point. If gun ownership causes violent crime then the two should be positively correlated. As one goes up, the other goes up. However, the trend suggests that the correlation is negative. However, correlations, or lack thereof, are not necessarily indicative of causality. It is difficult to control other variables in this scenario and you could be right--it could be some other variable that is at work.
ReplyDelete