Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Three Dead in St. Petersburg, Florida

from Dog Gone, of Penigma.blogspot.com.

Two of the dead were police officers, the third was the shooter. The article goes on to chronicle several other recent incidents in which police were shot.

It looks like 2011 is off to a good start in this particular grim statistic.

Does it make you wonder about the supposedly decreasing crime rate when you see things like this?  It does me.  It makes me wonder. How can more cops be getting killed all the time as well as several major cities be experiencing major increases in murders and yet crime is steadily going down?

Something doesn't add up.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

15 comments:

  1. It won't add up when you rely on news reports instead of the total statistics and figures.

    Now you MAY be right, the recent downward trend in violent crime rates may be turning around and on an upswing. Certainly there seems to be a lot more police officers being killed this month than last year.

    I find it interesting that firearm-related murder is going UP in Massachusetts? I thought they had very strict gun control there? Just more evidence that gun control doesn't effect firearm-related crime rates, eh?

    ...Orygunner...

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  2. O: It's rather a dishonest argument you make when you claim gun control doesn't work when Firearm crime is going up in MA.

    As I'm sure you know, each state isn't surrounded by an impregnable border wall. And you ignore the fact that when crime rates were on the downswing--Louisiana's climbed. As you know, LA has ver lax gun laws.

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  3. Jade: “And you ignore the fact that when crime rates were on the downswing--Louisiana's climbed.”

    A quick fact check of Jadegold shows that Louisiana violent crime rates were at a high of 1061.7 in 1993 and at a 30 year low in 2009 which pretty much mirrors the rest of the country. It is pretty easy to ignore things that don’t exist.

    http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/lacrime.htm

    I’ll add that to my running list entitled: “things of which Jadegold was grossly wrong about”.

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  4. TS: Cherry-picking, are we?

    In 1993, crime wasn't on the downswing everywhere.

    Added to my running list of Things I have Corrected TS On (Vol I)

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  5. Jadegold wrote:
    "As I'm sure you know, each state isn't surrounded by an impregnable border wall."

    Neither is the country, as evidenced by all the illegal drugs we get flowing into our borders.

    Those willing to break the law and supply drugs to meet the demand also manufacture (and grow) them within our borders. What if you were able to close our nation's borders? What's to stop those industrious suppliers of the black market from manufacturing firearms? They don't NOW because they're easy enough to get from other means, but fully-automatic firearms are incredibly easy to build in mass quantities in a simple machine shop.

    Whether it's the border of a state or the border of a country, the black market will always find a way. Have you truly considered the unintended consequences of stricter gun control?

    ...Orygunner...

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  6. Well, I am glad your list of my corrections is so vast. If you were agreeing with me I would have to seriously question my stance.

    Jade: “In 1993, crime wasn't on the downswing everywhere.”

    What do you mean by this? I am talking about the country as a whole, you seem to saying there are pockets which don’t match the national trend. That would actually be “cherry-picking” as you call it. Somewhere at sometime there will always be a place that defies the collective- even if you have to say “well violent crime in the Jones household of 4234 Cherokee lane was up in 2010”.

    What we have is that violent crime is down 41.6% in Louisiana from its high in 1993. The United States as a whole has had a 42.5% decrease over the same period. The only difference being that the USA had its peak in 1991 with 1993 being a mere 1.5% less. I don’t know what else to say.

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  7. O: The obvious difference, of course, is that drugs don't start out as legal drugs.

    Every gun that is manufactured begins as a legal gun. It becomes illegal when it gets into a criminal's hands. It gets into a criminal's hands because so-called "law-abiding citizens" provide them to criminals.

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  8. TS: Do you deny LA has a greater gun crime problem than MA?

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  9. Jade: “Do you deny LA has a greater gun crime problem than MA?”

    Nope. But that is not what you said. I’ll have the court reporter read back your statement:

    As I'm sure you know, each state isn't surrounded by an impregnable border wall. And you ignore the fact that when crime rates were on the downswing--Louisiana's climbed. As you know, LA has ver lax gun laws.

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  10. Jade - tons of illegal drugs start out as legal drugs. There is a huge black market for the sale of perscription painrelievers, ADHD meds, etc. All of these were legal drugs in the beginning.

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  11. Don't forget that meth manufacturing starts with all legal chemicals and OTC drugs.

    ...Orygunner...

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  12. Jim, Prescription drugs are certainly abused in the States, but when we talk about drugs we generally mean cocaine, heroin and marijuana. But you knew that didn't you? You just threw that bullshit about the prescription drugs in there to make a complicated argument a bit more complicated.

    The multi-billion dollar cocaine business is about an illegal drug that started out illegal.

    The illegal gun business is sourced by guns that ALL started out legally owned by guys like you and your local FFL guy.

    That's what we're talking about. Stop trying to derail the discussion.

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  13. mikeb - sorry to inform you that things are indeed complicated. Maybe your desire for things to be simple has led you to believe that simply passing the right law will solve all of our gun problems. Sorry to say the world does not work that way. You don't get to create your own reality by simply ignoring parts that go against what you want to believe.

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  14. The title of this blog post should read, "Guy who should have been strapped into an electric chair years ago goes on to kill more people."

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  15. Jim, You're exaggerating again. I never said "simply passing the right law will solve all of our gun problems."

    I may have said passing several common sense laws and enforcing them properly would solve SOME of our gun problems. I may have said that.

    Why do you find it necessary to exaggerate what was said and then argue against that? Isn't what I do say enough for you to disagree with?

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