Wednesday, February 26, 2014

When Mass. Criminals Want A Gun, They Often Head North

Massachusetts gun laws are widely considered some of the toughest in the country. But with a rash of shooting deaths in Boston this year, some law enforcement officials say it’s obvious that there are ways around the rules. And when Massachusetts criminals want to get their hands on a gun, they frequently head north.
In 2012, more than half of the guns that law enforcement seized in Massachusetts and managed to trace to their origins came from other states, according to federal statistics. The biggest suppliers by far were New Hampshire and Maine, as is the case most years.
This is one of the things pro-gun fanatics like to dismiss as unimportant or even mock as foolish.  The truth is however, states with strict gun control laws are not getting the benefits they otherwise would because of the nearby states with lax laws.
Denying the obvious is what they do.

36 comments:

  1. It must annoy you to have to blame states north of Massachusetts, rather than indulge your regional bigotry against southern states.

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  2. And if the nearby states had similar laws, the criminals would smuggle guns from farther states. And if those had the same laws, then they'd smuggle them from Canada, Mexico, or whatever nearby country had more lax laws.

    Or they'd just get smart and learn safe busting like we've suggested. If you want proof, look at this section of a report from the Australian government: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/mr/1-20/16/06_compliance.html

    Table 27, not quite half way down the page, shows that the majority of firearms thefts occur in homes where people comply with safe storage laws--and these account for 74% of multiple firearms thefts.

    To be clear, before someone puts words in my mouth, I'm not suggesting that storing guns in safes helps criminals--it hinders them, to be sure, unless they've learned to crack safes in order to get large scores. I'm just pointing out that, as we suggested, criminals are adaptive, and safes are not the cure-all that you suggest. I hope everyone will get and use a safe, but I also hope they insure their guns and also invest in burglar alarms, good locks, etc.

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    1. Simon, that is a great link! I've bookmarked it for future reference.

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    2. I wonder what percentage of the 500,000 guns stolen every year in the US was safely stored in gun safes. I'd bet it's pretty low. If safe storage were demanded by law, that 500,000 might be cut in half, don't you think? Then half of the quarter-million guns stolen each year might come from safes because the thieves are so adaptive, but the quarter-million that are NOT stolen would result in fewer deaths and damage. Can you agree with that?

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    3. Mike,

      I was just advocating for the use of safes, so obviously I think they're a good idea and people should use them. My problem with your safe storage laws is nebulousness about what qualifies and the inversion of justice in many cases where you insist on punishing the burglary victim.

      Also, as for the numbers you're trying to put out there, claiming that you'd cut thefts in half, it seems like a possible hypothesis, but you haven't in any way proven it. Now, if you could show a decline in the theft rate in Oz, that would be one thing. In the mean time, we have an indication that it is possible that the number of guns stolen may have gone up: The percentage of single guns stolen while not stored safely is much closer to the percentage of single guns stored safely, but both are eclipsed by the number of guns stolen, several at a time, from safes. A possible interpretation of these numbers is that it takes criminals as long to find one well hidden gun as to crack a safe, and that gathering guns into a safe makes it easier for them to find and steal them.

      I'm not arguing that it's better to come up with secretive ways to hide your guns--I am a fan of safes for many reasons--try to make it harder on criminals, place to store other valuables as well, fire protection, etc. I'm just saying that this is, indeed, a viable interpretation of the data, and we'd need more to call it either way.

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    4. Australia actually has anti-theft safe storage laws (something that doesn’t exist anywhere in the USA), and we see that still the majority of stolen guns met those requirements. So I don’t know how you jump to conclusions about how well it would work with such a bad statistic for your cause. We don’t know what percentage of Australians are complying with the law, we only know compliance after it was stolen. But it looks real bad for your case that thieves are skipping the safely stored ones and moving onto easier scores when the safely stored ones are the majority. They’re chart shows some trends that aren’t going down, but I believe the requirements were in place long before that. I’d like to see if thefts changed at all, and if we see that thieves adapted over time. If everyone has a safe, then we see more prepared thieves- and worst of all an increase in violent thefts (where instead of cracking a safe, the thief takes the route of violence to get the owner to open the safe).

      But look at another figure in this table. The amount of gun owners prosecuted for having their guns stolen under their storage laws. Do you think that would cause some people to not call the police after a burglary? Can you agree with that?

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    5. The other thing you have to realize is that the USA is awash in guns. Don’t we keep hearing that from you? When you say a reduction in crime guns would immediately impact violence, you are making the assumption that the criminal underworld is currently limited by their access to guns. In other words, they desire to commit more crime and murder, but just can’t get their hands on enough guns here in the USA. I don’t think you believe that. So with the criminal world saturated with guns, how much reduction in thefts would we actually need to see before criminals have a hard time committing crimes because they just can’t find a gun?

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    6. Simon, you yourself said a safe makes it harder for criminals. So your preceding paragraph is total bullshit about what's supposedly happening in Australia. A little common sense and honesty is all it takes, not necessarily more data.

      TS, the majority of guns stolen in Australia come from safes for the obvious reason that the Aussies aren't keeping their guns under the pillow any more. Most people comply with the laws about safe storage, therefor most theft necessarily comes from safes. Do you think there'd be LESS theft if not for those safe storage laws?

      The US criminal world is awash in guns, yes, but there is a constant attrition happening. In every city in the country guns are being taken by the police, thousands, hundreds of thousands. These are being replaced by a continual flow from the law abiding gun owners through theft and straw purchasing. So, clearly, stricter laws which would diminish that flow would have an almost immediate effect.

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    7. A little common sense and honesty? Mikeb, when the data show that you are wrong, you should be honest enough to admit that.

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    8. Mike,

      That's Australian Government data on what's happening there, not something I've made up. Your statement that I've negated my point by admitting safes make it harder for criminals is ludicrous oversimplification. Learning to open the safe takes time and effort and may slow down a criminal the first time they encounter such a hurdle, but because there's probably several guns in the safe, it's worth their time to learn to crack it, and then no other safes are an impediment to them.

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    9. Do you have any evidence that 250,000+ crime guns are seized per year by law enforcement (the number that so say would still be stolen under your plan)? That seems like a lot. But you still didn’t answer my question. Right now the criminal market for guns is saturated. They have more than they need to do their ills. So even if you managed to have a net reduction of flow into the criminal world, at what point would gun availability actually start becoming a problem for them? And of course all this is not addressing substitution of other weapons, and the effect on lawful gun ownership for self-defense.

      Now about Australia. Do you have any evidence that theft rates are down? And would you care to comment about my point that people may not want to report the theft if they might get arrested? That’s a huge problem, which I have mentioned here probably dozens of times and that you don’t seem to have an answer for.

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    10. Oops, it looks like firearm thefts in Australia have been increasing, Mike.

      The number of firearms reported stolen in Australia (excluding Western Australia) has risen by six percent each year since 2004–05.

      http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/mr/1-20/16/02_execsummary.html

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    11. Wow, it's almost as if we were correct that even if you cut off the ability of criminals to buy guns they'll just turn to smuggling and stealing to satisfy the same demand for guns...

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    12. Yep, simple supply and demand. Mike says we need to make it harder for thieves to steal guns. He admits it won’t stop thefts- just make it harder. This means one of two things will happen: they either give the same amount of effort and acquire fewer guns, or they work harder and acquire the same amount. Of course the problem is when the former happens enough to drop the supply level below the demand, guess what happens to the black market price for guns. And when that goes up, guess what happens to the effort thieves put in to their trade. Market balance prevents your goal for being obtainable, Mike. It’s impossible.

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    13. TS, that's a pretty concise explanation of why there's so much overlap between opponents of private gun ownership and opponents of the free enterprise system.

      Gun rights and capitalism are mutually supportive, as are "gun control" and collectivist command economy regimes.

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    14. Listen, when the so-called data shows something that makes no sense at all, you have to question whether the data is accurate. When most people begin complying with the law that says you have to lock up your guns instead of continuing to leave them under the pillow or in the night.stand drawer and someone comes up with a report that says the result is theft has gone up, to me it seems something is wrong with that report.

      Of course you guys latch onto something like that because it supports your bizarre and harmful demands for as lax gun laws as possible.

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    15. The data makes no sense at all? Only if you refuse to acknowledge any data that contradicts your position. We predicted this result--we predicted mechanisms by which it might happen, and then I stumbled across this report on accident while trying to determine the percentage of compliance with the Australian gun ban.

      But go on and stick your head in the sand--it wouldn't be the first time you ignored facts that didn't fit your paradigm.

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    16. Kurt, and since we are talking about a black market in this case, collectivist command economies only serve to strengthen the black market.

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    17. Have it your way, Simon. When people lock their guns up in safes, theft goes up. That makes perfect sense, especially since the DATA proves it.

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    18. I don't think Simon is claiming it to be causational, and neither am I. But it is a defeatable deterrent. What you are not recognizing is that when the demand is there, thieves will just try harder. They'll come prepared, they'll learn the skills they need, etc., especially as the black market price rises. Humans are smart.

      Do you think building a fence across the boarder will slow down illegal immigration?

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    19. Mikeb, take parallel cases: Prohibition and the War on Drugs. It may be that those two efforts kept some people from acquiring the desired substance, but millions managed to get what they wanted--and still do, in the case of drugs. But what also happened is that both policies increased the level of violence without achieving the stated goals or even coming close to doing so.

      The fact is that the harder you try to get rid of something through coercision, the more people will seek that thing. And the more dangerous our society will be. Why not work instead on reducing violence and improving opportunity? And yes, those things are mutually exclusive. Prohibition efforts make people reject anything that isn't a law and order approach.

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    20. As TS said, I'm not saying that the safe storage laws caused an increase in thefts. I'm pointing out that they failed to stop theft as you claim that they would do here and abroad. It's not the laws that cause theft--they just change the landscape. The market forces--in this case the black market's market forces--drive the acquisition of guns, and the new landscape has merely switched up which is the easiest way to acquire the guns. They can't buy them as easily, so it becomes more profitable to steal them or smuggle them, and so those activities increase.

      If the safes were suddenly impossible to crack (good luck achieving that) theft would drop and smuggling would skyrocket--not due to any law, but due to enterprising criminals trying to satisfy the black market any way they can.

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  3. The obvious is that Massachusetts's gun laws are repressive and need to be thrown out. But perhaps you can explain to us why those guns don't stay in Maine or New Hampshire to commit crimes? Why not remain where they're welcome?

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  4. "But perhaps you can explain to us why those guns don't stay in Maine or New Hampshire to commit crimes? Why not remain where they're welcome?"

    Greg asks a very good question Mike. Lets look at the violent crime up that way,

    Massachusetts, violent crime rate, 405 per 100k
    New York, violent crime rate, 406 per 100k

    Maine, violent crime rate, 122 per 100k
    New Hampshire, violent crime rate, 187 per 100k
    Vermont, violent crime rate, 142 per 100k

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    1. You think that's a good point? Really? Haven't we been over and over the fact that there are other factors that combine to raise the violent crime rate, many of which are lacking in states like NH and VT?

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    2. No Mike, but that's my point. The constant complaint of guns traveling from states with looser gun laws is just an excuse. For years, Chicago always used that lament to explain their ineffectiveness in controlling violent crime. Then they would couple that with claiming that all they need is just one more gun control law and everything will get better.
      Chicago recently came out and admitted that violent crime was caused by other factors and set out through good old fashioned police work to reduce violent crime.

      "The city led the nation in homicides in 2012 with more than 500. It ended 2013 with 415 homicides — the lowest total in nearly half a century but still far more than any other U.S city, including much larger Los Angeles and New York."

      "In response, authorities launched a multi-pronged effort that started with a gang audit, a massive pooling of information about specific gangs and their members.
      "We identified gang turfs, membership, who's in conflict with who, put it into a database and put that into the hands of beat officers," Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said in an interview with The Associated Press."
      http://news.yahoo.com/chicago-anti-gang-efforts-tame-street-violence-064900475.html;_ylt=AwrBJSCnLQ9TGhkArazQtDMD

      I'm hoping that Chicago can continue their fight against violent crime and further the reduction in the toll it takes on citizens. But Chicago's inroads in to controlling their violence problem belies Massachusetts's claim that the cause of their violence problem is to their north.

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    3. Yes, there are other factors, but you cannot overlook the one called gun availability to unfit people. That's what you guys keep trying to do. You want to focus on everything but the guns. We, on the other hand, recognize there are other factors, about which much is being done, but we also realize that gun availability needs to be addressed.

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    4. Mikeb, you have no means of reducing gun availability that won't also violate the rights of millions of Americans who aren't a problem.

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    5. Requiring you to lock up your guns at home and requiring you to have a background check done on anyone you sell a gun to does not constitute violating your rights. These are minor inconveniences which would result in many lives saved.

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    6. When someone is arrested or has all their guns confiscated because they didn't meet you requirements- that violates their rights.

      Did you see how that Australian report shows that people were prosecuted after reporting their guns stolen?

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    7. If it's the law that you must secure your guns properly and you fail to do that, it's not "my requirements." It's the law. And when people violate the law, they are liable to be charged with that. And that's not violating their rights any more than your being required to wear a seat belt is. When a cop tickets you for failure to comply, are your rights violated?

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    8. A ticket? Is that all you get for not meeting the seat belt requirement? How about if you get arrested, thrown in jail, lose your driver's license for life, and have all your cars confiscated and destroyed? Would that be a violation of your rights?

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    9. And what are you saying, so long as it is the law, no one's rights are violated? So when Russian authorities fine homosexuals for acting gay in public, that's not violating their rights anymore than getting a parking ticket?

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  5. Sorry, spaced out and forgot the cite,

    http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/5tabledatadecpdf

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