$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pedantbuster', 'R')eturning to the topic at hand, I think increased gun ownership and concealed carry is
playing a big part in the decline of crime.

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'S')urely a sign of massive societal collapse due to peak oil!

[The Practician]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pedantbuster', 'O')F - NRA says gun ownership is at an all time high, thanks to the Obama administration.
You should look in more than one place for your stats.

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets ... &issue=007

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pedantbuster', 'O')F - NRA says gun ownership is at an all time high, thanks to the Obama administration.
You should look in more than one place for your stats.

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets ... &issue=007

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The Practician', 'Y')ou're talkin to a guy who just admitted to having a degree in urban planning here! Having a degree in urban planning is like having a degree in statistical cherry picking to further ones own personal agenda.

[ColossalContrarian]

I've begun reading a pdf located here ->http://faculty.unlv.edu/mccorkle/Declining%20Violent%20Crime%20Rates%20in%2090s.pdf

The paper really has me thinking about all the factors involved in crime rates and the idea that crime comes in "waves" or "cycles" is actually pretty interesting and isn't as simple as immigrants, economy, laws, politics, but a combination of many things. One piece I found particularly interesting the part about "Political Legitimacy" that is a very good way to put it!

This part sums the pdf up pretty well too!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Crime Waves in Criminology
The more specific impediment to the development of an empirical study of
crime waves is a longstanding tendency by researchers to treat crime waves as
socially constructed epiphenomena, rather than as empirical facts with impor-
tant theoretical and policy implications. This view is exemplified by Erikson’s
(1966) influential study of deviance in the Puritan colonies of Massachusetts
in the seventeenth century. Erikson identifies three “crime waves” during the
first sixty years of settlement: the Antinomian controversy (a challenge to the
community’s religious establishment), the arrival of the Quakers from Penn-
sylvania, and the Salem witch hysteria. But he then argues that all three waves
were not fueled by increases in crime rates—which remained relatively stable
over the six decades—but were instead efforts to shift public attention away
from other problems and create social unity.
Like Erikson, the few researchers who have studied crime waves in contem-
porary America (Fishman 1978, Graber 1980) have most often interpreted
them as social constructs, often emphasizing the generally weak connections
between concern about crime and actual crime rates. For example, Fishman
(1978) argues that crime waves are constructed when the news media devotes
considerable attention to a small number of crimes, encouraging law enforce-
ment agents to bring evidence only of these crimes forward. Relatedly, Beckett
(1997) compares increases in rates of street crime in the 1960s and 1970s to
levels of public concern about crime and to levels of punishment. While she
does not conclude that the increases in crime were imaginary, she nevertheless
concentrates on the weak relationship between actual crime levels and public
fear of crime to argue against the rise in public support for more punitive crime
policies.

[The Practician]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The Practician', 'Y')ou're talkin to a guy who just admitted to having a degree in urban planning here! Having a degree in urban planning is like having a degree in statistical cherry picking to further ones own personal agenda.