http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=22585

Gun Control: Paul Helmke Continues Brady Tradition

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence introduced its new president, Paul Helmke, in a rebuttal to Florida Governor Bush’s recent statement on the state’s decreasing crime rate:

The truth is that, across the nation, violent crime, particularly gun crime, has been in sharp decline since the Brady Law went into effect in 1994.  Weak gun laws have not made Florida a leader in fighting crime: Arguably, they have helped to make it one of the two most violent states in the Nation.^[1]

Partial Truth Favors Brady

What Helmke does not say is that the U.S. violent crime rate began dropping two years before passing of the Brady Law. After peaking in 1991, the violent crime rate dropped 5.9% by the end of 1994, the year the Brady Law went into effect.^[2] Helmke’s implication that the Brady Law helped reduce crime is self-serving and misleading. The National Academy of Science concurs: their researchers concluded that results are too inconsistent to clearly endorse the Brady Law as a crime-fighting tool.^[3]

Helmke ignores Governor Bush’s main point: While Florida “weakened” its gun laws to favor law-abiding citizens, violent crime dropped.^[4] Florida’s violent crime rate has been falling steadily since 1992, reached its peak in 1990, and is at the lowest level since 1978.^[5] The table below compares Florida’s violent crime trend to the national trend, showing that Florida’s decrease exceeds the national trend in all categories.

Brady’s “Weak Gun Law” States and Violent Crime

Another Helmke claim:

According to FBI figures, in 2004 Florida had the second highest violent crime rate of any state in the Nation. Only South Carolina, also with weak gun laws, was more violent.

As noted in an earlier article, gun controllers like to ignore Washington D.C. crime statistics when discussing which state is most violent, even though its population is larger than Wyoming’s.^[6] Our nation’s capitol was the most violent jurisdiction in 2004, with a 75% higher violent crime rate than second-place South Carolina. Maryland was a close fourth to Florida–just a 1.5% lower violent crime rate–and it also has “strong gun laws” by Brady criteria.^[7] Average the two most violent “weak gun law” and the two “strong gun law” jurisdictions, and you get equal average ratings of 2.5. (A previous paper determined that Brady definition of “weak gun laws” means states with right-to-carry laws.^[8])

The five least violent states–North Dakota, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota–all have “weak gun laws” according to Brady criteria.^[9] In 2004, RTC states had an average violent crime rate of 388.6, while Brady’s “strong gun law” (non-RTC) states rate of 491.2 was 26.4% higher. Brady’s favorite states had a 39.1% higher murder rate, a 74.8% higher robbery rate, and 15.1% higher aggravated assault rate. RTC states had a 18.9% higher rate of rape, but it is interesting to note that the rate is dropping faster in RTC states than non-RTC states: Between 1995 and 1996, 10 states enacted right-to-carry. By 2004, they experienced a 19.2% greater annual decrease in the rate of rape than the 12 non-RTC states and D.C. This occurred despite the fact that the overall violent crime rate fell faster in the non-RTC states.^[10]

If Everybody Were a Concealed Carry Licensee…

Another Helmke quote highlights the inconsistent application of their own standards, in order to highlight their bias against RTC in the most ideal manner:

“Explaining and understanding increases or decreases in crime is always difficult. To argue that putting guns into our communities leads to a reduction in crime makes no sense.”

Between 1999 and 2004, the FBI reported that Florida’s general population had an average arrest rate of 5.72%.^[11] The percentage of RTC licensees who committed any crime after licensure averaged 0.60% during the same time period:^[12] the general population was arrested 9.5 times as often as RTC licensees committed violations that probably resulted in arrest. Using this as an indicator, if Florida’s general population were as law-abiding as RTC licensees, the state’s crime rate would be reduced about 90%.

This does not prove that RTC reduces crime, but it does show that licensees represent a safer, more responsible population group that requires a much lower expenditure of tax dollars on criminal justice resources. More importantly, it also justifies the right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms in public for self-defense, which is at the core of Governor Bush’s statements:

“Law abiding citizens that have guns for protection actually probably are part of the reason we have a lower crime rate.”

“The people that commit the majority of the crimes are habitual offenders. They’re the ones that commit a crime after crime after crime.”^[13]

By Helmke’s criterion, laid out in the first sentence of his opening quote in this section, to argue that not putting guns into our communities leads to a reduction in crime also makes no sense, especially in light of the data above.

Conclusion

Even though Brady has a new president, their anti-gun message remains the same, and so is their use of emotion-based, statistically-unsupportable rhetoric. The more things change at Brady Campaign, the more they stay the same.

^[1] Brady Campaign, Statement of Paul Helmke on Remarks by Florida Governor Jeb Bush, July 12, 2006. http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/?pagename=release&release=765

^[2] FBI, Crime in the United States, 2004, Table 1: Crime in the United States by Volume and Rate per 100,000 Inhabitants, 1985-2004, page 72. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/documents/CIUS2004.pdf

^[3] Charles F. Wellford, John V. Pepper, Carol V. Petrie, et al, Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review, Committee on Law and Justice, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Copyright 2005, pages 93-95.

^[4] Brent Kallestad, Bush: Florida crime rate down to lowest level since ’71, Palm Beach Post, July 11, 2006. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/gen/ap/FL_Florida_Crime.html

^[5] The Disaster Center, Florida Crime Rates 1960-2000. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/flcrime.htm

^[6] Howard Nemerov, Gun Control: Violence Policy Center Proves That More Guns Means Less Crime, ChronWatch, March 3, 2006. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=19861

^[7] FBI, Crime in the United States, 2004, Table 5: Crime in the United States by State, 2004, pages 86-96.

^[8] Howard Nemerov, Gun Control: Explaining the Brady Campaign Report Card, , January 25, 2005. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=12569

^[9] Cross-reference FBI, Crime in the United States, 2004, Table 5: Crime in the United States by State, 2004, pages 86-96 with NRA-ILA, Right-To-Carry 2005, March 17, 2005. http://www.nraila.org/issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=18

^[10] Compiled from Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States: 1995, page 64; 1996, page 72; 2004 page 86. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm cross-referenced with Right-To-Carry 2005, NRA-ILA, March 17, 2005. http://www.nraila.org/issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=18 Excel spreadsheet available.

^[11] Compiled from arrest data in the FBI’s Crime in the United States for each year. Reports can be referenced from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#cius .

^[12] Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Licensing, Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report. Compiled from annual reports 1999-2004. Reports must be ordered. Copies faxed to me by Marion Hammer, Executive Director, Unified Sportsmen of Florida.

^[13] Brent Kallestad, Bush: Florida crime rate down to lowest level since ’71, Palm Beach Post, July 11, 2006.

About the Writer: Howard Nemerov began doing his own research into gun control when he recognized that the media was full of distortions and half truths. He publishes with ChronWatch and other sites, and is a frequent guest on NRA News. He is currently working on his first book, "Gun Control: Fear or Fact," which deconstructs and explains the gun control agenda and its arguments, debunking each one with a statistic-rich analysis. This is the handbook for when you want to talk to others about gun control . Howard receives e-mail at HNemerov [at symbol] netvista.net.