Posted on 02/18/2018 1:25:48 PM PST by Kaslin
On Thursday, Minneapolis station WCCO reported on guns and crime in Minnesota. Anchor Frank Vascarello's introduction: "More people are carrying guns than ever before, but the crime rate remains low." Imagine that.
Reporter Pat Kessler also treated more guns and less crime as paradoxical.
Reporting on crime and guns has been infested with the "Fox Butterfield effect." It is named after a New York Times reporter, who in November 2004 was surprised that:
The number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1 percent last year, even as violent crime and property crime fell.
Later, a puzzled Butterfield referred to "the paradox of a falling crime rate but a rising prison population." Butterfield never considered the idea that fewer bad guys on the streets might lead to less crime.
The Butterfield effect as it applies to guns is the idea journalists are similarly reluctant to accept that armed citizens can better protect themselves and others. Potential criminals are deterred when a significant portion of the population is armed, while determined criminals limit their targets to known gun-free situations. One would expect fewer crimes as a result. Researcher John Lott has demonstrated that this is indeed the case.
On Thursday, Minneapolis station WCCO reported on guns and crime in Minnesota. Anchor Frank Vascarello's introduction: "More people are carrying guns than ever before, but the crime rate remains low." Imagine that.
Reporter Pat Kessler also treated more guns and less crime as paradoxical.
Reporting on crime and guns has been infested with the "Fox Butterfield effect." It is named after a New York Times reporter, who in November 2004 was surprised that:
The number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1 percent last year, even as violent crime and property crime fell.
Later, a puzzled Butterfield referred to "the paradox of a falling crime rate but a rising prison population." Butterfield never considered the idea that fewer bad guys on the streets might lead to less crime.
The Butterfield effect as it applies to guns is the idea journalists are similarly reluctant to accept that armed citizens can better protect themselves and others. Potential criminals are deterred when a significant portion of the population is armed, while determined criminals limit their targets to known gun-free situations. One would expect fewer crimes as a result. Researcher John Lott has demonstrated that this is indeed the case.
Minn. Station Doesn’t Get That More Guns Lead to Less Crime (Video)
Partial transcript:
(0:17-0:53)
... PAT KESSLER, WCCO: We took a very hard look at these numbers, and we did find that Minnesota has a very high rate of gun ownership, one of the highest in the country. But it has a relatively low rate of violent crime.
Minnesota's violent crime rate hit a 50-year low in 2016, according to the FBI. And in 2017, the state set a new record for firearms background checks.
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System reports it processed nearly 684,000 checks on gun buyers in 2017.
(1:04-1:17)
... Minnesota set another 2017 record too. The State Department of Public Safety reports that 282,188 Minnesotans now have permits to legally carry firearms in public ...
(1:32-1:58)
... An estimated 36.7 percent of Minnesotans do have some form of gun ownership. But there is still an awful lot we don't know about guns in Minnesota. For example, we don't know exactly how many gun owners there are. We don't know the number of total guns in Minnesota. And Frank, we also don't know how much ammunition is bought every year, and how much is kept by gun owners.
Sadly, as Lott noted in a Friday FoxNews.com column, so-called "gun-free zones" prove that fewer guns lead to more violent crime. In the case of America's schools, that endangers children (link is in original):
... (There is) one change that might have made a difference (in preventing school shootings): abolishing gun-free zones, where the defenselessness of general citizens is guaranteed by law.
... Nationwide, over 98 percent of such mass shootings attacks since 1950 have also been in gun-free zones.
“”””On Thursday, Minneapolis station WCCO reported on guns and crime in Minnesota. Anchor Frank Vascarello’s introduction: “More people are carrying guns than ever before, but the crime rate remains low.” Imagine that. “””””””””
Frank is a moron. Typical liberal newsreader.
If a few teachers and janitors were carrying guns the murderer wouldn’t have got through the first door.
Amazing how that works whereas like in Chicago with draconian gun laws there’s shootings every day and more on weekends.
People like this ought to be thrown in jail for stupidity.
Odd eh. Look at the increase in ownership of firearms, increase in population and actual decrease in firearm related incdents and it’s a net loss nation wide. But, statistics.
Funny how allowing the law abiding to arm themselves; surprisingly allows them to no longer be prey for the armed criminal thugs.
Since they see gun owners as the problem, they think more armed citizens should be pushing the crime rate up. They’ll never re-examine their faulty premise.
Holding out hope that Minnesota might turn RED in the near future.
Certainly would be an electoral game-changer, indeed, especially if it were added to President Trump’s column in 2020!!!
D U H !
More guns = less crime bump!
“Holding out hope that Minnesota might turn RED in the near future.”
Have you figure out a way to sever Minn/St. Paul and let it float down the river?
The only thing these Minnesota idiots should be worried about is their cops who like to shoot Australian women or black guys reaching for their drivers license.
It maybe that journalists are simply so devoid of the ability to use basic logic that people who can seem to them inherently evil.
Minnesota was unexpectedly close between President Trump and Crooked Hillary.
Trump even took note and held a late rally there as well.
Who knows what may have happened if he had another week to work on the Gophers.
Remember, he carried all the surrounding states save for Illinois.
I gather Minnesota is getting fed up with being overrun by Somali refugees.
Gee who would have thunk it..you mean people being able to PROTECT THEMSELVES equals less crime..gee..that is a head scratcher/sarc
I would not be surprised that Trump actually won Minnesota, if you factor out the fraud that likely took place in that state.
I bet these people would be just as surprised to learn that violent crime was almost non existent in the United Kingdom in the years before police permits were required to buy shotguns (not until 1967) and that during many of those years, the laws concerning the acquisition and possession of rifles and pistols were quite casual as well.
Ping.
Whodathunkit???!?!?!
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