Gun Homicide rate down 49% since '93; public unaware

[giblets]

Just out of interest, what was happening with lead additives to petrol around the early 90s and onwards in the US? There are some really intriguing theories linking it to trends in crime.

Nothing, the lead additives were taken out in the 70's. The theory is that high levels of lead exposure in childhood made people become more aggressive in adulthood.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

[Sava]

You finally realized that Asher is literally everyone

literally, that's a game changer

[MRT144]

1993 was when the internet started going mainstream, so this is no surprise. These days all the homicidal maniacs just post on forums and in YouTube comments. They don't have time to get off their computers and actually shoot someone. Shut down the internet and I'm sure we'd blow 1993 out of the water ...

1993 was definitely NOT the year the internet went "mainstream"

[kentonio]

Gun ownership has been increasing over the past decade, especially among the young.

Do you not read the thread you're actually posting in? Like the graph on the previous page that illustrated quite clearly that what you just said is bull****?

[Guynemer]

There's this thing called the internet.

It's a wonderful tool.

It gives me donkey porn and FBI crime statistics.

Accurate information is available to those who want it. I don't think there's any excuse to be an idiot.

There's this thing called the news media. It's supposed job is to give facts to the public. It has clearly failed at this.

[Sava]

There's this thing called the news media. It's supposed job is to give facts to the public. It has clearly failed at this.

I don't disagree. But it's silly to blame the media for people being ignorant or misinformed. You decide your own level of stupid.

[Aeson]

1993 was definitely NOT the year the internet went "mainstream"

If I wasn't already so swamped with adding people I have never met to my Facebook friends list I would shoot you for such an egregious misrepresentation of my statements

[Aeson]

And so the facts of the matter don't get obfuscated further ... there are well over 100 times more people on the internet today than there were in 1993. Since virtually everyone on the internet is an *******, we can extrapolate that without the internet the murder rate (with or without guns) would now be over 700%.

Thank you Al Gore for saving humanity

[snoopy369]

Having an interesting discussion on this in a friend's fb post (one with people who aren't using ad hominems at each other and ignoring the subject). Intersting points:

• The article loses a ton of credibility by not mentioning the Brady Bill. Whether or not it's related to the drop - who knows - it's most certainly worth mentioning, particularly given the year this began. Makes me think this is a biased article that's trying to make a pro-gun point, rather than a neutral article, which is odd from the usually fairly neutral pew folks.
• Media is important in two ways: not only in how they portray gun violence, but in how they contribute to the reduction in violence. Several changes in how violent crimes are reported occurred around that time, potentially contributing as well to the drop in violence.
• Epidemiology would suggest that this isn't a very interesting graph at all - largely it's reflecting a shift in the marginal population (ie, the people who were borderline gun owners probably stopped being gun owners around 1993, thus reflecting a sharp drop in crime, but the remainder of the population didn't shift their habits very much and won't). A small shift in conditions the other way might well yield a rebound - and perhaps that's already begun.

I would note for all of you banging on reg that there _has_ been an increase in gun ownership over the last few years (I'm not sure about decade exactly, but certainly in the last 5 years or so - your graph shows that). 1993-2013 is two decades, not one, and most of the drop in gun ownership happened shortly after 1993. It will be interesting to see if the increase in gun ownership in recent years contributes to an increase in violent crime, or if the other potential causes perhaps yielded more of the reduction.