10/13/2013

More on comparing crime by police and permit holders

I had a discussion last year where I compared the firearm violation rates for police and concealed handgun permit holders. Permit holders were at least as safe as police and possibly safer.  Dean Weingarten has some discussion available here where he claims that police officers are three times more likely to murder than concealed handgun permit holders.  From Ammoland.com:
I found two sources of data that seem roughly comparable:  One being the anti-gun Violence Policy Center (VPC) ( http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/ccwtotalkilled.pdf ) who attempts to track all homicides that are committed by CCW permit holders.   The data is incomplete, in that it relies on publicly reported stories, but it gives us a useful figure.  It does not seem likely that many reported stories are missed. (we can also assume by the source that VPC data is biased against lawful  gun owners) 
For police, I used a web site that tracks domestic homicides committed by police officers, and another that does the same for police involved domestic violence.   The data is comparable to the VPC data in that it relies on publicly reported stories.  Data was available for complete years from 2008 – 2011 for comparison of the two groups. . . .
Weingarten seems unfamiliar with the discussion about the Violence Policy Center claims in my book or other places.  For those who don't have the extended discussion in my book, here is a discussion that I had at Fox News about their claims regarding Florida.

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1 Comments:

Blogger dwb said...

i don't know why anyone finds this surprising, since its economics 101: CCW holders face the full cost of their actions (legal fees, and otherwise), while police officers are largely insulated. Even when there is a large civil rights lawsuit, the department pays and individual police are not held accountable.

Econ 101 says you get more of what you subsidize.

There are a whole lot of other good reasons to oppose blanket liability insurance for gun owners, like the fact that you cannot insure intentional acts, but the main reason is that insulating people from the cost of their actions is likely to lead to more risky behavior.

10/13/2013 10:59 AM  

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