Jeff, why the old news? You saw it was published on 1/6/2006, more that an year and a half ago.
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Good solid testament to the fact that Concealed Carry, Is a good thing, and does help to reduce the crime rate where ever it has passed, the public are not a bunch of mindless, crazy, gun happy people, we just want to be able to Protect ourselves, and our families, from the criminal elliment, The Police simply can not do the job, in fact the term, "To Serve and Protect", is probably the most missleading statement to the Public there is, simply because the Police cannot Protect, by an acvt of preemption, they can only act after a crime has been commited, so to prevent the crime, it is basically up to the potential Victum.
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It sounds cool, but it isn't true. The purported drop in Texas crime was NOT due to concealed carrying licensing. Sure, crime has dropped since the CHL went into effect, but how do you account for the several years that the crime rate in Texas was dropping prior to 1996? Obviously, the drop in those years had nothing to do with CHLs.
If you want to talk correlations with the Texas CHL and crime drops, do you realize that since Texas got its CHL program that it has been so effective to have caused crime to drop in MA, CA, NY, and ME over the last 10 years, the latter states not being terribly pro gun states at all (from Uniform FBI Crime Reports found online for each state). And that, my friends, demonstrates just how powerful the Texas CHL is. We do things bigger and better in Texas! Or does it?
Of course, I don't expect any of you to believe that Texas CHL has been so successful that it lowered the crime rates in distant states. What we have is a correlation, not a causation. When examined against the bigger picture, the crime rates in all of the states I mentioned were either all showing a marked decline in crime or fluctuating decline in crime with a generalized downward trend already in the years preceding 1996. So we can say that crime dropped in Texas after we instituted the CHL program, but based on the trend already in place, the crime rate was already in decline long before the CHL program.
People on both sides of the gun and CCW issue have been very quick to point out correlations that support their claims, indicating that the factors are causations when they cannot be shown to be be causations. Some, I am sure, know the difference, but some do not. Many of these folks believe that correlations substantiate causation and that is not necessarily the case as I sort of demonstrated with Texas CHL and crime rate information. You can verify by checking the source of my data which is the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
Something to consider with all this is the fact that Texas instituted its CHL program and the trend of crime did not change. The crime rate was falling since 1992, I believe and simply continued its course. CHLs certain did not cause there to be more crime either. In other words, the impact of CHLs fails to demonstrate any actual trend changes on the state level in regard to crime rates.
The other aspect to the supposed widespread benefit of CHLs in Texas is that a drop in the overall rates of crime in the state does nothing to explain why particular types of crimes against persons still managed to have multi-year increasing trends in some major cities of the state. Take Dallas for example. Since 1996 when the CHLs came into effect and until 2004, Dallas has had one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country. 1996 marked the start of an increasing murder rate that had declined since 1992. If you want to make a causative between CHLs and murder in Dallas and other pro gun supporters are doing for the crime rates and CHL, it would give the impression that CHLs were most definitely a very bad idea since the murder rate in Dallas went up because of CHLs.
Correlations are NOT the same as causations.
And to understand whether or not CHLs are actually having an impact on the crime rate in anyway, the correct data are not being gathered to learn this. Whether or not the state allows licensed concealed carry in public has no impact on crimes committed in personal residences. Texans have always been allowed to have guns in their homes and to carry guns openly or concealed on their own property. So nothing has changed in the ability of Texans to protect themselves on their own property with the passage of CHL laws. So to determine if CHLs are having a trend sort of effect, crimes will have to be identified or classified as those where people could carry guns without permits versus those where a permit is required.
With that in mind, CHLs have most definitely made a huge difference in the lives of individuals who have had to draw on and sometimes shoot attackers with their legally carried guns. At times such as when you are being the victim of a particular crime, state and national trends mean nothing because at that moment, the only statistic is YOU. So CHLs have most definitely benefitted many individuals and no doubt saved the lives of many individuals and that aspect cannot be stated strong enough.