4 ms·

Possible cause and effect? That's one of the claims of the folks who promote private gun ownership.

jstalin 13y ago
While I'm a gun supporter, I think the decline in overall crime has more to do with the reduction in environmental lead: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
- DougWebb 13y ago
  Interesting theory... but to really evaluate it you'd have to consider all environmental changes that could impact mental behavior. The usage rates of various legal and illicit drugs shift over time, as does the content of our food supply. It'd be a tough analysis, but I'd bet it would produce some interesting results.
- mitchty 13y ago
  Actually I forget where I read it but there is a hypothesis going around that the overall crime reduction has to do more with liberalization of things like birth control and access to abortion options. At work at the moment and don't have time to pull up the details until tonight, but the examples given say of romania where none of the above is legally available still has a high crime rate. The general gist of things are that having to keep around kids a parent doesn't want tends to lead to bad outcomes for the children in life. Its much more complex than that and obviously we can't run randomized trials across multiple generations to validate things (not that it would even be ethical), but its interesting nonetheless.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    > the overall crime reduction has to do more with liberalization of things like birth control and access to abortion options. Freakonomics says this.
    - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
      Great book. That chapter was a little awkward to read (for me) but it made sense.
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    That has mostly been shown to only have mild statistical relevancy, not nearly enough to be the majority of the explanation.
    - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
      The Freakonomics explanation (I just finished reading that chapter), says legalized abortion was a major contributor to decreasing crime rates in the 90's. However there were other contributing factors too. Author notes that it wasn't the "innovative policing strategies" of NYC that helped decrease crime rate, but the fact that they hired so many more police. There's a correlation there too. There's also a lot of discussion about crack cocaine and how that increased crime at its peak, but then related crime subsided.

While I'm a gun supporter, I think the decline in overall crime has more to do with the reduction in environmental lead: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

DougWebb 13y ago
Interesting theory... but to really evaluate it you'd have to consider all environmental changes that could impact mental behavior. The usage rates of various legal and illicit drugs shift over time, as does the content of our food supply. It'd be a tough analysis, but I'd bet it would produce some interesting results.
mitchty 13y ago
Actually I forget where I read it but there is a hypothesis going around that the overall crime reduction has to do more with liberalization of things like birth control and access to abortion options. At work at the moment and don't have time to pull up the details until tonight, but the examples given say of romania where none of the above is legally available still has a high crime rate. The general gist of things are that having to keep around kids a parent doesn't want tends to lead to bad outcomes for the children in life. Its much more complex than that and obviously we can't run randomized trials across multiple generations to validate things (not that it would even be ethical), but its interesting nonetheless.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > the overall crime reduction has to do more with liberalization of things like birth control and access to abortion options. Freakonomics says this.
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    Great book. That chapter was a little awkward to read (for me) but it made sense.
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  That has mostly been shown to only have mild statistical relevancy, not nearly enough to be the majority of the explanation.
  - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
    The Freakonomics explanation (I just finished reading that chapter), says legalized abortion was a major contributor to decreasing crime rates in the 90's. However there were other contributing factors too. Author notes that it wasn't the "innovative policing strategies" of NYC that helped decrease crime rate, but the fact that they hired so many more police. There's a correlation there too. There's also a lot of discussion about crack cocaine and how that increased crime at its peak, but then related crime subsided.