stop bringing up the founding fathers in gun arguments

[vaylorie]

Originally Posted by Lexical [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It would also explain why there is only a spike in the number of homicides rather than a consistent rise and eventual plateau which would then lead me to side with you as it was a very clear and consistent rise. But to make a point, generally in statistics if there is a spike in the data there is an outside force that isn't being represented throughout the data. In this case, world events.

If you remember in the 80's and 90's how crime in general was growing at an incredible pace and then later in the 90's is started suddenly, and almost inexplicably, dropping. This was across most of the US and is represented on the graph for DC. There are a ton of factors involved but none of those are gun restrictions. Increase in police force, increase in prison population, abortion legalization from years before, crack moving out of mainstream, etc.

Again, I get that there are literally hundreds of factors involved with crime rates on the up and down side, but the 'more guns cause more crime' component is just alarmist crap.