This post serves as a continued discussion. Recently, in certain comment threads, I've made references to the fact that Chicago has one the most stringent gun-restriction laws on the books. And, in short, it has done nothing to curb overall annual murder totals, or those attributed to hand guns. Some of the riders have asked for data. This is my reply. Before the numbers, it is important to point out that as far as public opinion may swing to the right, it also swings to the left—many times simultaneously.

This is illustrated by the discussions that surround Gun Control and Abortion Rights. The Left claims that the right to an abortion is provided by the US Constitution, by an interpretation of the right to privacy, and so on. So, there we are lead to think that the Left is relying on the document for its policy. As stated here before, I agree with abortion rights, however this reasoning of the Left is inconsistent with its stance on gun control. Clearly, the right to bear arms is specifically stated in the Constitution and needs zero interpretation.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

With gun control, the Left is saying that your right to own a firearm is superceded by the fact that you live in a highly populated, industrialized city that is socially and ethnically diverse where a wide range of social capital is exhibited by it population. If you live in a big city, where some people are unemployed, undereducated—un-whatever—no gun for you. However, our Founding Fathers clearly intended all circumstances for aborting a fetus to be covered by the Constitution and felt that by mentioning Privacy that was enough. Not only is that preposterous it is insulting to one’s intelligence. But here again we have a mind-fuck that has spanned several generations. The terminology used to describe each issue is specific in its intent. The right to bear arms, a right that is verbatim from the Constitution is referred to as Gun Control. An interpretation of the same document and its right to privacy leads us to Abortion Rights. Let’s not be confused here, the former is positively a right and the later is a control. Alas, we are lead to believe that guns should be controlled and abortions should be handed out freely. Any attempt to set parameters around abortion is met with stiff opposition. Any attempt to assert one’s right to protect oneself with a firearmis looked at in disgust. ’Feh, anyway, on with the numbers.

As stated above, Chicago has an anti-gun law on the books. If you live in the city perimeter, you cannot legally own a hand gun. Looking at the data, Chicago has the single highest murder rate across the nation. It’s not even close when one considers the ratio of murders to population. Chicago’s murder rate per capita is 0.02%. New York, with a population of 3x is 0.0073%. I've left some other cities in the table above for reference points. The top three, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles has strict firearm restrictions. The fourth on the list, Detroit, has a staggering murder per capita rate of .039%. However, Michigan passed conceal and carry laws in 2003. The effects are nebulous, as of the first six months of 2005, Detroit’s murder rate has dropped 10%.

In Detroit, it showed the number of murders had dropped nearly 10 percent compared to the first six months of 2004, but the number of assaults had increased 29 percent and the number of robberies was up 8 percent. Overall, 9,440 violent crimes were reported to Detroit police between January and June.

That article cites an increase in violent crime from 2004 - 2005, and goes on to attribute it to cut-backs in police force, sluggish economic factors and an increase in the attention paid to drug trafficking. This is exactly the point I would like to call attention to. The list of factors that contribute to crime rates is long and their correlations complex. Focusing on any single point as the crux, as is done with Gun Control, is foolish. Any attempt to lead us to believe that tighter gun restrictions are an effective means to reducing overall crime rates is both misguided and disingenuous.

On a national level, Chicago is the murder capital. Illinois is one of four states (Nebraska, Kansas and Wisconsin) that lacks any form of conceal and carry laws. Chicago goes a step further and restricts all forms of private handgun ownership as of the early 1980’s. Which leads me to believe that of the 598 murders in 2003, none were attributed to hand guns. Hilarity ensues. A further study of Chi-town’s gun restrictions reveals this:

A review of the Chicago Murder Analyses from 1965 to 1992 provides information on this question. The Murder Analyses are compiled annually by the Chicago Police Department, offering painstaking detail about the number of murders committed in the City of Chicago, the types of weapons used in those murders, the age of offenders and victims, and much more.
Figure 1 shows the number of murders in the City of Chicago between 1965 (seventeen years before the city’s gun control law was enacted) and 1992 (ten years after gun control). Between 1965 and 1974 there was a steady increase in the number of murders, with 1972 being the only exception. Between 1974 and 1990, the number of murders stayed within a reasonably narrow range, with a fairly dramatic fall in--1982 the year gun control was passed. Just five years later, in 1987, the number of murders in the city began to climb steadily. Indeed, by gun control’s tenth anniversary, the number of murders in the city was back where it had been a decade before gun control.

Figures 2 and 3 narrow the analysis to include only firearms (Figure 2) and handguns (Figure 3). The two figures closely track Figure 1: steady increase until 1974; stabilization until 1981; stabilization again at a lower level for five years; and then a steady increase beginning in 1989.

What all three graphs show is that the number of murders ebbs and flows with little apparent respect for gun control laws. The national gun control act of 1968 appears to have had little effect on murders with firearms in Chicago: The number of murders committed with handguns rose dramatically in the years following its passage. The number of murders with handguns was falling in Chicago before passage of the city’s 1982 gun control law. That year, the number of murders fell precipitously. Was this evidence of the gun control law working? If so, upon what theory? Were there suddenly fewer guns in circulation? Were criminals, heedless of the state’s murder laws before the city passed its ordinance, more careful once handgun possession became a misdemeanor? Then what?

Unfortunately, the tables are stripped out of that link. But I was able to find a direct link to similar data ranging from 1964-1995 and included it inline, below. The data is available online, and it is possible to search it with a high degree of specificity. Read the documentation and familiarize yourself with the variables used in the study. You can create relationships on the fly. So, a data set with WEAPON and INJYEAR as variables will generate this chart. For our intents and purposes, the two rows of interests are (percentages in bold and totals provided underneath) Automatic and Non-automatic Handguns, from 1982-1995, after the legislation in question was established:

Looking closely, the data appears to relatively unchanged from 1982-1995, with an increase spanning 1988-1991. I’ve generalized between Auto and Non-Auto because the distribution of Automatic handguns is expected to increase with their popularity. Whether or not a revolver is no longer popular is of no concern here. As an aside The Smallest Minority has a nice post about homicide trends on a national level. It's out of our scope here but worth a drive-by. What is relevant to this discussion is that overall, firearm related crime has gone down over the last ten years, while firearm ownership has increased. For Chicago, the level of handgun related murders has fluctuated, with little effect being contributed to tighter restrictions.