Monday, November 16, 2009

Interesting Articles: Gun Ownership and Crime Statistics

I have just come across an article about the "mandatory" (with some exceptions) gun ownership in Kennesaw, Georgia, USA.

The first article I read was at Compaign for Liberty.com however the "source" listed there returned a "not found" error.

Note: This article was put on the internet this year but if you do the maths, it is referring to 1998.

An extract from this article claimed:
The city's population grew from around 5,000 in 1980 to 13,000 by 1996 (latest available estimate). Yet there have been only three murders: two with knives (1984 and 1987) and one with a firearm (1997). After the law went into effect in 1982, crime against persons plummeted 74 percent compared to 1981, and fell another 45 percent in 1983 compared to 1982.

And it has stayed impressively low. In addition to nearly non-existent homicide (murders have averaged a mere 0.19 per year), the annual number of armed robberies, residential burglaries, commercial burglaries, and rapes have averaged, respectively, 1.69, 31.63, 19.75, and 2.00 through 1998.


However, not being able to read the source concerned me a bit as well as the dated nature of the article, so some googling turned up this article, which has extracts from the "The New American" magazine with references to Kennesaw. The extracts date from 1986 through to 1997.

Again, however this is 1997 data.

More googling turned up the following:

Crime Report for Kennesaw, Georgia for 2004, which states:

Kennesaw, Georgia has a violent crime rate of 91 incidents per 100,000 people. This compares with a rate of 840 in Georgia and a rate of 596 nationally. Lower numbers are better, indicating that fewer crimes happen per person in the population.

And for even more "up-to-date" figures here are the ones from September 2009:

Monthly Crime Stats - September 2009

Murder: 0
Rape: 0
Robbery: 0
Aggravated Assualt: 1
Burglary: 5
Larceny: 54
Auto Theft: 3
Arson: 0

Total: 63 -6 from previous month.

Y.T.D: 474 +31 from last year

**Note: Thefts from Autos continue to be the most common reported crime. In fact they make up almost 40% of all crime reported in Kennesaw! Please help us reduce this type of crime by locking your car doors, not leaving valuables such as cameras, GPS units, guns, purses, etc in your car, and reporting any suspicious persons/cars you see in your neighborhood.


Oh, and if you're a total geek you can go to this website which lists crimes by city by state for 2008 in the US and compare the numbers for yourself (yes, the numbers are downloadable into Excel).

Interesting read, especially for those people who believe "guns cause crime".

(h/t cocked and locked)

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