Study: Stand Your Ground Laws Increase Homicides

[Cali_Democrat]

Study: Stand Your Ground Laws Increase Homicides

by: Edward Garris
Thu Jun 14, 2012 at 02:30 PM CDT

<...>

Proponents of Stand Your Ground Laws claim that such laws make aspiring criminals think twice before committing violence. They tout the deterrent effect. As further support, they cite the protection of blameless victims. They argue, essentially, that the laws save lives, and that even where lives are not saved, the lives lost are the lives with lesser societal value.

Without addressing that last contention, a new study seriously undermines the first contention, that those laws save lives. The new study, from the Department of Economics at Texas A&M, comes to a devastating conclusion in its first page:

"We find no evidence of deterrence; burglary, robbery, and aggravated assault are unaffected by the laws. On the other hand, we find that murder and non-negligent manslaughter are increased by 7 to 9 percent. This could represent either increased use of lethal force in self-defense situations, or the escalation of violence in otherwise non-lethal situations. Regardless, the results indicate that a primary consequence of strengthening self-defense law is increased homicide."

http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/12379/study-stand-your-ground-laws-are-failed-policy

You mean the NRA and their right wing enablers are full of shit?

Whodda thunk it?

[SGMRTDARMY]

1. Why don't they give a breakdown

of those that were deemed murder and those that were found to be justified under SYG? Kinda makes me wonder about that. Until I see a breakdown, I'll take this report with a big grain of salt.

[TheCowsCameHome]

2. Some won't believe it, though.

Count on that.

[gregoire]

3. It's just common sense...

that laws that not only allow, but actually encourage, violence will lead to more violence. If instead these violence people like Zimmerman were always prosecuted and had minimum sentences, they'd think twice before using one of those things in what they view as self-defense.

[Jenoch]

23. What does the Zimmerman

case have to do with SYG laws?

[Warren Stupidity]

4. As I learned here, all the cases where SYG laws are misused

are not the fault of SYG laws. These are not true SYG cases. The only true SYG cases are the ones where a bad guy dies.

[TheWraith]

7. Sort of like cases where somebody is caught smuggling drugs from Mexico...

...aren't the fault of medical marijuana laws. Yes?

[hack89]

5. So where are the FBI stats that show the increase in murder? nt

[sarisataka]

8. Here is an excerpt

Reuters and other news organizations noted that the latest data show a decrease in violent crime for the fifth consecutive year.

The FBI reported that “violent crime declined in all city groups. Cities with populations of 50,000 to 99,999 saw the largest decrease (5.2 percent) in violent crime. Violent crime decreased 6.6 percent in metropolitan counties and 4.7 percent in nonmetropolitan counties.”

Violent crime decreased in all four regions of the country, the law enforcement agency reported, but forcible rapes increased in cities of 500,000 to 999,999 people.

Last year, according to CQ, the top 10 most dangerous cities were St. Louis, Missouri; Camden, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; Flint, Michigan; Oakland, California; Richmond, California; Cleveland, Ohio; Compton, California; Gary, Indiana; and Birmingham, Alabama

I added the highlights of cities in strict gun control states

[gregoire]

9. Great point

Their gun control laws are not nearly strict enough. There's where too much violence in this country.

[gejohnston]

6. Because the economists don't know what they are measuring

read the whole thread here.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/117243852
I'm not going to retype my opinion:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/117243852#post9
http://www.democraticunderground.com/117243852#post19

[hack89]

10. Yet most of the states they studied show a decline in murders and murder rates.

interesting.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl04.xls

[DanTex]

11. Two things:

First, as I pointed out in the other thread that linked here:

Briefly, in studies like these, they attempt to estimate the difference between the amount of homicide in states where the law changed versus the amount that there would have been without a change in policy. They do this by building statistical models that take into account national and local trends, crime rates in states without policy changes, and other factors that affect homicide rates, in order to isolate the effect of the policy changes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117261432#post23


Second, it's always funny going back to these older gungeon threads to see the right-wing trolls from the past. I wonder what screen names these guys are using now?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=285085
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=285731

[hack89]

12. So they compare to a hypothetical future

that can never be proven wrong? Ok.

Murder is down and continues to go down. That is all that matters.

I have no clue nor do I care about those folks - just like I don't care about all the anti-gun zealots that have been tomb stoned. Does it really matter?

[DanTex]

13. I guess I should apologize.

That other post was directed towards someone who seemed intelligent and capable of abstract thought. I didn't mean to confuse you with the sciency stuff and the compound sentences...

[hack89]

14. That is exactly it - I work with such studies for a living

I understand all too well the weakness of such "studies". It was not peer reviewed - perhaps you should wait a little while.


We still come back to the "the murder rate is falling but it is not falling fast enough" argument. If that is your strongest argument then it should be clear why gun control is dead in America. People are not stupid.

[DanTex]

16. "I work with such studies for a living"

[gejohnston]

17. Wow that is an thoughtful,

logical argument if I ever saw one. One of your better ones, at least it is not as insulting as usual.
Is bongbong your sockpuppet or is he yours?

[DanTex]

18. LOL. "an thoughtful, logical argument"

Here's a tip, gej: people who "work with such studies for a living" don't write sentences like this one:

So they compare to a hypothetical future that can never be proven wrong?

[gejohnston]

19. and people who actually understand them

don't make personal attacks and appeal to authority. Few people give a shit about typos on the internet.

[DanTex]

20. OK I admit, the typo thing was a cheap shot. Couldn't resist.

But the point about hack's sentence was valid. It was completely idiotic and nonsensical. You don't really think he works with studies for a living (whatever that means), do you?

[gejohnston]

22. I have no clue

but the saying "still waters run deep" has a lot of truth to it. If he were on the opposite of the debate, I think you would just take his word for it.

[hack89]

21. Do you know what the hardest question for gun grabbers to answer is?

"What happens if we do nothing?". Because the answer is simple: "there will be fewer gun deaths".

When "deaths are not declining fast enough" is your only argument it is clear why impotent fussing is all that is left for you.

Laugh all you want - you and your cause are still failures.

[GreenStormCloud]

15. Here is a link to the study itself.

http://econweb.tamu.edu/mhoekstra/castle_doctrine.pdf

The study has flaws. First, it deliberatly conflates Castle Doctrine (CD) with Stand Your Ground laws (SYG) and calls both of them Castle Doctrine. CD is limited to one's home and to property that you own, such as your place of business. SYG applies to any place that you have a legal right to be. That is a huge difference between the two. My bedroom is NOT an ATM at a C-store.

Since many states, including my own Texas, had CD for years before SYG, such conflations will result in skewed statistics for the time when CD was in effect and SYG was not.

The FBI classification of justifiable homicide is flawed. At the time of a homicide the self-defense will often be listed listed as murder, even though it may later be reclassified as justifiable. It will be reported to the FBI as murder and so listed in the UCR. Then if it gets reclassified the local cops often don't bother to send a reclasification to the FBI. This was documented in a Time magazine study some years ago. Relying upon the FBI UCR classification for justifiable homicide results in a severe understatement of the number of such homicides.

They even admit on page 5 that justifiable homicides are severely underreported.

Page 11 contains an item of pure speculation regarding the reporting by police after passage of the laws. They then use their unfounded speculation to set an upper bound on the number of justifiable homicides.

From page 26: "...estimate of the degree of underreporting suggest it is unlikely but not impossible for the increase in homicides to consist entirely of lefally justified homicides. We emphasize however, that one's conclusion on that issue depend's on assumptions about the nature and degree of underreporting of legally justified homicides." In other words, they are guessing.

In the data tables, page 35, one notices that the justifiable homicides by police almost triple. Since police were already not expected to retreat and therefore were uneffected by SYG we must ask why did police killings triple? This strongly suggest that there is another dynamic at play other than SYG.

I will agree that CD and SYG are likely to have little effect on criminals thought process as street criminals tend to live in the "now" and take little thought of the future beyond a few minutes ahead.