Guns Where are you SAFE?

Hello Tacticalktrainingandfirearms.com friends Let’s DIG IN! 

Texas. On the front edge of Stand your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws. For instance, it’s in the penal code that an intruder need only to put force against an entrance to a place you are in to be considered intending you deadly force, thus authorizing deadly force in return. The second his crowbar touches your door, you are assumed to be under imminent deadly attack, and can respond in kind. Try that in Maryland or Massachusetts…. your mileage may vary. You may run out of GAS!

So further let’s look at Dallas. Per Wiki it’s #31 in overall crime of cities over 100K population. St Louis is #1, followed by Baltimore and Detroit. Oddly Chicago, the gunshot capital of the US, is 17th overall. That is because there are large areas of the 2.7 million people there where there is little crime - the 1,399 gunshot victims this year alone are diluted by the sheer size of the city’s population.

So, it’s not the state, or even the city that’s the problem. In Texas, stay out of Austin, Englewood and Garfield Park! It’s the poor, drug and gang infested neighborhoods that have the problems.

Dallas is surrounded by 3 of the safest cities over 100K. Plano, Irving and Garland. Looking at the percentage of population with concealed carry permits (a good indicator of gun ownership), the county Plano is in has over 12,000 LTC holders. I never lived in Plano, in a town under 100K so didn’t make the Wiki list (which demographically mirrors Plano) for 40 years and can attest there were a lot of guns there - right at 1000 licensees in my zip code alone. Crime was low - mostly property crime, some domestic abuse. Very little in the way of home invasions. Burglaries usually happened in the middle of the day when everyone was at work and school. Even Dallas itself has safe neighborhoods. There are a couple of bad neighborhoods, and that’s where the bulk of the crime occurs.

In my current county, I recall there have been 4-gun murders in the past 40 years. 2 happened recently when a nut job took out Chris Kyle (American Sniper fame) and his buddy - shot them both in the backs of their heads. The other 2 were domestic abuse altercations, the last some 7 years ago. So, outside an insane guy, 2 murders in 40 years. Pretty much every house has a rifle or shotgun, most will have both, and many will have at least 1 or 2 pistols. correlation is very high indeed. But a culture of not stealing other folks’ stuff also goes a long ways.

So, while I think it’s difficult to chart gun ownership with crime, you might have a better chance charting licenses to carry (where the gun owners are vetted carefully for being good guys) and crime. You know the licensees are the least likely demographic to commit crime (1/6th as likely as even police), so crime is committed by non licensees. Some of those will come from surrounding areas, but their choice of target, I suspect, varies by risk of running into a licensee. The more licensees, the less potential for crime. It would be an excellent research project.