Gun Homicide Rates Up 31 Percent Since Stand Your Ground (FL)

[Eleanors38]

10. "homicides are justified or not" may be the key to this wizz-bang data. The 55 yr data track...

you present can't sustain the JAMA finding unless someone has been hot-wiring the circuit breaker box. Over the years I have grown to appreciate how some researchers have little regard for the differences in motivations for homicide.

Speculation: Perhaps there IS a relationship between the increase in concealed-carry (FL is numero uno in this regard) and the way hoodlums meet the Great Recycler; i.e., they are dying for their violent crime instead of being warehoused by the legal system. Some die by self-defense measure, some don't die but are imprisoned. The SD deaths by most reckoning are NOT homicides and don't show up in standard crime data. But these researchers may have broken off these SD deaths and filed them under "homicides.' Even so, the increase they contend flows from SYG laws still sees too high.

Further speculation: The researchers may see the above phenomenon and wish to stigmatize SD in anticipation of future measureable data showing an armed citizenry as having some kind of impact on crime. I am not convinced that an armed citizenry has a positive impact on social problems, but I am open to the question.