concealed carry in national parks, per liar coburn

[jimmy the one]

Tom Coburn (R sen, okla) May 9th, 2013 interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe": "In 2010, everybody said you can't dare let guns go into the national parks, and of course the rapes, murders, robberies and assaults are down about 85% since we did that."

LIAR.

Politifact, may 9, 2013: As we noted, the law went into effect in {feb} 2010, so the most obvious way to frame the comparison would be to use the data from 2009 (the last full year before the gun ban was lifted) and 2011 (the most recent year) --- {DISAGREE, 2010 could be counted as first year of ccw allowance since 'february' enabled, thus 10 months with ccw allowed}.
And as it turns out, the comparison to 2009 is not nearly as favorable to Coburn’s overall point. Between 2009 and 2011, these four categories of violent crimes actually rose collectively by 5 percent. Robberies did decline by 9%, but murders more than doubled (from a very small base), the number of rapes was stable and the tally of aggravated assaults -- by far the most common of these four crimes -- rose by 9%.

.......... murder .. (rape,robb,aggr asslt) .. total violcrime
2008 ......... 5 ............. (see link) ................... 367
2009 ......... 3 ................................................ 307
2010(ccw) .. 15 ............................................. 369 - ccw enabled february
2011 ......... 7 ................................................ 323
change 08 - 11: +40% murder .................. -12% total v-crime (Coburn's world, hardly 85%)
change 09 - 11: +133% murder ................ +5% total v-crime
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/09/tom-coburn/tom-coburn-says-after-national-park-gun-ban-lifted/

Coburn’s office acknowledges that he misspoke {altho he cited accurately from his 2nd Amendment Mythology Bible}; they actually calculated a decline of 12%, which is dramatically lower than 85%. But we find even the revised statistic to be questionable. It hinges on using {cherry picked start year} 2008 data, when 2009 data would be more appropriate -- and a comparison using data from 2009 actually shows an increase in violent crime in national parks since the gun ban took effect. Meanwhile, it’s far from clear that guns had an influence on the relatively small number of crimes that take place in national parks.
We rate Coburn’s statement False.

MORE GUNS, MORE LIES