A very interesting RealClearInvestigations article about murder rates and the wildly conflicting claims made about them by politicians. It turns out there are ways to slice the statistics and make an accurate argument for either Republicans or Democrats. Here are the reasons why.
Depending on the framing, accurate sets of numbers can be assembled to tell starkly different stories about mass shootings, school shootings, and the overall correlation between gun ownership and gun violence.
The murder rate for counties that Biden won is much higher than for the counties that Trump won – 5.97 versus 2.58 per 100,000 people – 131% higher.
African Americans commit half the murders in the United States, though they comprise only 13.6% of the population. The counties that Biden won have almost four times the percentage of black voters. That gap is even larger in the counties in the states that Trump carried than the states that Biden carried.
CPRC (Crime Prevention Research Center) research shows that blue pockets scattered across the U.S. map are the zones where most violent crime is committed, and it underscores how the generalizations on one partisan side or the other can mislead.
The authors make two important additional points. That relatively few (<15%) mass murders are committed with rifles of any sort, including the much-maligned AR-15. And that actual enforcement of state laws is mostly local - done by city police and DAs - which in large cities are all Democrats who tend to be soft on crime (my characterization, not theirs).
Black on black murders, by far the most common, typically receive publicity only in the city where they occur, being viewed one supposes as "business as usual." Murders involving whites get wider publicity as they are relatively unusual.
The underreporting of black-on-black murder is nothing new. I remember my father remarking on it in the context of 1920s Los Angeles where, as a younger man, he worked for the city prosecutor.
