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Brady Campaign: More government, more crime
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(Photo courtesy of Oleg Volk)
In the previous article, we examined how states considered the best by the Brady Campaign also have higher police officer density (more cops per 100,000 population). However, these states also have the highest violent crime and murder rates.
Another article examined how Brady’s favored states had the lowest levels of firearms ownership. For review purposes, the following charts show that as gun ownership levels increase, Brady scores, violent crime, and murder rates all decrease.
Washington, D.C. and the 50 states were sorted by percent gun ownership, in ascending order. (As with the previous article, orange lines are linear regressions, a statistical tool in Excel which indicates the overall trend in the dataset.)
In 2001, Brady gave states letter grades from “A” to “F.” These were converted to numeric grades for sorting purposes (e.g. “A” = 4.0, “F” = 0, “C+” = 2.33). As gun ownership levels increase, Brady grades decrease. The states with the lowest gun ownership had all the “A” and “B” grades, while the states with the highest gun ownership levels had all the “D” and “F” grades.
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As gun ownership rises, violent crime decreases.
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As gun ownership rises, murder declines, too. (For both violent crime and murder charts, the unusually high data point represents D.C., which also had the lowest gun ownership level of 3.8%.
Recently, William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University published a research paper entitled Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom. The purpose of the research is to quantify how states’ “public policies [affect] individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres.”
The authors note: “All of the statutory policies are coded as of December 31, 2006,” so this article references 2007 FBI crime data and Brady grades, because laws in place at year-end 2006 had the most regulatory effect in 2007.
The authors compiled two primary indices–Economic Freedom and Personal Freedom–which combined into the final score for Overall Freedom.
Economic Freedom equals the sum of Fiscal Policy and Regulatory Policy scores. The authors note:
We divide fiscal policy equally into spending and taxation issue categories. These categories are of course highly interdependent; we include them both as redundant measures of size of government.
Regulatory policy includes labor regulation, health insurance mandates, occupational licensing, eminent domain, the tort system, land and environmental regulation, and utilities. [Emphasis added]
The authors use the term “Paternalism” to define large, over-reaching government, which reduces the Personal Freedom score. This index evaluates various laws, like those governing gambling, alcohol sales, campaign finance, and asset forfeiture:
Asset forfeiture, when perpetrated without a conviction of the owner, is an egregious violation of property rights and, in our opinion, the Fourth Amendment rightly interpreted. Unfortunately, only a minority of states have reformed asset forfeiture rules to put the burden of proof on the government and require owner involvement in criminal activity for forfeiture.
Gun control is valued at “just under a seventh of the full Paternalism concept, so these laws have a modest influence on the Overall Freedom score, and none on the Economic Freedom index.
The authors did not include Washington, D.C., so the 50 states were sorted in ascending order by their 2007 Brady score, which was a numeric value between 0 and 100, 100 being Brady’s ideal state in terms of gun control laws. Actual values varied between 2 (Kentucky and Oklahoma) and 79 (California).
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Note that this trend line indicates that seven states are so poorly regarded by the Brady Campaign that their weighted score in the regression falls below zero. This is not surprising, since Brady’s best state, California, rated between “B-” and “C+” and anything below 50-60 would be an “F” if letter grades were assigned. (The average Brady score for all 50 states is 17.9.)
As Brady scores increase–better according to Brady–a state’s Economic Freedom score decreased. This means that Brady’s “best” states suffer from bloated government which is more likely to derogate private property ownership.
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As Brady scores increase, a state’s Personal Freedom score decreased. This means that Brady’s “best” states are more likely to thwart First Amendment rights by restricting campaign finance, or infringing on Fourth Amendment rights by forfeiting your assets without due process.
Not surprisingly, as Brady scores increase, a state’s Overall Freedom score decreased. This means that Brady’s “best” states really are best only if you work for the government.
Put it all together and you have the world according to Brady Campaign:
· Laws which disarm only the law-abiding.
· The safest work environment for violent criminals.
· Bloated, inefficient government where tax-paying citizens have the least personal and economic freedom, and the larger criminal justice system fails to address violent crime.
Previous: The world according to Brady
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For in-depth analysis of the issues surrounding gun control, read Four Hundred Years of Gun Control: Why Isn’t It Working?, which deconstructs the gun control agenda and motivates more people to support our civil right of self-defense.
Check out other Gun Rights Examiners:
- Atlanta: Armed customer stops robbery
- Austin: A good week for self-defense
- Boston: Do Massachusetts Gun Laws apply to all? (Part I)
- Charlotte: Dangers of gun registration: 'The Belgian Corporal'
- Cleveland: The next generation of gun rights activists
- DC: Under Obamacare, where will Canadians go for medical services?
- Denver: What happens to you when you buy a gun?
- Los Angeles: BOOK REVIEW: EMERGENCY - This Book Will Save Your Life, by Neil Strauss.
- Minneapolis: Dirty Deeds in Virginia
- National: Is ATF using 'heavy-handed tactics' on border state gun owners?
- Seattle: GAO report being deliberately misinterpreted for sensationalism
- St. Louis: Gun rights advocacy not responsible for killings
- Wisconsin: Gun rights advocates make progress
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