Feeling threatened? Shoot them.

[merphie]

Generally speaking, a "Burglary" is the breaking into a residence with the intent to commit a crime (at common law a larceny or felony).

Whereas "Breaking and Entering" is the breaking into any building not a residence with similar intent...

So the FBI numbers include non-residences... If someone broke into a McDonalds at 4AM to steal a gallon of special sauce, it winds up in the numbers....

The reason why "housebreaking" and "burglary" are often seperate is that classically "burglary" was limited to those breakings that occured at night and with the intent to commit a felony or other crime.

Some jurisdictions expanded on this by just redifining the term by statute, some created a "daytime" burglary statute, there are "entering without breaking" laws and so on... "Housebreaking" is very likely one of these, a law that extends the burglary concept past the common law and may have slightly different penalties...

I would have to look up the statutes to see if Oklahoma is in that method. I know the FBI NIBRS/UCR define buglary and breaking and entering as the same thing. If we are using statistics from the FBI then we must use their definition as well.

 

[shanek]

If we are using statistics from the FBI then we must use their definition as well.

Thank you!

Once again, the definition of burglary in the UCR:

Burglary is defined in the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program as the unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony or a theft. The use of force to gain entry is not required to classify an offense as a burglary. Burglary in the UCR Program is categorized into three subclassifications: forcible entry, unlawful entry where no force is used, and attempted forcible entry.

And the category in which burglary is placed:

In the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims. The property crime category includes arson because the offense involves the destruction of property; however, arson victims may be subjected to force. Because of limited participation and varying collection procedures by local agencies, only limited data are available for arson. Arson statistics are included in trend, clearance, and arrest tables throughout Crime in the United States, but they are not included in any estimated volume data. The arson section in this report provides more information on that offense.

So let's say that someone breaks into a home and assaults someone. If it is reported as two crimes, as merphie pointed out, the act of breaking and entering may be recorded as a burglary, but the assault would be reflected in the number of assaults. If the number of assaults, murder, etc., go down, but the number of burglaries stays the same or increases, I think we can assume that there is a greater rate of the burglaries occuring when no one is home.

 

[merphie]

Thank you!

We agree???? The Sky is falling! The Sky is Falling!

 

[crimresearch]

Don't get your hopes up yet Merphie.

Shanek, and Legal Penguin have the same references to the UCR handbook that I mentioned to everybody else, and I have been repeatedlypointed out the Heirarchy rule, which dictates that only *one* of the crimes gets reported.
Whether or not they choose to believe the FBI's rules, or make up their own is beyond my control...but they have been led to water.

And once again, the FBI has only been around for a short time...the definition of burglary was well established in the law long before the Bureau came up with a bureaucratic *shorthand* version for *filing* purposes...the only place you have to use their definition is if you are talking about their filing system.

The UCR in no way, shape, or form even pretends to give a total picture of crime, of to define actual crimes...just which categories to file a selcet number of them.

 

[merphie]

Don't get your hopes up yet Merphie.

Shanek, and Legal Penguin have the same references to the UCR handbook that I mentioned to everybody else, and I have been repeatedlypointed out the Heirarchy rule, which dictates that only *one* of the crimes gets reported.
Whether or not they choose to believe the FBI's rules, or make up their own is beyond my control...but they have been led to water.

And once again, the FBI has only been around for a short time...the definition of burglary was well established in the law long before the Bureau came up with a bureaucratic *shorthand* version for *filing* purposes...the only place you have to use their definition is if you are talking about their filing system.

The UCR in no way, shape, or form even pretends to give a total picture of crime, of to define actual crimes...just which categories to file a selcet number of them.

I agree. UCR is a terrible system. NIBRS is coming into focus now to take it over and the Heirarchy rule no longer applies.

However, Breaking/entering and burglary are both under the same IBR code and therefor breaking into a house and buglary would be reported in the same figure.

If someone broke into the house and then killed someone it would be reported as 03A (RedRum) and not 220 (B/E). So that situation would not be under the statistic he quoted and therefor he couldn't possibly be referring to the crime. There would be no way for us to know which crime occured while in process of a burglary.

According to UCR, if the guy broke into a house, killed the owner, and burned it to the ground; the crime would be reported as Arson.

As far as I have been following along, he has no said anything that wouldn't apply. Did I miss something?

 

[crimresearch]

Both crimes would be reported by the local police to the DOJ, using multiple case control numbers, but the final UCR would only 'report' one crime...

So pointing to the UCR stats for a given year, and assuming that there were this many burglaries, and this many crimes against a person in MS is futile..they aren't reporting to the public what was reported to them.

The NCVS would be more useful to paint the picture that Shanek wants to paint.

 

[shanek]

So pointing to the UCR stats for a given year, and assuming that there were this many burglaries,

I'm not making any claims about the number of burglaries. That's what you refuse to understand.

 

[merphie]

Both crimes would be reported by the local police to the DOJ, using multiple case control numbers, but the final UCR would only 'report' one crime...

So pointing to the UCR stats for a given year, and assuming that there were this many burglaries, and this many crimes against a person in MS is futile..they aren't reporting to the public what was reported to them.

The NCVS would be more useful to paint the picture that Shanek wants to paint.

That doesn't make any sense. The agencies I work with report to the OSBI (Oklahoma version of FBI). They currently use UCR, but are switching to SIBRS (Oklahoma version of NIBRS).

Under UCR they only report the controlling offense. This would mean the statistics from the UCR are accurate, but it leaves the possibility that other crimes were not reported.

So if anything we could assume the buglary offenses were lower than they should be.

 

[crimresearch]

That's interesting...I always had everything that went on during my shift recorded by case control number (including X99, 'other items not listed above'), and sent it all up the line.

 

[merphie]

That's interesting...I always had everything that went on during my shift recorded by case control number (including X99, 'other items not listed above'), and sent it all up the line.

They record all events, but as far as I know they only submit to UCR. I have no reason they submit to any other source because they have never asked for a report from our program compatible with the submission requirements for anything else.

 

[shanek]

Okay, trying to get this thread back on track...

Some people were dissatisfied with Mississippi as a single indication of whether or not guns prevent crime. So here's what I did:

I got a list of the states that had unrestricted gun possession, shall-issue permit states, and gun restricted states from keepandbeararms.com. I got their crime data for 2003 from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. I took the different categories, state by state, and took the population and the rate of violent crimes per 100,000 population. I made a weighted average, an average of the violent crime rate weighted by population. Here's what I came up with:

States that restrict the carrying of guns (CA, DE, HI, IA, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, IL, KS, NE, WI): Total population 103,939,261; violent crime rate 494.2 (4% above the national average of 475).

Shall-issue permit states (all of the rest except AK and VT): Total population 181,167,608; violent crime rate 459.2 (3% below the national average).

Unrestricted gun carry states (AK and VT): Total population 1,267,925; violent crime rate 357.5 (25% below the national average).

Seems like a clear trend to me!

No one (other than LegalPenguin) has a response to this?

 

[crimresearch]

Old news....

Your point?

 

[Nicodemus2004]

Old news....

Your point?

His point? Are you deliberately being obtuse? This is the entire point and I congratulate shanek on his time in research, and his patience with the yammering. You guys have been acting like elementry students on the playground with this crap.
Did too!
Did not!
Uhhuh.
nuhhuh.
Jesus!
States with armed citizens show less crime . Here ya go:
L_E_S_S C_R_I_M_E. Say it with me.

 

[shanek]

My guess is that, as guns become more available, the following will happen:

1) Murder rate goes up, as loonies have more guns and because of the perverse side of (2) below, that if you are going to bother to rob someone better just kill in case they are armed or reach for it, also a "wild west" problem where some stickup victim has seen too many movies and decides he can outdraw the guy who already has his gun drawn and aimed...

It's interesting when you look at the murder rate:

States that restrict the carrying of guns (CA, DE, HI, IA, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, IL, KS, NE, WI): Total population 103,939,261; murder rate 5.58 (.5% above the national average of 5.55).

Shall-issue permit states (all of the rest except AK and VT): Total population 181,167,608; murder rate 5.54 (.47% below the national average).

Unrestricted gun carry states (AK and VT): Total population 1,267,925; murder rate 4.50 (18.95% below the national average).

Still the same effect, but not as pronounced. Perhaps there is an effect similar to what you're talking about, and it's just outweighed by the ability of potential murder victims to defend themselves.

 

[shanek]

3) Property crime increases, as two-bit stickup men who aren't willing to kill become two-bit burgulars, forgers, and scammers.

This may actually be the case:

States that restrict the carrying of guns (CA, DE, HI, IA, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, IL, KS, NE, WI): Total population 103,939,261; property crime rate 3078 (13.3% below the national average of 3549).

Shall-issue permit states (all of the rest except AK and VT): Total population 181,167,608; property crime rate 3823.17 (7.7% below the national average).

Unrestricted gun carry states (AK and VT): Total population 1,267,925; property crime rate 2989 (15.7% below the national average).

So property crime is actually lower in states that have restrictive gun laws as compared to the shall-issue states. So it does indeed appear to be the case that, with an armed population, criminals are less likely to commit crimes that require them to come face-to-face with their victim.

The unrestricted carry states are lower, but since there's only two of them, and Vermont has low crime across the board, we might consider those statistics to be anomalous in this case (and exaggerated in the others).

 

[shanek]

His point? Are you deliberately being obtuse? This is the entire point and I congratulate shanek on his time in research, and his patience with the yammering.

Thanks. It's not as comprehensive as Lott's analysis by a long shot, but it does show the effect. (I can see why it took Lott years to compile all the data...)

 

[crimresearch]

His point? Are you deliberately being obtuse? This is the entire point and I congratulate shanek on his time in research, and his patience with the yammering. You guys have been acting like elementry students on the playground with this crap.
Did too!
Did not!
Uhhuh.
nuhhuh.
Jesus!
States with armed citizens show less crime . Here ya go:
L_E_S_S C_R_I_M_E. Say it with me.

No kidding...this has all been pointed out before, by myself and others.

If you are trying to suggest that Shanek came up with any of this, or that he was bringing anything new to the table, you are way off base.
I asked what his point was in bringing up old news, whichwasn't being disputed....get a grip.

 

[shanek]

If you are trying to suggest that Shanek came up with any of this, or that he was bringing anything new to the table, you are way off base.
I asked what his point was in bringing up old news, whichwasn't being disputed....get a grip.

It isn't being disputed that more guns = less crime? What board are you posting on????

 

[CFLarsen]

Thanks. It's not as comprehensive as Lott's analysis by a long shot, but it does show the effect. (I can see why it took Lott years to compile all the data...)

No, it doesn't.

Once again, shanek is fiddling with the data. What he leaves out - and he does leave it out, because he is perfectly aware of it - is that

Big Cities = High Crime.

We can see that, from shanek's own data:

The most populated 10 states, percentage of total crime committed in metropolitan areas:


CA: 98%
TX: 92%
NY: 96%
FL: 95%
IL: N/A (due to limited data)
PA: 88%
OH: 89%
MI: 92%
GA: 81%
NJ: 100% (due to NJ being considered all metropolitan)


Notice something? The highest percentages (apart from NJ) are in CA and NY, the two states with the biggest cities.

In Shanek's 1st group, the total population (13 states) is 103,939,261. But two states alone - CA and NY - make up more than half - 53% - of the population.

Add to that, CA and NY has no fewer than 18 big cities on the Top 100 list. A whopping 31 of the biggest cities are in those 13 states in shanek's first group.

Those 31 cities in the first group of states have a population of 25,911,506, making up 25% of the total population of the 13 states.

New York and Los Angeles are the top two cities, making up 11% of the total population of the 13 states. That skews the data enormously.

The 68 cities in the second group of states have a population of 29,813,121. The 1 city in the third group of states has a population of 268,983.

So, we have a small group of states with a lot of big cities - where we know the crime is.

Yeah, numbers can be crunched a lot of ways. But shanek's way is wrong. And he knows it.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Yeah, numbers can be crunched a lot of ways. But shanek's way is wrong. And he knows it.

Your personal soap opera aside, what is your point? That there will be more crime if there are more people??

Large cities are primarily where the wealth is. I'd not be surprised if crime tends to follow it more often than not.