Liberal lawmakers in Massachusetts must have figured they were one step closer to achieving their utopian dream when they enacted the state’s new gun control legislation in 1998. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. As Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe reports, Crime soared with Mass. gun law.
Since 1998, gun crime in Massachusetts has gotten worse, not better. In 2011, Massachusetts recorded 122 murders committed with firearms, the Globe reported this month — “a striking increase from the 65 in 1998.” Other crimes rose too. Between 1998 and 2011, robbery with firearms climbed 20.7 percent. Aggravated assaults jumped 26.7 percent.
Not easily detered though, the anti-gun crowd says the stats don’t tell the whole story – the firearms are now coming from other states. They claim that;
Crime didn’t rise in Massachusetts because the state made it harder for honest citizens to lawfully carry a gun; it rose because other states didn’t do the same thing.
“Massachusetts probably has the toughest laws on the books, but what happens is people go across borders and buy guns and bring them into our state,” rationalizes Boston Mayor Tom Menino.
But the murder rate in neighboring states, as well as in the rest of the country, kept going down, while in Mass. it went in the opposite direction ~
Relative to the rest of the country, or to just the states on its borders, Massachusetts since 1998 has become a more dangerous state. Economist John Lott, using FBI crime data since 1980, shows how dramatic the contrast has been. In 1998, Massachusetts’s murder rate equaled about 70 percent of the rate for Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. Now it equals 125 percent of that rate.
Clearly something bad happened to Massachusetts 15 years ago. Blaming the neighbors may be ideologically comforting. But those aren’t the states whose crime rates are up.
You know those progressive utopians aren’t about to let facts and figures get in the way of their ultimate goal though. Somehow that annoying human nature always slows them down. Never fear. They’re gonna perfect us if it kills us.
Related:
Gun Ownership at All-Time High, Nation’s Murder Rate at Nearly All-Time Low
