I have been wrestling with how to measure efficacy of one gun a
month laws as measured by effects on the Northeastern state crime rates
in response to passage and repeal of South Carolina and Virginia 1 gun a
month laws, and I found myself wondering if change in gun-crime rates
(murder, aggravated assault, robbery) relative to non-gun crime rates
(like rape, larceny-theft, burglary, motor vehicle theft) might be a fit
measure. So I decided to see if nationally these various antisocial
felony rates were strongly correlated or not.
Surprise: the
following shows correlation of murder rates, rape rate,s larceny-theft rates, motor
vehicle theft rates, and burglary rates to murder rates for 1960-2012:| 1 | 0.53031789 | 0.734603441 | 0.80169651 | 0.934104 |
murder rates correlation of course is 1.00, rape rate is very poor, probably because of low rates of rape reporting in the 1960s and early 1970s. But larceny-theft is a surprisingly strong correlation, and auto theft and burglary rates are very strong. Murder and burglary are so strong that changes in one predict changes in the other with startling accuracy.
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