More Guns, Fewer Criminals

The cherished liberal elitists idea that people exercising their Second Amendment rights to self defense leads to a significant number of innocents being murdered is just absurd.

We've all heard "more guns, less crime" but now there is a new twist. More guns, fewer criminals. USA Today has an article about criminals and their victims, who are the victims?

Criminals target each other, trend shows
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A spike in murders in many cities is claiming a startling number of victims with criminal records, police say, suggesting that drug and gang wars are behind the escalating violence.

Police increasingly explore criminal pasts of homicide victims as well as suspects as they search for sources of the violence, which has risen the past two years after a decade of decline, according to the FBI's annual measures of U.S. crime.

Understanding victims' pasts is critical to driving crime back down, police and crime analysts say. "If you are trying to look at prevention, you need to look at the lives of the people involved," says Mallory O'Brien, director of the Homicide Review Commission in Milwaukee.

In Baltimore, about 91% of murder victims this year had criminal records, up from 74% a decade ago, police reported.

In many cases, says Frederick Bealefeld III, Baltimore's interim police commissioner, victims' rap sheets provide critical links to potential suspects in botched drug deals or violent territorial disputes.

MORE FROM BALTIMORE: Cities study victims' criminal past

Philadelphia police Capt. Ben Naish says the Baltimore numbers are "shocking." Philadelphia also has seen the number of victims with criminal pasts inch up — to 75% this year from 71% in 2005.

In Milwaukee, local leaders created the homicide commission after a spike in violence led to a 39% increase in murders in 2005. The group compiled statistics on victims' criminal histories for the first time and found that 77% of homicide victims in the past two years had an average of nearly 12 arrests.

While it was common in the past for murder victims to have criminal records, the current levels are surprising even to analysts who study homicides.

The conclusion, murder victims have criminal arrest records. Who knew, and maybe that is the problem, the public goes on thinking, look at all these murders we have to do something. and who would want you to think that?