From today’s Union Leader, front page, “NH Has 3rd Lowest Violent Crime rate.”
The Granite State had the third-lowest rate of violent crime in 2017 — 198.7 incidents per 100,000 residents — trailing only Vermont (165.8) and Maine (121). Violent crime was down slightly nationwide, and it was the second year in a row that New Hampshire’s rate decreased.
Why? Expert opinions vary.
But not one of them had anything to say about Constitutional carry as an inhibitor of crime nor posited why passing it failed to fulfill the ‘blood in the streets’ narrative promised by hoplophobic leftists.
Where are the bodies? The stressed public safety and first responders. Law abiding citizens are walking around with firearms, and nobody knows they have them.
That’s not entirely true. Thanks to all the caterwauling by the left before, during, and after passage, people with criminal intent probably know. But that’s not something the experts in this report felt it relevant to share.
Gun grabbing Tuftonboro Police Chief Andrew Shagoury, president of the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police said,
“New Hampshire’s low unemployment rate of 2.7 percent is likely another contributing factor.
“It makes for a great state to raise a family and for businesses,” he said. “If you don’t feel safe or have security, it’s not very attractive on either of those fronts.”
Cesar Rebellon, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire is quoted as saying,
There is… no definite explanation for why northern New England tends to have a lower violent crime rate than other regions, although evidence points to several factors.
Hyperbolic Conservative bomb-thrower Steve MacDonald raises his hand! “Excuse me professor but all of Northern New England allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms without having to ask permission from Police Chiefs like Andrew Shagoury. Might that factor in?”
We don’t know. The Union Leader doesn’t appear to have worked that angle.
The Rebellon reporting continues,
“The existing literature would suggest that high violence tends to be associated with a high concentration of poverty in neighborhoods that are surrounded by other areas within the same city that have a lot of wealth” and in areas with high population density, Rebellon said.
Does the literature also include the likelihood that these neighborhoods are more commonly found in Democrat-run cities that have disarmed everyone but the criminals?
That doesn’t come up.
I’d also like to have seen some reporting in the state’s largest daily Newspaper on how violent crime continues to go down in NH after passing Constitutional Carry.
Did I mention that already?
An unknown number of law abiding citizens are carrying who knows how many loaded firearms under their jackets, sweaters, in briefcases, pocketbooks, backpacks, and glove-boxes and the blood in the streets™ scaremongering from the left not only did not happen we went the other way.
I think the Union Leader should have brought it up in their interviews even just to hear their response. Or, perhaps, to allow them to explain it away or explain why violent crime did not go up.
Maybe they will. We’ll have to wait and see.
