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Comment by pkaye | Hacker News Reader

Why does Texas has so many reported burglaries though?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/232539/burglaries-report...

Probably because these statistics are based on reported burglaries as opposed to the actual number of burglaries. It's my impression from various threads and news articles that people in California have given up on reporting all sorts of crimes due to the lack of prosecution.

Must be the same situation in Florida then?

California is a big place with a lot of varying community attitudes... that sounds like quite a big assumption.

1: The data is obviously completely bogus unless you believe there were only 11 burglaries in Florida in all of 2021. You can't draw anything from it.

2: Texas is the second most populous state, so total # has little value. You need the per capita number to understand whether their might be some deterrence happening. Unfortunately the Statista data is garbage, so it isn't worth calculating.

So where is a good source of data?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/232580/burglary-rate-in-...

Statista is proven untrustworthy, so I'd start with the FBI UCRs:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s

Thanks for that link. Looks like its a mixed bag between Texas and California. Out of the 9 crime statistics, California is better for 5 while Texas is better for 4. And sometimes the differences are small. For example for burglary, the rate is 392.8 for Texas while 392.8 for while 386.1 for California.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Because stolen guns are very valuable and the owners have to officially report them stolen to avoid all the possible criminal charges.

People report gun theft in order to make possession of it unambiguously a crime same as with cars and other serialized property.

Nobody with a brain actually thinks the police in the next state over are gonna seriously suspect them of something when their handgun inevitably gets recovered in an unrelated crime.

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