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Comment by jijji | Hacker News Reader

Its worth noting that every city on the list is a city with very strict gun laws. You won't find the robbery rates high in cities and states which allow citizens to properly defend themselves when confronted by an attacker committing a felony on his or her person.

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To be fair it's never really clear what is cause and what is effect with gun laws in the USA -- places with high crime of certain kinds (urban/black, with liberal or anti-gun politicians) tend to go for anti-gun laws. Places with low crime and lots of anti-gun people also go for anti-gun laws. Places with high crime and a more pro-gun culture resist those laws. It's hard to say passing a law pro or anti gun changes crime; you'd really need something equivalent to a "twin study" in bio, where two otherwise-identical cities at the same time pass different laws.

How does the proper defense scenario play out with a gun? Someone pulls a gun on you to rob you, and you then pull yours out without getting shot? Once you do pull out your gun, do you shoot the robber(s)? I find it hard to imagine any of this working out very well.

Or is the possibility that you may be armed supposed to act as a deterrent?

In states that have strict gun laws, the way it plays out is that the victim never has the opportunity to defend themselves. Read any story where an attacker tries to rob a person with a concealed firearm to figure out how it plays out when the victim is armed. It usually doesn't end up well for the attacker. So I guess we should just all be victims and never defends ourselves when attacked. It actually drives crime up when everyone plays the victim and doesn't defened themselves. The attackers feel emboldened to commit the act over and over and over again with impunity. Why should they stop? No one is preventing them they should continue to rob people, it is working for them.

It's sort of a deterrent from "herd immunity", but it's mainly so that if a crime escalates from property crime, you can defend yourself. I'd toss my wallet/cash/etc. in one direction and move to cover/flee/draw, depending on the circumstance. I'm fine with losing whatever cash/credit cards/etc.; I'm not fine with being under the control of an attacker and potentially moved elsewhere, taken to an ATM, kidnapped, shot, etc.

The bad thing about CCW is it turns any assault into a likely-to-end-in-someone-shot situation; if you're carrying and potentially will be knocked unconscious in an assault, or are being grappled, the attacker may grab your gun and shoot you; your correct course of action is to shoot him first.

So how come Houston has 3 times the robbery rate of San Jose or San Diego? Why does St. Louis, Missouri, have a higher robbery rate than Washington, DC?

As someone from the St.Louis area I'd like to point out that the official crime rates are largely an artifact. The municipality called the City of St.Louis only covers a small amount of the actual city and includes most of the high crime areas.

New York City is also pretty far down the list for robberies, even though robbery is one of the few things trending up in NYC (or so I hear).

What are the 'very strict' gun laws in Cleveland and Cincinnati? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Ohio

Is that true? For example, St. Louis, Missouri's violent crime rate is comparable to Oakland's, according to Wikipedia[1], but doesn't appear to have strict gun laws. Similarly Memphis and Atlanta; neither Georgia nor Tennessee are particularly well known for strict gun control, and I can't find any evidence that those particular cities are different.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...

Look at the concealed carry laws in each state in the top ten. You'll find it very difficult if not impossible for the average person to obtain a concealed carry permit in any of those states.

Missouri and Tennessee both sound pretty easy. Take a course, pay a fairly reasonable fee, and as long as you're not a criminal or crazy, you're good to go.

Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to compare actual crime rates, much less "crime risk for someone not engaged in an illegal enterprise" across cities. The FBI rates are calculated per city population, and fail to take into account metro size. St Louis and Atlanta are both relatively small in geographic size and population compared to their metro area.

Violent crime tends to be closely related to poverty, and much tends to be "criminal-on-criminal". As criminals do not follow carry laws, it's hard to know the true effect on stats. I do find it interesting that if you sort the list by property crime, the top cities are dominated by ones in gun friendly states. A quick comparison shows for example, Atlanta has a higher property crime to violent crime ratio than Oakland. If you say there's "base crime level" driven by socioeconomic factors, then Atlanta's more gun friendly laws could contribute to it having a smaller percentage of violent crime in the total crime pie chart. Criminals may choose to break into unoccupied cars, stores, and homes instead of muggings and home invasions.

Stand your ground?

Self defense?

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