An interesting comparison....

I don't think your comparison of MD and VA can support an implied conclusion that restrictive gun laws have no, or little effect on crime. Look at some of the states with tight anti-gun laws (NY, NJ, IL, MA) in comparison to some with relatively gun-friendly laws (NC, FL, TN, OK, TX, SC) and any correlation is void.

FYI, I live in NC and am a gun-ghts nut.

For politicians the urge to "do something about crime" is very high. That what they do "appears" to deal with a problem is more important to the electorate than that it actually work. Education is the answer. That criminals don't give a rat about laws should be obvious, but that never stopped a politician from taking advantage of a "crisis." Meanwhile, law abiding gun owners' fundamental rights are ignored in the rush.

It's not a matter of whether there is an inverse correlation between rates of gun ownership and crime rates. What the data goes to show, at the very least, is that the anti-gun argument that strict gun control does anything for crime is completely destroyed. The whole "guns cause crime" thing is totally bogus, as the data shows. I'm in Virginia, a Brady Bunch hated state, due to our relatively sensible gun laws - and our crime rates are dropping and lower than most other areas. Yet the number of CCW permit holders here has gone up rapidly in the last year. And gun sales have been booming (if you'll pardon the pun). And then check out D.C. and Chicago.

The simple fact is that strict gun control or lax gun control is going to have only so much effect on crime rates. Certain people are going to commit certain crimes regardless of what is legal and what is not. It has more to do with the various socio-economic conditions and the attitudes and philosophies of the people who live there. There are too many variables to solely credit or blame gun control laws or lack of gun control laws for higher or lower crime rates. I am sure it is a factor, though. But there can be no doubt that relatively "high" levels of legal gun ownership does not, in any way, cause or contribute to increased crime rates.

As much as I would like to believe and use this correlation I can't. I live in NJ. We have crazy gun laws and Camden NJ and Newark NJ always rank in the top of the list of violent places. But right over the river, Philadelphia is experiencing a very high murder rate. Especially among Philly cops. PA is very gun friendly.

Show me more examples and I will put more credit on this one.

I did a correlation between Brady Campaign grades and scores by state, and state crime rates according to the FBI. I ran the numbers both with and without DC. There was no statistically significant correlation between Brady grade and crime. The sign of the correlation depended on whether you included DC (assuming an equal Brady score to California)

The problem with "running the numbers" is that many of the people who provide those numbers have a vested interest in keeping reported crime down.

So we have agencies that "cannot afford to tabulate the crimes reported to the police;" other agencies that stop counting on Halloween; and various and sundry other forms of blatant fraud. Some of it is as simple as "don't tell anyone and maybe no one will notice."

You cannot compare a jurisdiction that reports 100 percent of the crimes reported to one that reports only ten percent. Nor can you compare a country that counts a homicide after the perp has been convicted and all appeals are exhausted with a country that supposedly reports all the crimes reported to the police. And that's exactly what has happened, over and over and over again.

Stranger

PA may be a gun friendly state, but doesn't Philly's have those "home rule powers" and the city itself has a number of anti-gun ordnances like San Francisco (had)?