The American people are being misled and duped by exaggerated claims of rampant crime. The fear caused by these exaggerated claims is fed further by the incessant fictional violence served up to the public in movie houses and on television screens.
There are many reasons for this exaggeration. Law enforcement people like bigger budgets, and more crime is a good justification. Journalists love melodrama, and crime stories are perfect melodrama. Politicians love to demagogue, and crime is a good issue for demagoguing (a politician can be against crime without offending anyone, a rare issue).There are more sinister reasons, I think, that involve people's lust for power. One way to get people to give up their liberty is to scare them so that they think the alternative to a vast increase in police power is violence and chaos.
Let's look at the facts and see how you are being bamboozled.
The FBI reports 23,438 people were murdered in 1990. Measured as murders per hundred thousand people, the number is 9, and that rate is four percent lower, I said lower, than in 1981.
So 9 people per 100,000 were murdered in 1990. Wow. Terrible, huh? Well, flu and pneumonia killed 31.3 people per hundred thousand in 1989 (latest year statistics are available). Liver diseases killed 10.6; diabetes, 16.2; cancer, 198.3; cardiovascular diseases, 394.5; and accidents, 38.9.
Compared to the 23,438 homicides, 22,500 people were killed in accidents in their own homes and 49,900 were killed in motor vehicle accidents.
You've heard all the propaganda from Handgun Control. Well, 9,923 people were murdered with handguns, but 12,400 were killed in falls. Perhaps we should ban gravity or impose a seven-day waiting period before delivery of a stepladder or a second-story in a house.
The FBI has no statistics for those famous assault rifles, but under the general heading of rifles, which could be any kind, they were used in 743 homicides, which put them well behind old-fashioned knives, which were used in 3,503 homicides; blunt objects, which dispatched 1,075 people; and bare hands and feet, which were used to kill 1,112 people.
Now compare those numbers with all the nonsense you've read, seen and heard about assault rifles and machines guns - how these terrible weapons have to be taken off the streets because they are being used to slaughter people. Oh? Where are they? Not in the FBI report, the single authoritative source of crime statistics. Where they are is on TV and in the movies because special effects people love machine guns.
You've probably heard and seen TV stories and TV discussions about how black youths are slaughtering black youths and what a horrible crisis this is. You certainly get the impression from TV and other journalistic accounts that most black neighborhoods are free-fire zones.
Again, what are the facts? The facts are that in 1990, out of 26 million American blacks, 971 black youths under 18 were homicide victims, just a hair more than the 942 white youths under 18 who were homicide victims. Compare those numbers to 4,600 people who drowned, the 4,400 who died in fires, 3,900 who choked to death on food, and the 5,600 who were accidentally poisoned.
You are being conned and misled about crime. People are inflicting you with unnecessary fear to satisfy their greed for budget increases, their lust for sensationalism, their yen to reduce people's liberty, with perhaps a little racism thrown in.
Don't let them con you.