CNN has made quite a habit of outrageous statements on gun issues. You can see previous interviews here here , and here . From my appearance last night on CNN.

LOTT: Every place that guns have been banned, murder rates have gone up. You cannot point to one place, whether it's Chicago or whether it's D.C. or whether it's been England of whether it's been Jamaica or Ireland.

LOTT: Every place that guns have been banned, murder rates have gone up. You cannot point to one place, whether it's Chicago or whether it's D.C. or whether it's been England of whether it's been Jamaica or Ireland.

No, you're not going to get away with this. You lied about it the other day. Thirty-five gun murders a year in Britain, eleven to twelve thousand in America. Stop lying, because what you say drives Americans to defend themselves.

I'm sorry, but that's just a complete lie. It's a complete lie. The gun murder rate in Britain is 35 a year, average. You need to stop repeating a blatant lie, about what happens in other countries.

Amanpour: After Dunblane, they put in these bans, they put in these punishments, fines, jail sentences, etc. and its true that straight afterwards there wasn't a huge change , but 2002/2003 until 2011 the rate plummeted by 44% .

Amanpour: After Dunblane, they put in these bans, they put in these punishments, fines, jail sentences, etc. and its true that straight afterwards there wasn't a huge change , but 2002/2003 until 2011 the rate plummeted by 44% .

Amanpour: After Dunblane, they put in these bans, they put in these punishments, fines, jail sentences, etc. and its true that straight afterwards there wasn't a huge change , but 2002/2003 until 2011 the rate plummeted by 44% .

After Morgan then claimed multiple times that I had lied, the video then shows that I tried to explain that there is a difference between levels and changes. In an obvious setup, Christiane Amanpour claimed that the murder rate in the UK had initially been flat after the ban and then fell.

After Morgan then claimed multiple times that I had lied, the video then shows that I tried to explain that there is a difference between levels and changes. In an obvious setup, Christiane Amanpour claimed that the murder rate in the UK had initially been flat after the ban and then fell.

Morgan and Amanpour were clearly taking about the number of homicides so initially here is a chart for that (source here see Table 1.01 and the column marked "Number of offences currently recorded as homicide"). She is right that there were substantial increases in law enforcement activity (for the original data see here and here ), which one suspects should have been associated with reduced crime rates, but, even with that, how can she make the claims that she did about homicides? (Note that it often takes a couple of years after a person becomes a police officer before they become very effective.)



Two clear points can be seen from the next two figures. First, after the ban, clearly homicide rates bounce around over time, but there is not one single year during the 15 years after the ban where the number of homicides is lower than it was immediately prior to the ban in 1996. By the way, the average yearly homicides from 1990 to 1996 was 601. For the time period after the ban started it was 707, an 18 percent increase. Second, the number of homicides remained higher than the immediate pre-ban rate despite a large increase in the number of police officers during 2003 and 2004.











If you look at the percent changes, the change from 1996 to 2003 was bigger than the drop since then. If she says that there is no "huge change" between 1996 and 2003, how can she say that there is a "plummet" after that (when it fell by 32%, not the claimed 44%)?



Note also that Morgan must have misspoken about the number of gun homicides a year. Indeed, at least since 1990, the average has been twice that high and has never even got as low as the average of 35 a year that he claimed. I think that total homicides are the most important concern, rather than how a homicide was committed, but if that is what some would rather focus on, it is still hard to see that even firearm homicides fell after the ban. The averages in the pre- and post-ban periods are virtually identical (61 pre-ban and 62 post-ban), and there are only two years that the number of firearm homicides fell below what the number was in 1996 (2009 and 2010).







Obviously, guns are involved in more than just homicides or murders. One thing that is clear has been the huge increase in gun crime generally in England and Wales since the gun ban (for similar discussions see Obviously, guns are involved in more than just homicides or murders. One thing that is clear has been the huge increase in gun crime generally in England and Wales since the gun ban (for similar discussions see here here , and here ). Firearm Offenses involving handguns, rifles and shotguns were falling from 1991 to 1997. At that point, they stopped falling and kept increasing until 2006. The number of firearm offenses in 2011 was still 16 percent higher than in 1996 and the average for 1997 to 2011 was 8,326 or 31 percent higher than in the 1990 to 1996 period. If Piers means to include Scotland in Britain , that would raise the number of gun homicides in 60 to 73





that it

reduces the recorded homicide rate in England and Wales, but what would a similar reduction mean for the US.









More information on the adjustment for England and Wales is below for "Update 4." If taken literally and as I discuss below, that isn't clear, a simple comparison can be made. In 2012, the US murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000, a total of

. Arrests amounted to only 7,133 . Using only people who were arrested (not just convicted) would lower the US murder rate to 2.26 per 100,000.





Gun crimes have apparently

also

been seriously underreported in the UK. From the UK Telegraph in 2008:

The internal memo, written by a senior officer, says there has been significant under reporting of serious crime and warns of "serious concerns" that confidence in the police and Government will be knocked when the true levels are revealed.

It was drawn up in response to a briefing paper given to the Metropolitan Police Authority outlining Home Office changes to the definition of crimes.

Under the changes, police have been told to classify all offences as gun or knife crime when there is a threat with a weapon. Previously, this did not happen if the weapons were hidden.

Similarly, more assaults are to be classified as grievous bodily harm rather than the less serious actual bodily harm when a victim is injured.

In the memo, Det Chief Superintendent Peter Barron said: "The potential increase could be a rise in recorded GBH of 58 per cent, a rise in gun crime of 20 per cent and a rise in knife crime of 15 per cent." . . . It was drawn up in response to a briefing paper given to the Metropolitan Police Authority outlining Home Office changes to the definition of crimes.Under the changes, police have been told to classify all offences as gun or knife crime when there is a threat with a weapon. Previously, this did not happen if the weapons were hidden.Similarly, more assaults are to be classified as grievous bodily harm rather than the less serious actual bodily harm when a victim is injured.In the memo, Det Chief Superintendent Peter Barron said: "The potential increase could be a rise in recorded GBH of 58 per cent,and a rise in knife crime of 15 per cent." . . .

The UK Telegraph had this story in 2010 of how this bias has increased over time in Nottinghamshire.

"Their crime figures are totally inaccurate. Unless a gun gets discharged, it often doesn't get reported. A lot of people are brandishing guns out there and they are not put in the figures because a gun isn't discharged.

"If the figures from hospitals, of people coming in with gunshot and knife wounds, were used, the figures would be a lot greater. The hospital figures should be taken far more seriously." . . .





I am more concerned about total murders than just firearm murders, but firearm murders have also risen after the 1997 handgun ban. Indeed, there are only two years after the ban where the number of murders were below what it was before the ban. In 2011, there were 60 murders, up from 49 in 1996.



The discussion on CNN was supposed to be a Townhall where people from different views were in the audience. Instead the people that they brought in from Arizona and Wisconsin and other places were all on the same side. I asked the people in my section if anyone opposed increased gun control regulations and no one said that they did. Several shouted that they wanted to ban all semi-automatic guns.



