I grew up in New Hampshire and spent most of my life and all of my police time there. I fled the long winters to the warm South a while ago, but still consider myself a New Hampshireman.
You will see why our friend and ally Professor John Lott is not the only one who says “more guns equal less crime.”
The state motto is on New Hampshire license plates, courtesy of General John Stark: “Live Free or Die.”
The fact that those license plates are manufactured by convicted criminals in the state penitentiary is something of a palatable irony.
The title of the article says it all about how Leftists view (non-governmental) gun ownership. Anyone with half a brain can see that the VAST majority of firearms that are purchased and owned in the US are not used in violent crimes. Otherwise, we would all be dead in a few years. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to consider the effect of having a high population of criminals has on the amount of violent crime in a given state. Like the Midwest, the rural counties in Northeast states have low rates of violent crime while the large cities are awash in crime and criminals. It ain’t a gun problem, it’s the inevitable result of a breakdown of families, the educational system, and the industrial base.
Mark, I live an hour or so away from Kansas City where we listen to the morning murder report, uh, news every morning. We rarely have a murder in our area.
The denser the population, the denser the populace! Give people adequate space, they seem to be able to think through social problems logically, but pack them tightly into urban areas and they seem to lose brain cells. Or maybe they gather into tight bunches BECAUSE of brain damage.
Scott Morris,
So true. Cities are for idiots. I keep thinking about those sophisticated New York City slickers, voting for Bill DeBlasio for mayor, TWICE!! Then they have a choice between Curtis Sliwa and Eric Adams, and they vote for Eric Adams.
{Shaking my head}.
Whimsical take on urban/rural crime rates. Way back in Experimental Psychology, we read about a study on how rats reacted to high population density. Simply put, as population density increased (I think by natural reproduction), so did violent behavior (if they were human, we’d call it crime). I don’t recall details, but I think that might hint that there’s some sort of relationship there.
That said, correlations can be somewhere between tricky and meaningless. There’s an old study done in the UK (back in the mods & rockers days, for other old folks), that showed a 90th percentile correlation between violence and the sale of oranges. Didn’t have anything to actually do with oranges, but at that time, oranges were primarily sold in the warmer months when peoples tempers flare anyway.
WR Moore.
The study if I recall correctly. Showed a correlation with high density low income housing projects when I first heard about it I was a security guard on nights, in big 10 college dorm complex. That density was higher then Cabrini Green.
The study I referred to dealt exclusively with rats.
If any of you are near the Manchester, NH, airport, the shop pictured in the lead photo, Shooters Outpost in Hooksett, is definitely worth the visit. The “firearms and war memorabilia museum” noted in the caption is an outstanding, well organized large collection of machine guns and other weapons, many of them grouped according to the conflict in which they were used. A bunch of them are also just arranged in the middle of the floor of that part of the building. I counted 11 or 12 Thompsons, 5 or 6 MG-34’s and several MG-42’s and Ma Deuces as well as some other more exotic guns.
I noted that the Concord Monitor article was written by David Brooks who is usually never agreeable to an independent populace. That said the spokesman for Security.org, Haley Helms, I did not see her Proof in relation to that statement. She stated that some people are buying their guns “On Line” without getting a background check. I wonder where she got that bit of info, Sharon Watts, Maybe.
New Hampshire is probably my favorite state. I should move there, and I just might when the time for decision arrives. All the other great states have something in common with New Hampshire, even if it is only the fact that great (right-thinking) Americans live in the great states. If at all possible, it may be wise to create a law, that no Democrats are allowed to reside in New Hampshire. After all, Democrats have plenty of places where they can live.
Am I being divisive? You bet. That’s where I am, after seeing the fruit produced by more than a century of liberalism/socialism/Marxism/statism (whatever label you prefer).
A long while back, I compared the murder rate between Boston and Vermont, as they both had similar sized populations. Boston had nearly 400 murders, Vermont had 24 homicides, of which a third were justifiable and a third of the non-justifiable ones were stabbings.
That exercise convinced me that it’s not the guns that are the problem.
And it also speaks to the idea of less population density equals less crime!
My wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in 2017, with a trip to New England. We visited all of the states around there, all the way up to Maine. The state we loved the most, was of course, New Hampshire. Of course, there was the beauty, the breathtaking scenery would be hard to beat by any standards, even other states in the same area.
But for us, and particular for me, it was the people, hands down. I am a Michigan person, born and raised, and lived her my entire 62 years now. And while I used to find that since I tend to be a kind and open person, and treated everyone I came across the same way, they would return my same kindness and friendliness, it is no longer that way, and has not been for at least 20 years, if not more.
New Hampshire, however, I don’t think that I met anyone that was not like a neighbor. And that is not just business owners who want to take your tourist money. You could sit at a table in a restaurant, and the people sitting at the next table would ask where you were from, as it was pretty obvious that we were not from the area. And they would include you in their group discussion, telling you things to see, and things that they were proud of. And on occasion things that they were not so proud of, such as a politician that came from a family who was only interested in making sure that his own were taken care of. And how next election, they were making sure that he was gone.
It made me think of the days gone by in my small town of Michigan. My dad had a brother in Junction City, Kansas, an army lifer. He had just returned from Vietnam, and my dad was taking the family out to visit his family. We had an older car, but serviceable. The lady across the street had just bought a brand new Oldsmobile. She not only offered my dad the use of driving her new car to visit his brother in Kansas, she insisted on it. So we drove our next door neighbors brand new car, with no miles on it at all, all the way from Michigan, to Ft. Reilly to visit my dad’s brother, and back.
I myself could also live in New Hampshire, were it not for the winters. My wife loves the snow and cold, so I am stuck in Michigan. But I would move to more favorable climes in a heart beat if possible. Or simply buy a trailer and truck and commute.
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