Winning?
winning!!!
To me, the weirder thing is that an admin just confirmed something that appeared to everyone up until now as a guess.
Now that we know the city…did the murder rate really go up as much as was claimed?
Not exactly, but within spitting distance.
Well, sort of - if you’re spitting with the wind at your back from the tallest building in Oklahoma.
The increase in homicides was due to domestic violence and murder/suicides. People using their weapons to kill each other and themselves in crimes of passion in their homes, not marauding packs of criminals invading the homes of unarmed citizens.
Considering the reason SA was citing the increase this detail is kind of important and not just a little ironic.
I grew up in Oklahoma and it is part of the midwest. Actually I grew up in a suburb of OKC. Want to guess it’s name. It was Midwest City Oklahoma.
If anything Oklahoma likes to imagine that it is a part of the West. The National Cowboy Hall of Fame is there.
Well, in a way…but it’s not the type of murder increase where more guns in the homes would be any sort of solution.
Due to a variety of recent developments, a couple of which involve a couple of surprisingly generous PMs from people I’d not expected them from, and others which have occured upon reflection, I’ve decided to take Ed’s advice and simmer things down for a while. But before I go I feel it’s necessary to set a few things straight:
No, actually it was more like I said, if you’re determined to figure it out anyway, then go ahead and I’ll laugh at the time you spend trying to figure it out. It was clear by that point that the investigation would continue no matter what.
It’s of the type that makes people feel unsafe in their homes and therefore desirous of firearm protection. Plus they know that the knowledge they may be armed is one key element in keeping the wolves at bay. When people are being shot and killed in public for their shoes and rims and in $20 drug deals, it’s not hard to imagine the results if criminals could count on people inside their homes not being armed.
A few weeks ago we had a girl who’d just pulled into her driveway at night and was tased by three guys who then tried to pull her out of her car. Her brother came running out of his house and scared 'em off. No one knew if they wanted to abduct her for human trafficking purposes, to abduct her for rape purposes, for rape and murder purposes, or whatever. Turns out they were just broke and wanted a car.
Things like that are what make people want to arm themselves even in their cars, and luckily our governor signed a concealed carry law just last month so now people can do that too.
This is incorrect for two reasons. One, many of the domestic violence and murder/suicides that occur are still drug/crime related and caused by one or both of those factors. And two, blaming the increase on domestic violence is largely a political tactic on the part of the prosecutor intended to quell public fear and demands that something be done about it. The police chief on the other hand blames the increase on not having enough cops to put on the street. And even other people blame it on our being at the I-35/I-40 junction for drug cartel and gangland drug trafficking. But any way you cut it, drugs and minority criminality is responsible not only for the increase in our murder rate but the overall murder rate as well.
As other posters have stated, Oklahoma is very much considered part of the midwest by people who live here. We have very little in common with the deep south. Instead think Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa. And like Zebra said, Western cowboy culture and influence is big here as well. We like our beef, we like our beer, and we like our football. But we also depend on our land, our wheat, our grain elevators, and harvest season. And of course we love our shiny new basketball team. Thunder up!
Yes, exactly. Last weekend, prior to my statement and halfway into December, we experienced our 96th murder, which officially put us at 60% over last year’s total. And that’s just for the city proper. I have no idea what the total number of murders was for the entire metro area.
So once again Starving Artist has been proven honest and truthful, even though he had no expectation of being put to the test.
For ten years it has ever been thus.
If the objective here is to fight ignorance. then Rick did exactly what he should have.
Bullshit. By midway through the year OKC had already matched their homicide rate for the entire year of 2011. The reason, specifically, was an early surge in domestic violence and murder/suicides. These aren’t ambiguous cases subject to your interpretation - they are real cases whose circumstances are well documented by law enforcement. Which of the cases described in the article below do you think might have happened in your house or any other unrelated bystander’s houses if the people involved didn’t know you were sitting there in the dark stroking your .38?
Bullshit.
And even other people might blame it on gay marriage or illegal immigrants. But there are plenty of people just as delusional as you, and their opinions don’t reflect reality either.
Except for all the evidence to the contrary. Any way you cut it, you are so full of shit your paranoid, twitching eyes are brown.
Meaningless. You’ve listed a mere handful of crimes and you haven’t the vaguest idea whether drugs or some other criminal aspect to the crime came into play with regard to some of them.
Wanna bet? 
Those were 11 cases of domestic violence homicide, each of which had 2 or 3 victims and there had been just under 50 homicides by that time total. That huge increase in domestic murders when combined with OKC’s already normally high murder/suicide rate accounted for a large portion of the stated 60% overall increase. None of them could or would have happened in your home whether you had guns in every room or not.
Additionally, 2011 was Oklahoma’s lowest violent crime year since 2002 - so 2012 is being compared to an unusually low rate for 2011, making the 60% increase even less significant overall.
That’s not to say there weren’t some actual violent homicides in home robberies or carjackings and what have you - just no more of them in 2012 than usual. Oklahoma also has one of the highest suicide rates in the country at 35% above the national average. For whatever reasons suicide is the second leading cause of death among 14-24 year olds in OK. (Maybe those who don’t remember the glorious 50’s aren’t so happy with the cultural mores the old timers there want to perpetuate)
Sounds like a great place to live - but a bus ticket to anywhere else would cost a lot less than a bushmaster and a box of hollowpoint ammo.
Don’t worry the rest of us understand.
But in MURDERS, it is way up. It had dropped into the 30s, actually, just 7-10 years ago. A robbery is not equal to a murder; conflating “violent crimes” with “murders” is hiding the fact that murders in OKC are, in fact, way, way up:
Murders in the City of Oklahoma City (within city limits)
2001: 45
2002: 38
2003: 49
2004: 39
2005: 54
2006: 55
2007: 58
2008: 57
2009: 65
2010: 54
2011: 60
By any measure, going over 90 is a sudden, weird jump, and it’s dramatically higher than it was ten years ago. (If you go back another ten years, though, before the continent-wide crime rate started dropping, it was even worse back then.) So why is it worse now?
Something unique to OKC?
Bad economy?
Fluke?
I actually just sent the following story idea to the Daily Oklahoman, the biggest daily newspaper in Oklahoma City:
Who cares? Violent crime is down throughout the US. Nobody in their right mind thinks otherwise. There are always anomalies, and OKC is one of those.
Why the fuck are we even talking about Oklahoma City?
From Rickjay’s post right above yours:
Murders in the City of Oklahoma City (within city limits)
2001: 45
2002: 38
2003: 49
2004: 39
2005: 54
2006: 55
2007: 58
2008: 57
2009: 65
2010: 54
2011: 60
Why do you think 2011 numbers were “abnormally low”?
That doesn’t make sense. Why would people be committing suicide due to mores of a bygone time the old timers want to perpetuate? I’d think problems due to current mores would be a more likely inducement.
Excellent point regarding number of murders vs. number of violent crimes. I was about to point that out myself before I saw that RickJay had it covered. Plus, the fact that a rate is lower doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s suddenly become a good or acceptable rate.
I’d note also that 2011 was actually somewhat of a mini-spike in murder itself, as was 2009, when compared with most of the other rates prior to this year’s. In fact there’s actually been a fairly strong upward trend that began around 2005, where the rates went from the 30s and 40s to the mid-50s and mid-60s and stayed there until this year’s spike which is currently at 98 with two more homicides yesterday, involving a guy who beat his ex, killed her boyfriend, then fled and committed suicide. Which is a good example of how just because a pair of homicides is statistically due to murder/suicide it doesn’t necessarily mean no criminality was involved. It often is.
And on preview, had you seen RickJay’s table, John, you’d have found that your characterization of 2011’s murder rate as abnormally low is quite off the mark, as in fact it had second-highest murder rate of the entire preceeding decade.
Then why are we even talking about gun control? If violent crime is down the problem is taking care of itself and there’s nothing to worry about. Right? That seems to be what you’re saying anyway. So if pro-gun folks are foolish for wanting guns to protect them from the relatively smaller number of crimes that are occurring, how do you justify getting even more upset at the vastly smaller number of incidents where someone is needlessly harmed through the misuse of a firearm in the home?