Minnesota is one of a few states that track crimes committed by Concealed Carry permit holders. When the Minnesota law was passed, an annual report of crimes committed by permit holders was required. The Minnesota permit is simply a permit to carry, the law does not discriminate between carrying concealed and carrying openly. Reports for the law are available for 2003, and 2005-2012 in pdf files.
The number of people with Minnesota permits that commit murder or manslaughter is remarkably low. Only three instances are recorded in the Minnesota Carry Permit annual reports for the nine years reported.
From the reports, the numbers of valid permits for each year are as follows:
2003 - 15,677
2005 - 32,885
2006 - 42,189
2007 - 51,347
2008 - 56,919
2009 - 69,313
2010 - 79,180
2011 - 91,221
2012 - 114,793
Total for the years listed - 553,524
Rate of carry permit holders committing murder and manslaughter/100,000 per year, .542.
Rate of murder in the general population in Minnesota, per 100,000 averaged for the years 2003, 2005 - 2012, is 1.78.
©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch
Update: Due to an alert reader, I have found a discrepancy in the comparative figures. The change is not large, but it is real. The rates given for the general population are labled as murder, not murder and manslaughter. I was able to access official Minnesota crime book pdf files , which gives the numbers of criminal homicides, defined there as:
Criminal homicide involves those offenses of murderIt appears that this number would be equivalent to the aggregate of murders and manslaughters, as it eliminates deaths due to negligence.
and non-negligent homicide that are classified as
willful felonious deaths as distinguished from deaths
caused by negligence. “Attempts to kill” are scored as
aggravated assaults and not as murder. Justifiable or
excusable homicides, suicides, accidental deaths, and
deaths due to negligence are not tabulated in the state
homicide total.
Using these numbers and population estimates from this source, plus the population estimate for 2012 from wikipedia, I calculated the rate of criminal homicide for the general population in Minnesota, per 100,000. Averaged for the years 2003, 2005 - 2012, it is 1.97, which is about 10% higher than the rate for murder alone.
Why is the first stat for murder and manslaughter and the second only for murder? Are these manipulated statistics?
ReplyDeleteThe first statistic is from the State of Minnesota statistics on carry permit holders. It lumps murder and manslaughter together.
ReplyDeleteThe second statistic is for murder because the manslaughter is not shown.
You can go to the links in the article and see what was available.
It is possible that manslaughter statistics would bump up the numbers for the general population.
I found this website that gives somewhat different numbers, and they are a bit higher than the cited source.
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/2010/mandated/100425/Minnesota%20Milestones/www.demography.state.mn.us/milestones/indicator0ef4.html?Id=1106&G=31
Unfortunately, they do not cover the years cited.
Good catch.
I found the murder and nonnegligent homicide rate for Minnesota for 2010. It is 10% higher than the murder only figure.
ReplyDeleteIt is in a pdf. and gives the rate as 2.0/100,000, while the source cited in the article gives the rate as 1.8/100,000 for 2010.