Tom Tomorrow reposted this today - in response to the gun-worshippers who are howling today

[Pholus]

128. I feel like this comment has been cut and pasted all day yesterday. So I will too.

So here are the factors which have been discussed and the special interest groups that have taken credit for this:

1) Guns, guns and more guns (uhhhh, you)
2) Improved police work removing repeats from the streets (police chiefs)
3) Changing demographics of an aging population (Demographers)
4) Evolution of the drug trade as the winners shook out (the DEA)
5) More cops in general (politicians)
6) Then you got Steven Levitt saying legalized abortion had its effects. It is about 15 years between legalized abortion and the drop in the rate.
7) Finally, the prison industrial complex. Their graph of incarceration rate vs. year looks JUST like the violent crime rate.

We all used to laugh at the stock communist character who was so blinded by ideology that he'd devise strange and bizarre rationalizations as to why it was communism responsible for only the good and none of the bad in a situation. My microwave has several bags of popcorn and I await a response for the ages as you try to explain how factor 1 is the only critical one and the rest of them are irrelevant.