"Ed Huntress" wrote:

Personally I would correlate a high crime rate more to lack of
educational attainment/opportunities rather than "liberal" :-) gun
laws.

But that doesn't help with Las Vegas, which has an enormously high violent
crime rate. And there are counties in the South with low crime rates and low
education levels combined with severe poverty.

There's no single correlation. That's what makes it so frustrating to
analyze.

Yes, the hard problems usually do not have easy answers. I'll also
pull a minor CYA and belabor my wording "correlate a high crime rate
MORE TO..." rather than "due to" above.

I can't help but hold simplistic hope in the belief that with more
rigourous "just the facts Ma'am" education (vs warm fuzzy esteem
building "even though you are oh SO SO wrong" new aged pap) a lot of
our societal ills would evaporate.

I'll also take a poke at the "global warming is a scam" crowd - it's
been my experience that the most vocal people I have personally
witnessed spouting forth do not seem to have a strong grounding in
science and math. This would seem to stack the odds against their
being right. And yes, I realize there have been times when the
scientific establishment was wrong - alas poor Gallileo and the dude
who rather recently proved that ulcers were more bacterial than
emotional.

Ah what a parable that is for the current "death panel" highly charged
emotional unUnited State of Affairs...cough cough