re: Reality Check: More Minnesotans Own Guns, Violent Crime Remains Low

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If you wanted to make a racial thing out of it, the honest assessment would be that it's due to fewer blacks in the state

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I don't know if the actual numbers bear that out though. While in general black people do account for a large percentage of crime, the numbers we have, when combined with the demographic data, paint a slightly different picture in Minnesota specifically. For example, the demographics in 1990 indicated that white people made up 95% of Minnesota residents, with black people at around 2.5% of the population. The total crime index per one hundred thousand for 1990 was 4500, and the violent crime index was 306, with property crimes at 4000, and murder at 2.7. Since then, the proportion of black people has increased to 5 percent, while the percentage of white people has decreased to 85 percent, in 2010. At the same time, the total crime index dropped to 2800, violent crime dropped to 236, property crime dropped to 2500, and murder dropped to 1.8. The current demographic data suggests that 19% of Minnesota is not white, and the total crime index is at its lowest rate, the violent crime index has risen slightly (but still lower than the 1990 numbers), and property crimes have dropped to levels not seen since the 1960's. All the while the population has increased from 4.4 million to 5.5 million.

While I have no idea where germandawg is coming from, and thus have no desire to defend him, I'd just like to point out that the data complicates notions about race and crime, though I'd have to look at the numbers from each state to see if this is something specific to Minnesota. My feeling is that, given that the US violent crime rate index has fallen from 731 in 1990 to around 395 in 2016 (or 400 generally from 2010 onwards) with increased population, increased diversity, and even a reduction in the proportion of white people in the population has not had an upward effect on the overall crime trends.

If not for the Somali's it would be much lower.