Weiser says:
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I'm talking about the rate of violent victimization overall and the
impact
that banning guns has on the rate at which people are victimized.
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I agree with you, rates of change with respect to criminality may be
significant. To determine, however, the causes of these changes may be
more problematic.

From the same source I cited previously, here are some sample crime
rate changes. [for 1990-2000]

Crimes recorded by the police (percentage changes)

1990-2000
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EU Member States average -1%
England & Wales 4%
Scotland -18%
Austria 22%
Estonia 143%
Finland -11%
France 8%
Hungary 32%
Lithuania 122%
Italy -12%
Netherlands 12%
Russia 85%
Slovakia -1%
Slovenia 76%
Sweden 0%
Canada -10%
Japan 49%
U.S.A. -20%

After looking at those figures, I'm not sure what kind of conclusions
one might draw. A simplisic fool might conclude that communism served
many peoples much better (from a crime perspective) because, since the
introduction of a free market system, things appear to have gone hell
in a hand basket in Russia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia etc. Slovakia
seems to be an anomaly, but perhaps, now that the politically correct
commies are no longer in charge, the Slovaks can finally give their
gypsy population a good hiding [apologies to all those of either Slovak
or gypsy extration].

As to the USA, perhaps the 20% decline is due to the dot-com economic
explosion under the careful stewardship of President Clinton. I think
one fairly well-established cause of crime is unemployment,
underemployment, and poverty (Scott, as you so eloquently said in your
"What I'd do to lazy welfare Queens" treatise, idle hands do the
devil's work). OK, shall we chalk that -20% in the USA up to Clinton?

Japan is a surprise at +49%. But perhaps not. If we note that the
decade in question was not particularly kind to Japan economically, we
ought not to be surprised that crime was up in Japan.

In terms of Canada; often Canada follows the USA in economic
development (I'll not revisit the nature of trade between Canada and
the USA), so quite likely the positive data for Canada can also be
attributed to 8 years of a Democrat in the Whitehouse GRIN.

What's your take on these numbers, Scott?

frtzw906