[raven818]

All of these polls show what peaceable gun owners already know - that support for the Second Amendment is the dominant belief in America today, and the fallacy that restricting the rights of honest citizens will impact crime has been exposed for what it is.

Here in Florida, the crime rate has dropped dramatically. An actual study, followed up by the state, attributed the rate drop to gun ownership by private citizens. Sales have been at their highest since 2010.

Unfortunately for those here in Jacksonville, we are, and have been, the murder capital of the state..Not Miami, not North Miami, not Ft. Lauderdale, Not Tampa...us. We are, by some, considered in a tie with Miami-Dade.

Jacksonville has 1,313,228 people. Most are in rural areas outside Jax proper. Miami-Dade has 2,496,435 people. It is what most folks would call a large city. I fail to see how our two cities can be compared. Miami= almost all city dwellers... Jacksonville = 3/4 rural. A much smaller population " in town " here, doing the largest percentage of killings, daily.

Posted: 7:37 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, 2011

By Matt Augustine and Alyssa Spirato

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. —

A new study out of the University of North Florida shows that Jacksonville remains Florida's murder capital, despite the beliefs of many that Duval county had slipped into second place.

UNF Criminology Department chair Dr. Michael Hallett and a group of students studied homicide statistics from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as well as coverage of the homicide crisis in Jacksonville as told by editorials in the Florida Times-Union.

"We found that, in fact, statistically Duval county was tied for number one with Miami-Dade and had, in fact, not fallen to number two," says Hallett.

The study looked at the number of murders per 100,000 people. Duval county and Miami-Dade both had a 9 percent homicide rate. But Miami-Dade county has about 1.5 million more people living in it than Duval county. Escambia county was not included in the study becasue it only looked at counties with populations of 500,000 or greater. They also examined statistics of violent crimes using firearms.

Hallett says the study is not an attack on the JSO or the state attorney's office, or meant in any way to diminish the efforts of the agencies to stem the homicide problem. Instead, he says it's meant to draw attention to the fact that despite what we often hear, murder and violent crimes are still very much present in our community.

"Lots of people out there want to declare victory on violence and crime in Jacksonville, and our analysis of the data shows that it's not time to declare victory yet."

Despite the UNF study, however, Sheriff John Rutherford is backing his statement that Jacksonville is experiencing lower crime rates, saying we are experiencing the lowest crime and murder rates in forty years.

“That success is in how we use those officers. By going out and getting the community to work with us. The gun bounty program, operation safe streets, knocking on those seventy-seven thousand doors,” says Rutherford.

But he says if you ask people if they feel safer today than in years past, they will say no. Although from 1991 to today, he says the crime rate has dropped from 68 thousand to 48 thousand.

“We are very happy about these numbers because they are the lowest we’ve had in 40 years. But I’m not happy with these numbers,” says Rutherford.

He continued on to say that most people do not feel safe because of how crime is reported in our community.

“So you’re literally twice as safe today as you were in 1991. But nobody feels it. Nobody feels it because of the way that we report crime,” says Rutherford.

He says it’s because of national news being reported on a local level.

Rutherford is in the paper daily, and doing his best to keep his job. One could expect no less from a politician who is in deep trouble to defend himself.