Smoke and Mirrors on Crime

I read an article the other day that really bothered me. It had to do with legislation meant to discourage attacks on cops and it really hit me that the left is playing a shell game. Observe.

The article in question was an AP article reporting that many states are adding laws to their books (or beefing theirs up) which make it an extra crime to commit a crime against a police officer. In other words, while the underlying crime is already illegal, these laws add an extra punishment if the victim of the crime is a police officer. The intent of laws like this is to raise the penalty for crimes against officers to make the world safer for the police by making criminals more likely to submit when confronted by the cops. Most states already have these laws but with this idea of a war on cops, these states are beefing them up.

Naturally, the left is outraged. Black Lives Matters types are whining that this is sending the signal that states want the cops to oppress them, and the article reflected that. It let these comments go without question. It never pointed out that these laws apply to things like assaults, not protesting, and that it's easy to avoid being punished by these laws by simply not committing the crimes. It also took as fact that there is an epidemic of white cops killing blacks, even as the article could only identify two examples -- the guy in Minnesota and Ferguson, Missouri. And it questioned whether there is a war on cops even as it mentioned the 21 ambushed in Dallas (while ignoring Tennessee, New York and other places) and the fact 143 cops were killed last year. So 2 dead blacks is an epidemic, 143 dead cops is doubtful it's anything.

More importantly, the article noted that: "Police deaths on the job have generally declined over the past four decades, from a recent high of 280 in 1974 to a low of 116 in 2013." Then it said that because of this, it was doubtful if these laws were needed or would help. But this is a shell game.

Starting in the 1970s, conservatives began fighting back against two decades of liberalism in the criminal justice system. Those laws were put into place and the crime rate fell. These laws included harsher sentences... harsher sentences for specific crimes... harsher sentences for crimes against officers... etc. And the more conservative laws got put in place, the more the crime rate fell. What the author does here is identify the falling crime rate without mentioning that conservative laws are the most likely cause for it. He then says that because the crime rate is already falling (apparently by magic), there's no evidence such laws are needed. Basically, he's ignoring cause and effect so he can claim that people proposing more of the cause are proposing something that has no effect.

It's a bit like dieting to lose weight, pretending that the weight you lost was just a natural trend of things, and then telling people who suggest more dieting that there is no basis to assume that dieting works.

And the more I thought about this, the more I realized that this has been the liberal coping strategy with criminal laws my entire life. When the crime rate was soaring under their laws, it was just a random thing. When it was falling under conservative laws, they ignored the blatantly obvious connection between conservative laws and lower crime. And now that the crime rate is so low, liberals argue against conservative laws on the basis that the crime rate is so magically low that we don't need them... the very laws that cause the crime rate to fall. This is intellectual fraud. And you see it here, where the author flat out ignores the connection between laws protecting cops and falling cop deaths and then turns around assumes that the beefing up of these laws will prove ineffective.

What's more, check this out. One of their "experts" said that these laws "reek of political pressure to do something symbolic as a way of expressing solidarity with police officers," as if that's a bad thing. She then says, "The problems that need to be solved are really problems on the ground. They're not gaps in the statute." Yet, when it comes to guns or rape or other causes they like, it doesn't matter how packed the statute already is... "somebody needs to do something!" and that something is more laws to make even more illegal what is already illegal.

So they think that extra laws do deter conduct, unless it's laws that protect cops.

Thoughts?