Another leftist lie has been debunked, but what is interesting about this episode is that Americans were never believing it in the first place. Over recent years, Democrats have responded to criticism about their soft approach to criminal activity by arguing that violent crime has dropped.
The numbers seemed to partially support this narrative. While FBI statistics initially showed a decrease in criminal activity, the numbers still remained higher than they were in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic and the “Summer of Love” which featured widespread unrest across the country.
A new report shows that the FBI stealth-edited their crime numbers and now shows that violent crime has actually increased. This isn’t a huge surprise to people who don’t live in the lofty ivory towers in which progressives have shut themselves off from the regular world. But there are indications that this lie was never working in the first place.
Real Clear Investigations published a report stating that the FBI quietly revised its 2022 crime data which originally showed a 2.1 percent decline in violent crime. Now, it shows a 4.5 percent increase in violent criminal activity, which includes thousands more incidents than it did at first.
This revelation not only raises doubts about crime data reporting, but also shows that the government and allies were at best wrong about the facts on the ground. At worst, they deliberately sought to deceive Americans into a false sense of security that might motivate them to vote for Democrats in the upcoming elections.
As RedState’s Bonchie pointed out:
It also couldn't be ignored that around 40 percent of police departments were no longer even sharing crime data with the FBI. That left the bureau increasingly relying on a questionable system of estimation to produce its published crime rates.
The FBI’s crime stats revisions reveal how much guesswork is involved in even the “final” numbers often seized on by politicians. The FBI doesn’t simply count reported crimes. Instead, it offers estimates by extrapolating data from police departments that report only partial-year data. The Bureau also makes estimates for cities that report no data. The FBI’s method of generating these estimates changes over time, and it affects the figures they report.
The next thing someone may be wondering is if these revisions are normal. To put it simply, they aren't. Carl Moody, a professor at William and Mary College, looked into past years and found that no revisions happened between 2004 and 2015 while 2016 to 2020 saw only minute changes of less than one percent. It wasn't until Biden and Harris took office that the FBI started producing these massive revisions for 2021 and 2022 (and no doubt, eventually, 2023).
Nevertheless, data also shows that the American public is not buying what Democrats are selling.
A Gallup poll conducted between March 1 and 20 this year found that 26 percent of Americans worry about crime and violence a “fair amount.” About 53 percent indicated they worry about crime a “great deal.” Only 21 percent said they worried about it “not at all” or “only a little.”
This means that 79 percent of Americans are concerned about violent crime in their communities.
Apparently, most Americans never believed crime was decreasing in the first place.
There is also the rapidly increasing rate of gun ownership to consider. A studypublished in September showed that more Americans are purchasing firearms and improving their home security systems over fears of violent crime.
The survey showed that almost a quarter of Americans (23 percent) report that they or a neighbor has been the victim of break-ins. This has led many to question whether local or state law enforcement agencies can protect them.
About 46 percent of respondents believe that neither local government nor police are doing enough to shield their communities from violent and property crimes. This has prompted many to take matters into their own hands, with 29 percent having beefed up their home security systems in the past year and 25 percent planning to do so in the future.
The increased worries over home security have also brought about behavioral changes. Researchers found that 26 percent of Americans have considered relocating because of safety concerns. Gen Zers (49 percent) and urban dwellers (39 percent) being among the most likely to entertain this idea.
However, one aspect the report did not discuss was how fears over crime have driven sharp increases in gun ownership, with many Americans becoming first-time gun owners.
A University of Michigan study showed that 79 percent of gun owners cited personal protection as the main reason for owning guns.
Gun ownership has even increased among liberals, who would normally be expected to eschew the keeping and bearing of arms.
A 2022 survey from NORC at the University of Chicago found that 29 percent of Democrats or Democrat-leaning respondents indicated they have a gun in their home, up from 22 percent in 2010. For Republicans, gun ownership was higher, with 55 percent reporting having a firearm at home in 2022. But the most striking detail is that since 2020, more than half of new Democratic gun buyers were first-time owners, according to a survey by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions cited by the Wall Street Journal report.
If Democrats were successful in deceiving the public into believing crime isn’t a big issue, Gallup’s data would look quite different. Additionally, there would not be such a massive increase in gun ownership – especially among those who typically favor more restrictions on gun ownership.
Lying about crime was never going to be a viable strategy. When people can clearly see what is happening in their communities, no amount of gaslighting is going to make a difference. Crime will definitely be a priority among voters in the upcoming elections and if the data is any indication, Democrats are going to have to take a different approach to crime instead of simply telling falsehoods about it.