“Thinking outside the box” is, in my opinion, an overrated concept. Sure, it has its place. Sometimes, we think in a way that is too “boxed in,” and we need someone to come around and say “hey, you’re looking at it wrong, look at it this way instead.” Other times, however, people come up with ideas that are so far “outside the box” that they serve no useful purpose, except maybe to remind the rest of us why there was a box in the first place.

For a journalist, one way to distinguish the good kind of “thinking outside the box” from the bad/looney kind is to compare one’s conclusions to the actual data, to ensure that the two are at least consistent. If they’re not, then there are only two possibilities: either the data is wrong, or you are. Usually, though not always, you are the one who’s wrong. The New York Dog Trainer provided a fine example of this disconnect when it reported the results of a voter survey days before the 2000 election . Had the Howeller simply reported the data from the survey without comment, it would have done a splendid job of accurately predicting the outcome of the race - as the pie charts accompanying its write up did. Instead, they had to bugger things up with a long “analysis” aiming to explain away the results of the survey and convince the reader that their man, Al Gore, was about to win in a landslide. You know the rest.

Today, with a little help from fellow Oh, That Liberal Media contributer Dave Huber, I encountered another example of a journalist who thought a little too far out of the box. In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, staff writer/editorialist Nathan Gorenstein attributes New York City’s draconian gun control laws to its low homicide rate, relative to that of Philadelphia. Technically, he didn’t attribute anything himself; journalists never do that when they pretend they’re simply reporting news rather than expressing their own opinions. Instead, he peppered the article with multiple, gratuitous references to the avaiability of guns (which, presumably, are unavailable in most parts of the U.S., where crime rates are much lower) and wrote that “Criminologists also cite … New York’s stricter gun-control laws” in attempting to explain Philadelphia’s higher crime rate. Needless to say, no actual, real-life criminologists are named in the article. Thus, I have a difficult time accepting Mr. Criminologists as anything more than the evil twin quintuplet of Experts, Critics, Some and Many, all of whom are mere alter egos of the writers of the article itself. Some, or even many, named criminologists, experts and critics regularly express opinions inconsistent with those of the journalist who penned the story. Unnamed ones never do. Nuff said on that.

One obvious problem (though it clearly was not obvious to Mr. Gorenstein) with the argument is that while New York’s low crime rate is a relatively new phenomenon, its blatantly unconstitutional gun laws are not. Thus, it makes no more (or less) sense to argue that NYC’s gun laws “caused” the crime rate to plummet in the 1990s than it does to say it “caused” it to skyrocket in teh 1970s and 1980s. Mr. Gorenstein does not address this issue. Unsurprisingly, neither do Criminologists.

Another problem, which is almost as obvious (but again, clearly was not obvious to the author of this “news” item) is that Philadelphia’s present murder rate, while high, is neverthless much lower than its peak in 1990, at which times guns were regulated more strictly in Philadelphia than they are today. What happened in the interim? Did everyone have a gun handy in 1990, only to have large numbers of criminals temporarily lose them, and then find them again while cleaning out their attics in 2004?

The third problem with Mr. Gorenstein’s version of the “news,” is found in the chart that accompanies his article, yet which Gorenstein himself appears not to have read. Note that among the ten remaining cities included on the chart, only three - Detroit, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore - have homicide rates that exceeds Philadelphia’s. A fourth, Chicago, comes close, “losing” by a 3.2 margin - the same margin by whcih it “beat” Philadelphia last year. Of these four cities, D.C. and Chicago have had near-total handgun bans for decades. Baltimore does not, but Maryland gun laws are nevertheless much stricter than Pennsylvania’s. That leaves Detroit all by its lonesome among cities with both looser gun laws and higher homicide rates than Philadelphia.

Four of the remaining six cities, Houston, Phoenix, Dallas and San Antonio, are located in shall-issue states (AZ and TX) whose gun laws are at least as liberal as Pennsylvania’s. San Antonio’s homicide rate (7.4 per 100,000) is identical to New York’s. The other three are a bit higher, but still much lower than Philadephia’s. That leaves only two major cities - Los Angeles and San Diego - whose gun laws are stricter than Philadelphia’s, yet which also have lower homicide rates. As gun laws are largely preempted in California, both cities have relatively little gun control when compared to New York. L.A.’s homicide rate is higher than New York’s; San Diego’s, is lower.

Bottom line: Among the 12 cities listed on the chart, only one city (Detroit) has less gun control and more homicides per capita, than Philadelphia, while three (Los Angeles, New York and San Diego) have more gun control and less homicides. The other seven either have more gun control and more crime, or equal/less gun control, and less crime. Therefore, according to the Inquirer, it stands to reason that strict gun control reduces crime.