We’ve noted here in the Locker Room previous examples of reporters writing in confusion how incarceration is up while crime rates are down (here’s one). Prisons cause crime, apparently ? otherwise, why the confusion? More criminals off the streets mean less crime.

There’s something else in mainstream-mediathink that causes crime: guns. If you own a gun, apparently the darn thing sends out subliminal messages to you in your sleep ? especially if there’s a prison being built. Yesterday the Baltimore Sun encountered the shocking idea that guns in the hands of private citizens might actually have a deterrence effect on crime. This news they reported in a headline that reads as if it were a paradox:

Crime may be dropping in US, but gun possession is rising