Crime rate stats & lies

According to the news, over the Thanksgiving weekend there were eleven homicides in Houston. Instead of raising salaries for Congressmen and redrawing voting districts, it would be nice to see our elected officials spend that money on increased police forces and plans to turn things around before we end up like New Orleans. Or is it too late? Someone sent me this; I include my own observations, because the numbers are either misleading or wrong:

There have been an average of 160,000 troops in Iraq during the last 22 months, which has a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000. That's disregarding the Iraqi victims--in from May through July this year, there have been reported 1,169 shootings deaths in Baghdad; and reports of more than 70 shootings a day.

The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. Actually, according to the Washington Post, D.C. posted a homicide rate in 2004 of 35 per 100,000 residents. Baltimore and Detroit had higher rates -- 43 in Baltimore, 41 in Detroit, according to preliminary statistics. By comparison, Boston, which is about the same size as D.C., had a rate of about 10 homicides per 100,000 residents.

That means that you are 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq. No; American soldiers are still twice as likely to be shot in Iraq as a citizen is in our nation's capitol.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington, D.C. That's just stupid, but it's true that we should do more to combat crime.