Despite having waded through John Lott’s stat-laden look at the connection between legal gun ownership rates and crime, I’m still not convinced that firearms ownership is the key variable for crime reduction. A variable, certainly. The most important variable? Dunno. But if correlation equals causation (every time), then way-hey! Because one’s thing’s fo sho’: gun ownership is up and crime is down. “According to the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report released today, the nation experienced a 4.0 percent decrease in the number of violent crimes and a 0.8 percent decline in the number of property crimes in 2011 when compared with data from 2010,” the Fibbie’s press release reveals. This in a down economy. Go figure.