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Sure, I'll grant you that this seems to be evidence against HBD. However, I think it's still a highly effective theory, and certainly more parsimonious than bullshit like systemic racism and the like. The evidence, at least IMO, seems to be pretty net positive overall.
Maybe there's something interesting going on here, like the lead ban and decreased criminality in all demographics but didn't close the black-white gap. I'm waiting for that effort post myself!
Something I’ve never seen accounted for in discourse about the decline in criminality is the shift towards firearms using smaller bullets being the default available in America- when criminals used magnum revolvers and sawn-off shotguns their victims were less likely to survive than they were from a 9 mm round.
Not sure the difference is that significant for handguns even if it's only a single round -- and one should probably take into account that popular nines tend to hold ~3x as many rounds as a magnum revolver. (which would probably be on the expensive side for a fifties criminal anyways? The stereotypical crime gun from the era for me is a "Saturday Night Special" in .38, max)
Shotguns are probably still used quite a bit in crime? And if one were to replace a sawed-off shotgun with something with more gangster cred, that thing would probably be a MAC-10 or something, so I wouldn't really say it's necessarily less destructive.
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Criminals use larger bullets nowadays- most gunshot wounds pre 1990s were from small caliber pistols like a .25ACP or .22. Very few crimes were committed with a .45, which is very common today.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/GUIC.PDF
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https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2688536#
That's a fair point, but I don't know if historical records are that granular, but if anyone wants to dig into it I'll be looking on.
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