New York Times editorial board claims to know why crime is falling

The New York Times has this notable and lengthy editorial headlined “Crime Keeps Falling. Here’s Why.”  There are a number of contestable and uncontestable claims in this editorial, but I am especially wary about any confident asertions about what we know and do not know about the crime declines and surges and declines over the couple decades.  Many of the claims in the editorial seem to reflect short-term, hindsight judgments rather than rigorous data analysis (and it seems especially premature to conclude that immigration policies play no part of crime trends).  Still, folks should read the full editorial to see its various claims, and I will here just quote the concluding paragraph:

Perhaps the most encouraging conclusion from the past several years is that we know more about what drives crime trends than it can sometimes seem.  Law enforcement matters, and the national mood matters.  So does access to guns; the laws regarding heavy-duty firearms are far too lax, as are the regulations that allow even many people with violent histories or mental illness to own guns.  Even at today’s levels, violent crime remains far too common in the United States.  No other peer country has nearly so high a murder rate.  The recent decline should give Americans confidence that we could make more progress if we were willing to try.