Gun Facts vs Myths

January 16, 2013 Self Defense

Gun crime stats, history, and causes

Stefan Molyneux provides a very good overview of the facts, history, and how government programs (war, welfare, drug war) have been the key contributing causes of violence in our society.

  • Fact – Gun ownership is the highest in areas where violence is the lowest (e.g. white, richer, rural, older populations)
  • Fact – Guns are used defensively 7x more than offensively/criminally (350K crimes per year vs. 2.5M defensive cases – – with 76% of instances not actually firing the weapon)
  • Fact – Those utilizing guns during defense are less likely to be harmed
  • Fact – criminals have repeatedly admitted avoiding targeting victims which may be armed
  • Fact – felons obtained guns by theft or borrowing 40% of the time; purchasing from another individual 44% and retail 16%
  • Fact – there are over 200K concealed permit holders in FL, only 8 per year are revoked due to crimes
  • Fact – UK has always had much lower murder rates than the US — even when the both had very limited gun controls (e.g. 1920).  After 60 years of increasing gun control, UK murder rate has been increasing
  • Fact – mass shootings have decreased (42 in the 1990s; 26 from 2000-2012)
  • Fact – the US murder rate is 50% lower than it was 20 years ago
  • Fact – The Aurora shooter had 7 theaters in his area; the one he chose was not the closest but the one that specifically banned concealed handguns
  • Fact – as John Lott researched “With only one exception…every public shooting since at least 1950 in the US in which at least 3 people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
  • Fact – a study has shown that private gun owners are convicted of firearms violations at the same rate as the police
  • Fact – according to the DoJ, states with right to carry laws have 30% lower homicide rate, and 46% lower robbery rate
  • Fact – studies by the CDC and NAS both found no conclusive evidence that gun control laws reduced gun violence
  • Fact – combat veterans are much more likely to later commit violent crimes, abuse alcohol, and physically abuse their families
  • Fact – single parent upbringing correlates highly with violence later (85% of youths in prison grew up in a fatherless home)

USA compared to other countries

Ben Swann breaks the argument down very quickly and clearly (as usual). Gun ownership does not always correlate to gun violence (e.g. Switzerland vs Mexico/USA), and countries with complete gun bans often have violent crime rates much higher than those with many guns (e.g. Great Britain vs USA).

Below is a link to a fantastic paper covering the myths and facts related to guns.

http://gunfacts.info/pdfs/gun-facts/6.1/gun_facts_6_1_screen.pdf

  • How does the US compare to other countries in terms of gun availabilty vs. gun crime rates?
  • Do states allowing concealed carry experience an increase in crime?
  • Does the evidence indicate licensing/registration is effective towards preventing crime?
  • And many other topics/questions

Assualt Weapon Confusion and Hypocrisy

Here is another very good blog covering some pragmatic/utilitarian reasons against renewing the assault weapons ban.  Their summary below

If gun control advocates want to actually have meaningful discussion and debate about the “assault weapon” and “high capacity” ban, they MUST address these questions:

– Why ban cosmetic features?

– Why ban guns used in a mere 2% of crime?

– Why base gun control legislation on rare and statistically insignificant mass shootings to begin with?

– Why ban magazines that have been consistently sized since their invention?

– How would banning these magazines have saved lives, given that all a shooter needs is multiple magazines and 3 seconds of time (i.e. Cho at Virginia Tech massacre)?

– How will a ban on either these weapons or magazines reduce crime, since there are many millions of them legal and available anyway, especially since production has ramped up after the ban’s expiration?

 And most importantly: After a decade of failure, why assume that the bans will reduce violent crime THIS time around?

Self Defense, and “Why would anyone need an assault weapon?”

Many on the anti-gun left suggest that firearms are not necessary for personal and/or home protection because we can and should rely on the police to come help if necessary.  However, the police themselves admit that “you are on your own” for those minutes between when you call and when they arrive – – with response times ranging from 2 minutes to hours later!

It is also very important to note that the courts have repeatedly ruled that we have no right to police protection, and the police have no legal obligation to protect us.  See this video of how a NYPD cop stood by and watched as a man was repeatedly stabbed by a serial killer.

An area that should be emphasized is that people can, and have utilized assault weapons legally in defensive scenarios (like Korean shop owners during the LA riots).
Contrary to Jon Stewart’s assertion otherwise, many reasonable people are justifiably concerned about the threat of a tryannical government.  The US government itself guilty of atrocities at Wounded Knee (a gun confiscation raid), internment of Japanese and German citizens, and many other crimes.  Or it could be the threat of tyrannical government in general, as we saw government disarm and/or kill 262 million in the 20th century.
Additionally, many are also concerned about a meltdown in civil society where mass criminal violence by other civilians is likely (e.g. due to the collapse of the fiat dollar).   Perhaps the government is also concerned about this potential breakdown in society, and that is why it is buying 2700 armored personnel vehicles, almost 2 billion rounds of ammo, and thousands of assault rifles?
By what right or justifiable criteria does the government get to determine what is and what is not a reasonable threat to which you can defend against?

These topics now begin to cover the moral/rights perspective.  As Judge Andrew Napolitano forcefully argues, we have the right to defend ourselves from not only individual criminals, but also against a potentially oppressive government.

the natural law teaches that our freedoms are pre-political and come from our humanity and not from the government, and as our humanity is ultimately divine in origin, the government, even by majority vote, cannot morally take natural rights away from us. A natural right is an area of individual human behavior – like thought, speech, worship, travel, self-defense, privacy, ownership and use of property, consensual personal intimacy – immune from government interference and for the exercise of which we don’t need the government’s permission
By what right do politicians propose banning tools/items which have legitimate defensive purposes, and only become criminal once a person utilizes these tools to initiate violence upon innocents?

The ultimate goal of eliminating all guns (for citizens at least)

Then again, the vast majority of politicians do not concern themselves with rights or even Constitutional authority.  Their goal, as they sometimes admit (often accidentally), is the outright banning of all guns.

Consciously or subconsciously, statists strive for a fully disarmed populace so government power and our corresponding obedience/dependence is increased.  They believe this is the most efficient way for them to implement all their wonderful egalitarian programs.  Hey, those programs worked out great for the Soviets, Cubans, North Koreans…right?

 

 

And finally, here is a quick picture pointing out those liberal blowhards like Piers Morgan which believe the 2nd Amendment was only for muskets.

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