The Facts That Gun Grabbers Can’t Wrap Their Minds Around

The Facts That Gun Grabbers

It seems like there are irreconcilable differences between those who are pro-Second Amendment, and those who advocate gun control, and I think it goes beyond their personal beliefs. They think about the world in fundamentally different ways, which becomes plainly obvious when you see how these two groups compile data on homicides and gun ownership. Let’s take a look at how anti-gun folks see these numbers:

    Higher ownership of guns in the United States has been linked to more violent crimes and overall homicides, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard University.

I was intrigued when I first read that. I don’t think it would change my overall position on the rights of human beings if this were true, but I’d like to know if the statistics I give readers are true or not, so I decided to read more into this study.

    Firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in US states with the most guns versus states with the least, said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

    “We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime, instead, we found the opposite,” Monuteaux told Live Science.

    “This study suggests that it’s really hard to find evidence that where there are more guns, there are less crimes, but you can easily find evidence that where there are a lot more guns, there are a lot more gun crimes,” he said.

    Numerous studies have found that gun ownership is directly associated with gun-related homicides, and homicide by gun is the most common type of homicide in the United States.

    Boston University researcher Michael Siegel and colleagues found in a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Public Health that over 30 years, gun ownership levels correlated with firearm homicides, such that the higher the gun ownership rate, the higher the firearm homicide rate.

Do you see what they did there? At first, the article was about gun ownership causing violent crime. Then it shifts back and forth between that, and claiming that more guns cause more gun related crimes. I swear the next time I hear the words “gun homicide” “gun crimes” or “firearm homicides” I’m gonna scream.

That’s because gun control advocates can always find plenty of statistics that show higher gun ownership rates correlate with gun related crimes. Obviously, if you live in a state or country with an easy access to firearms, there will be more crimes committed with firearms. Human beings always seek out the most effective tools for the job, so they will always spring for best weapons they can get a hold of, regardless of whether or not they are criminals or law-abiding citizens.

But gun control advocates have a tendency to ignore overall homicides, and instead focus on homicides that are caused by firearms. When you do that, you’re missing the bigger picture. You’ll always fail to recognize that, while more guns equal more gun related crimes, they may also cause the overall violent crime rate to go down, a fact which has been proven time and time again.

Now it’s true that the Harvard study did claim to find a relationship between more guns and a higher overall homicide rate. I decided to look for another article that had more details on the study, which I did find. The researchers behind the study admitted that while there did appear to be a connection between more guns and more crime, they weren’t sure which came first. Do guns cause more crime, or does a higher crime rate cause people to buy more guns?

This reminds me of another falsehood that gun controllers fall for over and over again. They love comparing the statistics of criminal homicides and justifiable homicides. Criminal homicides account for many more deaths than the former, so they conclude that guns are much more likely to be used by a criminal to kill, then they are to be used by a law-abiding citizen to protect themselves. But there’s a serious problem with that conclusion.

As many of us now know, police departments in America are famously bad at reporting the number of “justified” homicides their officers commit. And apparently, they’re even worse at reporting justified homicides committed by average Americans. These numbers also don’t account for how often someone uses a gun to protect themselves, which don’t result in injury or death. It’s a number we’ll probably never know for sure, since some people probably don’t even bother reporting these incidents to the police.

So the next time you read about any study that draws a conclusions between gun ownership, crime, and self-defense, always read between the lines and dig a little deeper. The truth is often elusive.

Written by Joshua Krause.

2 Comments:

  1. Here are some quotes on the subject:

    Patrick Henry – The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.

    James Madison – Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

    Samuel Adams – The Constitution shall never be construed… to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

    Gouverneur Morris – Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.

    Patrick Henry – Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?

    Thomas Jefferson – For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

    Patrick Henry – The great object is that every man be armed.

    Thomas Jefferson – No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

    Thomas Jefferson – What country can preserve its freedom if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let the people take arms for the liberty tree of freedom must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

    Samuel Adams – If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

    Joseph Stalin – “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?”

    Alan M. Dershowitz – “Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s too much of a public safety hazard, don’t see the danger in the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like.”

    Yoshimi Ishikawa – “Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don’t have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.”

  2. From: A police officer in Australia…

    Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.

    The first year results are now in:

    Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent,

    Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent;

    Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!

    In the state of Victoria…..alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent.

    While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steadydecrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.

    There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.

    Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased after such monumental effort and expense was expended in ‘successfully ridding Australian society of guns….’

    You won’t see this reported on the American evening news.

    The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.

    Take note Americans, before it’s too late!

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