And there you have it: gun control advocates’ logic in a nutshell: lots of guns = lots of murder. Why, it’s enough to make you want to take a selfie calling for civilian disarmament and post in on Twitter! That said, to fully embrace this anti-ballistic belief system, you need to ignore the fact that America has lots of guns and not a whole lot of murder. In fact it’s best if you ignore John Lott’s chart and base your comparison on cherry picked “developed countries” whose murder rate makes the U.S. look like The Home of the Homicidal and the Land of the Loonies. Here’s the confounding (for the antis) data . . .
Once antis ignore or avoid this inconvenient truth, they switch the “guns everywhere = murder everywhere” statement around. They ask Americans to assume that the inverse is also be true. “No guns anywhere leads to no murder anywhere.” Which is so patently absurd even gun control advocates don’t go there. Or if they do . . .
They fall back on the theory that “fewer guns everywhere leads to fewer murders everywhere.” Fewer is better! Not to belabor the point – and God knows they do – gun control advocates assert, publicly, that if gun control saves ONE life it’s worth it. But that argument ignores the fact that Americans use firearms tens of thousands (some say millions) of times to save life.
While Americans’ gun rights aren’t subject to arguments about social utility, gun ownership is a net positive for both individuals and society. That’s without considering firearms’ deterrent effect on crime. Or the inescapable fact that gun control enables government-sponsored mass murder, which is a far bigger killer than gang bangers banging, or individual armed psychos acting out, or suicides, or any of the other tragedies informing America’s firearms-related death rate.
If you really want to distill gun control advocates’ logic down to its essence, it’s this: they don’t like guns. Except in the hands of the police and the military. Maybe. Better yet, I can name that civilian disarmament gestalt in two words: guns suck. Fortunately, most Americans don’t share that opinion. And, hopefully, never will.
Heard on the news yesterday that a guy in my area was found guilty of murder. He will be serving 1-5 years in jail. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
What are you suggesting? Incarceration as a deterrent? That’s crazy!
Doesn’t really seem to be much of a deterrent to those most likely to commit murder. But, if you lock them up, that keeps them off the streets. And that’s the essential thing.
So, places like Chicago are so damn toxic not only because they disarm potential victims rather than criminals, but also because they don’t lock up violent criminals. Because Chicago is run by criminals, for criminals. The pablum about violent crime being the fault of society and the ease of obtaining weapons is for the useful idiot masses.
Keeping murderers and rapists off the streets is the most important thing, and the easiest way to do that is the death sentence. You can’t fool a parole board and kill again if you are too busy filling a coffin.
I’m thinking 1-to-5 doesn’t sound like very much time for a murder. You can get that much for a third DWI. You can (technically) get 1 year for a first DWI. And that’s no-accident, just got caught before you got home DWI.
It’s actually the inverse (changing “if P then Q” to “if not P then not Q”).
(Which is a good thing, because an obverse is true if the original statement is true, whereas an inverse probably isn’t true if the original is true.)
An obverse is when you take a statement like “all P are Q” and change it to “no P are not Q.”
I don’t think you can take an “obverse” of an “if P then Q” type statement.
D’oh! Text amended.
Thanks. But now that same sentence ends with “is also be true” which I doubt you intended.
“…most Americans don’t share that opinion. And never will.”
Careful with the predictions there, Mr. Farago. There was a time when we might have said, “Most Americans won’t vote for a socialist for President. And never will.”
Added the word “hopefully.”
Don’t forget this little gem: Every gun owner is a psychopath who just hasn’t snapped. Yet.
That one always makes me giggle
You’d think they’d spend a lot less time and energy towards making gun-owners “snap” en masse.
Someone should make t shirts. “WARNING! Gun owning psychopath who just hasn’t snapped yet!”
I love it!
“The only people who should have guns are the police and military.”
“But the police use those guns to terrorize and murder innocent black men and the military uses weapons of war to impose the tyranny of America’s facistic will upon the world.”
After the general population is disarmed, the progressives plan to continue with disarming the police and military. It’s actually written into the UN charter to do just that and then have a UN Police/military force as the only armed group on the planet.
I would not suggest that we seek that job in the U.S., or most other countries. Let me know when that force is finished with the pissant Boko Haram. I think suicide by firearm would be preferable to a future an a UN policeman.
If only we could go back to the days before guns existed, when nobody was ever murdered and people lived happy lives of idle luxury, secure in the knowledge that nobody anywhere would wish them harm…
Oh, yes, the eleventh century. A lost paradise!
(Not arguing with you, but building on your sarcasm. At least, I hope it was sarcasm. :P)
Gun control advocates’ logic in a nutshell~ NONE
There, fixed that for ya………
My county is in the top 15 for gun(that are on paper) ownership and yeah our murder rate umm… Well, probably lower than lil waynes pants. I’m not sure if he’s stll around but I’ll assume he still wears pants like knee padding.
“Gun Control Advocates’ Logic in a Nutshell”
Stupid POS opinion from a Nutb_g exhibiting nutjob tendencies.
There fixed ya.
“Cherry picked developed countries”?
Really, you want to counter that basically by saying that US is better than Angola, Congo and Zimbabwe? (ALL developed countries are ahead of US as regards murder rate, including those with lax gun laws like Switzerland and Czech Republic).
@Bungameng
Try again.
You do know how a bar graph works, don’t you? Just checking..
Not to mention, the vast majority of our homicides come from (drumroll please) cities and states with lots of gun control! Remove that and we drop to the bottom 20.
Face it – most of the murders you object to come from areas that already have the gun control you say is the solution.
the murder rate in America is highly dependent on demographics (and by extension, culture).
As I posted elsewhere, according to the Audacious Epigone, the white murder rate in rural Minnesota is 0.91 per 100,000
Yet Minnesota has “shall issue” CCW.
The murder rate in Jamaica in 2005 was 58 per 100,000 yet guns were essentially banned starting in 1967, with a law requiring an annual fee of 6,000
The places in America driving our murder rate (high by Western European standards) are demographically and culturally more akin to Jamaica or Brazil than to Austria, Sweden, or Australia.
Spoons everywhere lead to obesity everywhere!
Ban Food!
for the children!
The question I always ask gun control advocates is if lax gun laws and more guns lead to increased gun murder could they please explain how Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have such low rates of crime and murder with such lax gun laws.
Don’t you love it when they then switch it up and pretend they’re lecturing a child and say something stupid like “look, guns can only be used to kill” And pretend they’ve won the debate by rescinding their participation in an “honest discussion” when it became an actual honest discussion?
Overabundance of law abiding citizens?
Dearth of thugs and thug wannabes?
No local chapters of #BLACKLIVESMATTER?
Not enough stuff worth looting?
Guns everywhere leads to murder everywhere? I guess that explains all the dead bodies in my gun safe.
You need a bigger safe Ralph.
My guns must be broken…. I’ve had them for a while now and not a single murder.
Are my guns broken? Did I miss a page in the instruction manual? What kind of warranty do these things have? If I have the receipts do you think I could return them and get different ones?
Yes, you need different guns! Get ride of those obsolete single shots, and muzzle loaders. Pick up some Uzie’s, maybe some MP-5’s, and an M-60 for serious work, like taking out your whole family!
Another anti-gun position is: All gun owners are criminals.
Utopian believers lead to murders everywhere. Humans are predators, those who forget or refuse to believe this are the reason that there are more murders and violent crimes then there should be.
WOW, Jamaica is 2nd world wide for homicides and they have basically banned all gun… Guess that firearm theory just went to hell in a hand basket and forgot to bring a gun… Willfully ignorant people who refuse to read the fact’s are the reason people die from VIOLENT CRIMES every year… In the USA the most dangerous weapon that takes more lives every year is a CAR, Vehicular homicide is the MOST COMMON CAUSE OF DEATH EVERY YEAR SINCE THE 1930’S IN THE USA…
Homocide is demographic.
Rural Minnesota has murder rates not to disimilar from the “advanced European” countries that the lefties like to lecture us about.
Baltimore has a murder rate of about 35 per 100,000 – right up there with many 3rd world countries. Maryland’s gun laws are much stricter than Minnesota’s.
According to the Audacious Epigone, the white murder rate in Minnesota was mere 0.91 per 100,000; yet the black murder rate was 21.58 per 100,000
Yet Minnesota has “shall issue” CCW. Why aren’t all those white gun owners shooting each other?
Hey! That looks like that global warming graph they’re always yelling about with the labels changed.
“No guns anywhere leads to no murder anywhere.”
It’s true. Just ask Tamerlaine, Attilla, Lucrezia, Herod, and Alexander.
Self defense is an inherent God given natural right. The 2nd Is so “We the People” can protect ourselves from corrupt government. Is there something that politicians don’t understand about “shall not infringe”? mrpresident2016.com