Reader Henrik B. writes:
If anyone ever suggests that the security theater known as “gun laws” ever do good, please point them towards Sweden. So far this year we have had 30 explosives go off this year and one mass shooting along with numerous minor shootings. In response we got new gun laws in 2015 (it is not a new issue). At the moment most things are banned. You might get a license for a semi-auto rifle if it has a two-round magazine and looks like a traditional hunting rifle. Waiting times for a license are very long. The police just announced . . .
that they will try to handle applications for licenses in under 10 weeks. My personal record is trying to get a license for a bolt action rifle since 2013. I am still waiting as I have had to drag the police to court because apparently pistol grips are “military” as are free-floating handguards. And they’re “dangerous.” Also preparing for self-defense is illegal. So even if you only carry a screwdriver around for protection you are breaking the law.
Of course now some politicians feel that we need even stricter gun laws for law-abiding citizens because of the insane situation here in Sweden. What they fail to see is that criminals have never used weapons that have ever been legal here (they smuggle them in to the country). Their laws do nothing. Combine that with the so called “no go areas” in Sweden that are basically lawless and we have a big problem BS laws will not solve.
Security theater like this is only a means for politicians to make it look like they actually do something. These are not simple issues a new law will fix. These are the results of very bad policies that has poisoned society for a long time and will take a long time to fix. Unfortunately new gun laws are basically proof that the politicians are incapable of handling the real issues facing society and a clear sign that they need to be voted out of office.
Self defense is illegal? Sounds like Mexico.
And the UK, where a couple years ago a woman defended herself from an intruder with a broomstick and she was accused of being unlawful.
In the UK, it is not yet illegal to train in martial arts. But it is illegal to use that training to defend yourself against someone trying to hurt or kill you.
If you hurt your attacker, you can be arrested and then sued by the criminal. Kind of like how US schools are training children to submit. The only way to not get suspended is to let a bully kick the crap out of you.
That would be Italy. I come from there. It’s not truly illegal, but the excess of self defense it so common (as an accusation from judges) that are frequent those cases where BURGLARS have been refunded after being wounded for trespassing private property with criminal intentions.
It’s got to a point where it’s a joke, in Italy.
@Phil: But a VERY bad joke when the criminals come out on top and the victim is not allowed to defend themselves or hurt the bad guys. This has got to stop. Thank God for the 2nd Amendment over here and pray that it never goes away. Also do whatever you can to keep that from happening and fight the laws that punish a victim for protecting themselves. That is FLAT OUT WRONG and when the government gets to that point it is time for a CHANGE of the government.
Oh I am. I am active here in the US. I have seen enough (bad) happen in that socialist country called Italy.
I already have a large weapons collection (here) and growing. And I finance the local 2A institutions and businesses here (including the NRA). I am not going to let it happen here what I have seen be the norm “there”.
Well, it is legal to defend yourself. Just not in any way that would actually protect you from harm.
Only scenario where I could protect myself in Sweden was if someone ran towards me, shooting at me, at the shooting range and I had a loaded weapon ready to fire back with. But only one shot because the court would ask me to motivate every shot in that situation.
Someone actually got stabbed fatally (would have died if not for the hospital) and he defended himself AFTER the stabbing and the other guy died. He got sentenced for manslaughter because he should just have run away according to the court…
I’m sure it’s easy to run away when you have stab wounds.
Sounds like in Sweden, you need to get your own gun for protection – definitely if you live near one of these “no go” areas. If a person breaks in your house and tries to kill you and you shoot them with your gun – then you should definitely not call the police (because you’ll go to prison for defending yourself with a gun). Instead, you’ll just have to wrap the body and toss it from a moving vehicle in one of the “no go” areas, or on the police HQ stairs, whichever you prefer.
Sounds also like Italy or Europe in general.
Here in Italy we have a shopkeeper sitting behind bars since two tears because he shot two robbers who tried to shoot him first.
Still there, while drug dealers, thieves and many real criminals and even killers are free because the jails are overcrowded.
That’s the cradle of civilization nowadays.
Not much better anywhere else here in EU.
I was forgetting: if you’re assaulted at home, you should defend yourself with bare hands or with a stick. Nothing more that that.
After wounding or just making the thug flee, you should bang your head against the doorjamb hard enough to start bleeding, then call the cops and get to the hospital to attest that you were wounded and were indeed in the right for defending yourself.
Might still go wrong, but that’s the suggestion cops and Carabinieri give you if you ask them.
They will not investigate too hard on such cases, but often the judge will just spit on your safety and incriminate you because you were not generous enough to allow some poor guy to rob you at will.
In the end you’r the f…ing capitalist.
That often applies also to phisical harm or rape.
In the end these poor guys come from another culture, and seing a womans hairs might cause them some hormonal turbolence. Different culture, no punishment.
Just a couple of examples of very common cases. No racism involved, just rage at human stupidity due to political correctness and phoneyness.
Sooner or later you’ll see the Europeans reacting, and that will be ugly!
Never get peaceful (idiots) people angry!!!
There are many communists in Italy, and as we all know, communists don’t give a shit about people.
Right. We really have to rely on our cops and Carabinieri.
If you find the right ones, they’ll help in any possible (and legal) way.
But there are enough dumbheads even among them.
They get the leftist paranoia against self-defending citizens hammered on the head and into the brains on a daily basis, and some of them just “give way” to that BS.
Still, many people here prefer to be judged by 12 than to be carried by 6;-)
“Not much better anywhere else in EU.”
Let me introduce to you this sentence: “The fact that a person prepares a weapon in order to defend themselves against expected attack does not preclude the defense from being legitimate.”
This was held in a 1981 Supreme Court decision. In Czechoslovakia. COMMUNIST Czechoslovak Supreme Court. As it happens, it holds up even today, or to be more precise, it holds up even more today when the country has shall issue concealed carry.
Currently, we have an equivalent of what amounts to stand your ground in the Czech Republic, and many are trying to get castle doctrine passed in legislature.
There is nothing standing in the way of Italians or Swedes to change their laws too. There is something wrong with people who allow themselves to be victimized by criminals in a free country – something that even communists in Czechoslovakia would not dare to do.
Actually also in Italy you are free to defend yourself, but the problem is in the so-called Justice.
Here any judge can do whatever they want, and since the leftists are mostly stupid enough to see a free and self-defending citizen as a dangerous fascist, and most judges are leftists if not purely communists, they always decide against him.
If pressure from the public is enough, they just put him through terrible difficulties and try him, just to say he was right.
But that after maybe 5-10 years, after destroying his life and often his wealth.
I’m not surprised that a former socialist country has such a clear policy for self-defending citizens.
The pacifistic propaganda has been brought to all western nations by Stalin and the Soviet Union.
They kept financing all possible idiots on this side of the iron curtain, while arming themselves as much as possible.
This has left deep scars over here.
You had to get the brunt of that foolish ideology, but got spared from the idiotic and phoney pacifism.
I really wish you to be able to keep it up!
Czech Republic though is a bastion of common sense (the real kind) compared to most of Europe though. Probably because withering under communist rule is still in living memory for many folk there.
The problem with communists isn’t even that they don’t care about people.
Other dictatorships didn’t care much either (and we know it well enough).
The problem with the communists is that they don’t care about reality.
As a former, and long dead (luckily) secretary of our nice Commie Party here used to say, if reality and ideology don’t match, too bad for reality!
And that’s no joke.
These AHs are ruling now.
Not only in Italy!
@Ovidio G-
“Actually also in Italy you are free to defend yourself, but the problem is in the so-called Justice.
Here any judge can do whatever they want, and since the leftists are mostly stupid enough to see a free and self-defending citizen as a dangerous fascist, and most judges are leftists if not purely communists, they always decide against him.
If pressure from the public is enough, they just put him through terrible difficulties and try him, just to say he was right.”
Unfortunately, my foreign friend, a Constitution doesn’t protect citizens from that institutional corruption and diseased ideology you mentioned.
new gun laws are basically proof that the politicians are incapable of handling the real issues facing society
What are the “real issues?”
SOCIALISM!!!
Yeah Socialism!
Another aspect of Swedish delay, years of waiting to rent a Stockholm apartment due to rent control. Note that the article also implies a (hidden, for Progressives) benefit; foreigners cannot possibly comply with the rental waiting dance, so Stockholm stays much more Pure Swedish.
http://www.smartgrowthseattle.org/letter-stockholm-rent-control/
Sweden is the rape capital of Europe thanks to their bizarre desire to import Muslim men into a feminist society.
Judging by the above described attitude towards self defense, as well as most anything else) by the natives, Muslim men is likely the last hope that wretched corner of once-were-civilization has left. Any broad supporting the disarmament of her own father, husband and male relatives, have only herself to thank when none of them are able to come to her defense. She’s better off raising children of some Jihadi anyway. If nothing else, daddy may just teach them how to arm themselves with at least something. Whether that be AKs or bomb belts.
“Real issues”.? You know what he means, I know what he means, everyone knows what he “means”. But to say the truth is…..”hateful.”
“No go areas”, 30 bombs (handgrenades) going off, instigated by “different immigrant groups” according to the Swedish article. But the immigrant group is not named.
Sigh. Let me say it. Muslims and the “Religion of Peace”.
Toynbee said great civilizations are not conquered from without, instead, they committ suicide.
Liberal/progressivism is a death cult. Those that practice it’s self-hating, selfish, self-destructive, baby murdering rituals of self flagellating, delusional and reality denying psychosis are embracing the death of not just themselves, but of an entire civilization.
So you’re saying that Islam is to blame for the US mostly black no go zones or Hungarian mostly gypsy no go zones? Sure, sure, it is all about religion.
Sigh, again. I was commenting on an article about SWEDEN. Thier No Go Zones if you look at their own demographics, are primarily Muslim.
Now some of the most violent black gangs in the US are Nation of Islam, but we still have the Bloods, Crips, and so on. And yes, there are no go zones in the US where cops only go in with back up, if they respond at all.
And Bungamen, no, it’s not all about religion. It’s about a culture belief system and what you do with that belief system.
Communists, that believe in no G-d, believe the ends justifies the means, have murdered hundreds of millions of people in the last hundred years, and they justify it by their belief system.
Muslims, believe, by their own holy example of Muhammad, believe the end justifies the means. Which means rape, pillage, plunder, mass murder, converting, subjugating and chopping off heads to impose their cultural belief system, which happens to be called a “religion” is perfectly acceptable. As Muhammad said in the Koran, as well as by his example.
ISIS, with brief periods of “tolerance”, has been the face of Islam for the last 1400 years. Read a little history, you will see I am right.
‘…this is only a means for politicians to make it look like they actually do something.’
Pretty much a universal problem. Politicians would rather look like they’re doing something productive than to actually DO something productive. They really don’t want to accomplish anything or else they wouldn’t have any reason to ask for (take) more of your money.
Hating on politicians for making it LOOK like they can defy the laws of nature because they do not ACTUALLY defy the laws of nature?
They fake it because there’s really nothing else they can do… Just like Cops, Politicians are asked to do the impossible: Be responsible for someone else who refuses to be responsible for themselves.
Yep. Liberal/progressives are rioting in the streets because they are upset their “rights” to have all their needs provided for them aren’t being met.
“I’m upset because the government isn’t taking their job of treating me as big over grown baby seriously enough, I’m not getting enough free stuff!!”
No go Aloha Snackbar areas? Sorry you’re on your own.
“According to statistics provided by local authorities, 31 percent of the city’s 300, 000 population were born abroad and nearly 41 percent of the residents have a foreign background. The main countries from which immigration takes place are ones which have been recently plagued by conflicts – migrant groups from Iraq, Syria, the former Yugoslavia and Somalia are among them. The data also says that the Muslim population constitutes about 20 percent of Malmo’s population; this is one of the most significant percentages in Scandinavian cities.”
Hmmm…..
A problem all over socialist Europe. And they don’t have to cut heads off…just breed.
Think they’re about 25 years from the EU voting to change its name to the United Caliphate or whatever. Won’t even be a fight, the Sharia zones will just spread out and eat the whole place.
While it may not be all that, Sharia Law sure as heck beats progressive law (as do anything else, up to and including nuclear holocaust, come to think of it), which seem to be the only realistic alternative over there.
I can’t understand why otherwise intelligent people think that a gun law will stop a criminal from acquiring and using a gun in the course of his other illegal activity. So we’re to believe that a criminal will give up robbing, stealing, raping, and killing if we could some how outlaw all guns? I guess the writer of the article can say from experience … “NOT!”
“potentially” intelligent people. Whose potential has been irreversibly stunted by state sponsored indoctrination.
What kind of “no go areas?” Are these like cool Stockholm hacker Piratbyrån areas where everybody looks like Noomi Rapace in the movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (Millennium – Män som hatar kvinnor). Or is it like a muslim Shariah Police thing where they beat you if you walk in with a cold beer in your hands? Or is it like a drug zone where all the drug vendors set up shops for retail drug outlets? I’m going to need more information here. Are these zones Swedish people? Are they immigrants? Are they a bit… “overly” religious? Please tell more.
Basically ghettos where rule of law no longer apply. Example. Just the other day there was a 2 hour long shootout and the police just waited until the shots stopped before announcing that it was “over”.
In American English, we have a word to summarize all that: “Detroit.”
The biggest problem with “areas where law no longer apply”, is that as soon as sane people move there to do cool things like organize street races or mass produce guns, drugs, bombs and whorehouses, suddenly “law no longer apply” no longer applies anymore. If the progressive riffraff would just genuinely leave Detroit alone, as in completely alone, the place would be awesome. Risky, perhaps, but man! potentially rewarding as well. Which is why “law no longer apply” is just another progressive newspeak for “only the law that benefits us apply.”
“Security theater like this is only a means for politicians to make it look like they actually do something. These are not simple issues a new law will fix. These are the results of very bad policies that has poisoned society for a long time and will take a long time to fix. Unfortunately new gun laws are basically proof that the politicians are incapable of handling the real issues facing society and a clear sign that they need to be voted out of office.”
How true. Should be the rallying cry for no more gun control in Sweden, USA or anywhere. Gun controls are the smoke and mirrors of politics right now. And when those laws fail to fix the problems the politicians seem to have no other ideas. Socialism and the theory that the criminals are misunderstood and need to be coddled and protected are both issues that feed into the continuing violence. OTOH decriminalizing possession of drugs would likely do some real good. Arresting and sentencing the users instead of the suppliers is a waste of time. Look at Portugal for the model of something that might work in this area.
Funny we never heard about that mass shooting….must’ve not been with a gun.
Henrik,
According to this Swedish article: http://www.svd.se/fran-no-go-zoner-till-rekordtrygg-stad …
New York is an example to follow. Guns/Weapons are the problem. And abortion needs to be available to everyone. So… unwanted babies, and weapons. Those are the root causes here. Get rid of the unwanted babies and the weapons… and your crime can drop 79% too.
We have free abortion. Criminals use smuggled guns so god luck banning those. The police have actually become worse at doing their job when they have had more resources given to them. The police is now an occupation in decline in Sweden. Police officers quit faster than new can be recruited. This because of incompetent leadership basically. The police in Sweden is more interested in joining gay pride parades and talking about how important it is to be multicultural than to actually do work. Stockholms last policechief started a new department to save puppies for example. This after she manufactured some big narcotics bust just to score points with the media together with her friends. The police is corrupt beyond belief. They have sold guns to criminals. One policechief just got out of jail for heading some kind of rape group where they kidnapped raped and tortured teenagers. He was also the head of the feminism department in the police. Go figure. There are numerous examples of bizarre corruption and criminality and most of all incompetence in the Swedish Police.
Sorry to hear that your politicians and their laws are so bad.
Please send more K31’s.
That’s Switzerland man… This is Sweden. The Swedes provide awesome mausers (or once did – not anymore) like the Swedish M96 or the Husqvarna mausers. Now they just supply chainsaws and pirated software/music.
Mora knives and some real cool axes.
And massive amounts of crappy particleboard furniture…
I <3 my more robust. Too bad whoever made it will probably get killed….
mora*
autocorrect and broken edit….
My bad, my brain started on auto-complete when I saw Sw..
Back in 1990, I bought a Hakim battle rifle which was the Egyptian made AG-42 Ljungman, which definitely was Swedish. Great rifle, but finding ammo for it was tough. The only stuff I could find was old Prvi-Partizan, and it was a really tight fit in the chamber.
If only Algore had been faster at building the internet…
Al Gore got side tracked during his invention of the Internet with dreams of brandishing a noble peace prize at fossil fuel companies and coal power plants.
It’s time to STOP Muslim immigration to the U.S. Write your Congressmen and Senators, they don’t assimilate, just take and destroy.
After 911, in Lackawanna the kids in the high school cheered, mostly Yeminis, introduced by the steel companies in the 20’s and 30’s, cheap labor.
What goes around comes around.
Type into google, “no go areas” in Sweden, I had never heard of this shit.
Home carry!
Dude. It ain’t the Muslims who are banning guns in Sweden. It’s the other guys. In the Muslim parts of their towns, people seem to have some appreciation for guns.
Comparing population and area and many other factors to consider, (culture, history…) Sweden and its anti-gun platform does not appear to be a good example for the anti-firearm a-holes in the US.
I always ask people, well, who would you rather have the advantage in a life-threatening incident, them or you?
Let’s compare: Arizona is supposedly a “gun owner’s paradise”, but has some significant crime problems. How does it stack up against the weapon-free Nirvana of Sweden?
Burglary: Sweden 785/100,000; Arizona 732/100,000
Rape: Sweden 67/100,000; Arizona 35/100,000
Murder: Sweden 3.6/100,000; Arizona 5.3/100,000
Robbery: Sweden 97/100,000; Arizona 101/100,000
Assault: 959/100,000; Arizona 264/100,000
(The assault numbers may not be apples to apples: I’m not sure each region uses the same definition)
Aside from murder, it appears that Arizona is hands-down the safer place to live.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/azcrime.htm
“Murder: Sweden 3.6/100,000; Arizona 5.3/100,000”
This just hit my eyes so I had to double check. Swedish murder rate is in fact 0.7/100.000, that is 7.6 times lower than AZ’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
I won’t be double checking the rest of the numbers you put forward.
Interesting. I took my homicide number from one of the charts attached to the Wikipedia article I cited. I suppose that it serves me right for using Wikipedia as a source.
Going to a new (and hopefully better source) ( https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/murder-and-manslaughter.html ), I see that Sweden had 87 cases of murder and non-negligent manslaughter in 2013. (The statistics do warn that there may be some inaccuracies, as some of those crimes are later determined to be suicide or accidents.) Sweden’s population that year was 9.593 million. This produces a murder rate of .907/100,000. I stand corrected on that figure.
Going to a different source to check the assault rate (as previously stated, I wasn’t sure about that one myself. Here’s a better source: http://knoema.com/atlas/Sweden/topics/Crime-Statistics/Assaults-Kidnapping-Robbery-Sexual-Rape/Assault-rate ), I find that Sweden’s rate of assaults with physical injury (Which would seem to be the equivalent of Arizona’s Aggravated Assault rate) was 915.2/100,000 in 2012. This is still much worse than Arizona’s assault rate.
My original conclusion is unchanged: Aside from murder rates, Arizona is generally as safe as Sweden. Arizona is much safer when it comes to sexual assault or physical assault.
Cuss it all! It looks like the assault statistic I pulled for Sweden also includes several other crimes. The stat rolls kidnapping, robbery, and some sex crimes in with it. The same site’s number for the US is still about 28% of Sweden’s.
A second check of the assault rate statistic I found suggests that it is similar in scope with the Arizona rate after all. That leaves Sweden with 915 per 100,000 versus Arizona’s 264.
I still apologize for choosing my original source badly. My goal is to discuss and inform, not reinforce confirmation bias.
Comparing statistics like these internationally is mostly an exercise in futility, because nobody reports crimes under the same standards. What is counted and how it is counted (or even IF it is counted) varies widely from country to country.
About the only useful thing you can extract is year-to-year trendlines. The raw numbers are full of landmines.
It is the same in Sweden as it is in the US. Some areas are more affected by violence than others. There are places in the US that have much better statistics than Sweden I am sure. Still, removing guns, if it was even possible, from the equation does not solve any of the issues that our societies have. It is not even a temporary solution.
And yet Sweden and the rest of scandinavia is much safer than our gun-nightmare called a country. Atleast they don’t have NRA/TTAG terrorists running amok.
If the NRA or TTAG had their way, The rest of europe and the world would fall into the violent tyranny of “Gun rights”.
“Gun rights” terrorists disguise destruction, suffering and death with “patriotism”.
The TTAG puppets are vomiting on their keyboards over this tiny step by sweden. But, gun right nazi terrorists are dumb gun nazi terrorists.
the Second Amendment did not take into account the level of stupidity of modern Americans. The average knucklehead out there couldn’t shoot his way out of paper bag. The danger isn’t to the “bad guys” but to the “good guys.” The idea of arming yourself to go to a movie is insane. I mean really insane. What kind of nut would recommend that?
Dan Zimmerman is usual with his “stories” and comments was him pocketing an NRA… Neurotic/Nazi Rifle Association check.
Gun free zone have NOT created the whole problem!!! The NRA and the gun nuts have created the whole problem with crime and terrorism and their brain-dead hillbilly solution is “Mur Gunz”.
Why can’t gun nuts get that through their thick skulls!!!
First off, firearms in the USA are overwhelmingly used for homicides and suicides versus use for self defense by a 53:1 margin.
Nice troll. Sweden might not be the hellscape inner city Chicago is. But it is a sure proof that gun control is worthless security theater if your goal is to lower violence. It is certainly not working here and it will never work in the US where there is so many guns.
Yeah Random Swede. Willy just comes on the site, takes a shit, then leaves. Never any debate, just a bunch of adhominems, shows nothing but ugliness, hate and contempt, then….. nothing.
All I see is the same dehumanizing, contemptuous, and hateful spew that anyone instigating mass murder against a hated group would appreciate.
All Willy does is show me why I carry a gun. And thank G-d for it.
If Willy wasn’t venting here as often as he does – he would probably be committing mass murder somewhere else. We provide a psychological outlet for Willy’s hatred. It’s kind of like the 1984 “two minute hate.” He comes here – shouts his face off, insulting everyone, and blaming them for problems of which they are unaffiliated – then leaves.
Eh. 5/10. Try harder. I’ll bite, but you could do better.
Suicides are a non-issue. Part of having a right to life is having a right to end it when you so choose. You can take all of those deaths and remove them from your stats. They don’t count.
As for murders, a good portion of the murders that take place with firearms in the US are related to gang activity. Allow me to make this perfectly clear: The lives of gang members and criminals in general are of no consequence to me. As living entities, their existence is worth less than the gunk which I scrape off the bottom of my shoe. Their loss of life is not a tragedy; it is an occupational hazard, and nothing more.
You can pull all of the deaths that do nothing but remove human garbage from the gene pool out of your numbers, too.
As for the rest of your steaming pile of idiocy, I’m just going to copy and paste a post I made about the reality of the murder rate in the US a little while back on TTAC, because I don’t actually care enough to write a special post just for you:
“(You must u)nderstand (…)that emotion cannot be allowed to dictate social policy.
Throughout human history, emotion has been the tool weilded to bring popular support to unjust causes. The internment of Japanese-American citizens during WW2-that’s an emotional response. The people that have targeted Sikhs and Muslims because of 9/11-that’s an emotional response. The people that harass others for their race, their appearance, their beliefs, their sexuality-whatever reason they choose to latch onto. The demonization of “the enemy” in every theatre of war going back to the beginnings of human history. And yes, the knee-jerk response to meddle in the lives of law-abiding citizens because of a tragic event that ultimately affects a very small number of people. All of it is driven by emotion.
Emotion must be kept under the strict control of logic; allowed to run free, it is the enemy of freedom and individualism, and indeed, the enemy of the principles that define America as a country-you know, that whole “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” thing.
So. Let’s put emotion aside for a moment and re-frame this whole mess surrounding the gun debate in this country with logic holding the leash.
The CDC documented 18,090 deaths for the year 2011 due to Pneumonitis-i.e. lung inflammation. That was the 15th leading cause of death in the US that year, behind Parkinson’s (14th, 23,107 deaths), Diabetes (7th, 73,282 deaths), Alzheimer’s (6th, 84,691 deaths), and heart disease (1st, 596,339 deaths).(1) The CDC does not include car accidents explicitly in their chart-although there is a generalized “accidents” category, which ranked 5th-but the NHTSA documented 32,367 traffic fatalities for 2011.(2)
By way of comparison, the FBI documented a total of 12,664 homicides in 2011, of which 8,583 were related to firearms.(3)(A) And this is in a country with a population estimated at 311,591,917 (the U.S. Census Bureau’s provisional estimate as of July 1st, 2011 based on the actual documented count of 309,330,219 people from the 2010 census).(4) That’s less than 0.003%!
Of those 8,583 homicides, 1,824 were documented to be gang-related.(5) It is important to note, however, that “nearly half of law enforcement agencies report they do not regularly record any criminal offenses as ‘gang-related\’”, and that there is no standard or consensus for what constitues a gang-related homicide.(6) Thus, the actual number of gang-related homicides is likely to be much higher.
Let’s take it at face value, though, and knock another 1,824 off of that 8,583; that’s 6,759 homicides for the year 2011 that may or may not be related to gang violence. Going by the Census Bureau’s population estimate, that’s less than 0.0022%. Roughly 2 people per 100,000. I’m not cherry picking this data; I’ve cited my sources (at the end of the post), this information is all from government documents.
And this is before we get into issues like how many of those murders would actually have been prevented if the responsible party didn’t have access to a firearm, or how many of the responsible parties were already banned from having firearms under existing rules that are not enforced properly, variations based on demographics and geography or a thousand other variables.
The idea that guns are a major issue in America is hysteria, with the government and the media both feeding it by playing on peoples’ emotions and the human brain’s natural inability to handle large numbers well.
What happened to your friend is tragic, and you have my sincere condolences. I mean it. I know what it’s like to lose someone, and I feel for you. Dispense with the emotion, though, and all of the arguments in favor of more regulation of firearms in this country fall by the wayside.
It is impossible to keep everyone safe all of the time. Your odds of being killed by a gun in the US are vanishingly small, and the right of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves by any means necessary and with deadly force if-God forbid-it’s ever required, trumps the irrational, emotionally-driven need to “feel safe” with virtually zero basis in reality that has been inflicted on so much of this country by our own news media.
Footnotes:
(A) Someone may come along and try to discredit me by pointing out that the source I cite for the 2011 population estimate gives a count of 14,612 murders versus the 12,664 in the source I used for my calculations. The disparity is due to the fact that the larger number includes both murder and “nonnegligent manslaughter”, while the second number is homicide only. I I did not find a breakdown of the cause of death in the 1,948 cases that make up the difference; thus, I cannot derive meaningful information from calculations made with the larger number.
Sources:
(I’ve had issues with links in posts at TTAC in the past, thus you’ll have to google these if you want to fact check me)
(1) Hoyert, Donna L., Ph.D., and Jiaquan Xu, M.D. CDC National Vital Statistics Reports. 61.6 (2012): 4
(2) “Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for The First Nine Months (January-September) of 2012″ Traffic Safety Facts DOT# HS 811 706. 2012: 1
(3) “Expanded Homicide Data Table 8.” Crime in The United States 2011. FBI (dot) gov, 10/3/13
(4) “Table 1.” Crime in The United States 2011. FBI (dot) gov, 10/3/13
(5) “Measuring the Extent of Gang Problems.” National Youth Gang Survey Analysis. nationalgangcenter (dot) gov, 10/3/13
(6) “Are gang homicides increasing?” Frequently Asked Questions About Gangs. nationalgangcenter (dot) gov, 10/3/13”
Willy’s quite the histrionic little troll.
Seems to get the vapors easily.
Comes across like a bitch – no ad hominem, just objective description.
Here’s a nice read for him: http://journal.ijreview.com/2015/07/245635-gun-rights-advocates-have-a-devastating-new-argument-against-gun-control-here-it-is/
TTAG terrorist. LOL. People that support freedom for everyone = terrorist. If you prize safety over freedom, a gun free, robbing, assault, STD infected rapist paradise may be for you.
Only Willy Lunchmeat would find “rights and freedom” – “cruel and oppressive” LOL. It really is a funny concept. Willy Lunchmeat needs to be kept safe from “rights and freedoms.”
Uh… no.
What tiny step? This one: What they fail to see is that criminals have never used weapons that have ever been legal here (they smuggle them in to the country). So, why would you support something that both doesn’t work and limits everyone’s rights and freedoms?
Projection. Willy lunchmeat couldn’t shoot his way out of a paper bag. I agree – the idea of arming yourself to go to a movie is insane, but it’s too bad it has to come to this. There are a lot of Willy Lunchmeat types filled with hatred and opinions that they need to go get attention not by going to a blog and taking a verbal dump, but going to a theater and shooing everyone up before offing themselves. It’s pretty despairful, but better than the alternative – going to the theater and getting shot up by someone with a gun after guns are banned and no being able to do anything about it.
That’s nonsense. The NRA doesn’t pay Dan Zimmerman. Dan Zimmerman pays the NRA.
Uh… no. Guns don’t cause violence. Violent hateful people with opinions that can’t vent on
gunblogs cause violence. They want to enforce their opinions on everyone else rather than embracing freedom and tolerance. More guns is not the answer – but less guns definitely isn’t the answer either.Why can’t anti-gun freedom hating collectivists get it through their skulls?
Source please? I didn’t think so. Why have you bunched suicides with homicides? Homicides are people killing other people against their will. Suicides are people killing themselves because they decided to. Did you do that to inflate numbers? There are better, less messy, ways to kill yourself than a firearm which are just as easy. People don’t need a firearm to kill themselves, so I think that should be removed.
Little willy only counts a successful defensive gun use if it kills the bad guy. that way he can ignore the 99% of other defensive gun uses where nobody was killed or shots weren’t even fired, because that would destroy his numbers.
It’s the most transparent dishonesty by omission available today.
“Dan Zimmerman is usual with his “stories” and comments was him pocketing an NRA… Neurotic/Nazi Rifle Association check.”
Siorus and Anonymous refuted the rest of your drivel very well, however, my question is:
Where do you get the authority to defame someone like that?
“First off, firearms in the USA are overwhelmingly used for homicides and suicides versus use for self defense by a 53:1 margin.”
Even the Violence Policy Center(a gun control group) estimates 67,740 uses of firearms in self defense every year. That’s the lowest figure out there, much higher than combined numbers of criminal homicides and suicides together!
Believe it or not, but the first time gun control became an election issue in the Czech Republic was in connection with Sweden, or to be more precise, Swedish attempts to export their gun control EU wide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_Czech_Republic#2014_European_parliamentary_elections
This is not a religious or cultural problem, it’s a class problem and lack of customs control. For the last 30-40 years we’ve had increasingly right wing leaning social democratic governments mixed with a few market liberal right wing ones. What they’ve had in common are budget cuts on public spending (including police & customs) as well as a race to the bottom when it comes to dismantling social security & welfare. The middle class has held the swing vote between the two blocks (center-“left” & center-right) so parties are mostly concerned with trying to appease them in different ways. Tax cuts, grandstanding without action and trying to get away with not taking responsibility has become the norm.
Our gun laws are actually quite generous and good for Ertope on paper, but the politicians and police that handles the license applications really hates sports shooters and kind of hate hunters. As Henrik said there is statistically almost never a crime made with a legally owned firearm here in Sweden, but the borders are pretty much wide open and smuggled guns flow in in droves. Right now we have a AWB type situation where guns are limited do to how they look. It’s silly and sad and we’re trying to lobby against it. It’s hard because it’s not law as much as procedure and practice which harder to get at.
The mass shooting was a criminal getting revenge on a rival criminal by bringing a mate and opening fire with automatic weapons into a cafe full of people. Fully automatic weapons aren’t possible to own or get in Sweden and I’m quite sure the people doing the shooting aren’t eligible for licenses for any gun, so our increased gun control gas exactly zero effect on that kind of gun violence.
We’ve had an increase in shootings here, it’s mostly young kids in rival gangs in the cities of Malmö and Gothenburg. Criminals from poor areas with little hope of a future that’s found a place in the world in these gangs and built an insane machismo code of honor that demands blood for the slightest offense, imagined or real. It’s almost exclusively gang on gang violence but they do it in crowded areas sometimes and people do get in the way.
My two cents is that economic and social stratification needs to be lessened, borders need to be controlled for smuggled guns (that’s a whole chapter in itself) and police need to actually solve some of these murders and non lethal shootings so there are consequences for these guys. Right now they get away with it.
There is the whole thing with criminals only getting punished for the worst crime they have committed. So while they wait for their time in court or for their jailtime they can do whatever without being charged. Then they get released after 2/3rds of the sentence time. And the sentences are very very low to begin with.
Combine this with an incompetent police force and the social situation and we get what we have. Shit.
I’m all for rehabilitating criminals, but you have to actually spend the resources and above all you need to catch them. In Gothenburg I don’t think they’ve made a solid case against ANY of the gang shooters. 🙁
And they never will. People are afraid of testifying in court. And for good reason. They will not be protected and they are not allowed to protect themselves.
“My two cents is that economic and social stratification needs to be lessened, borders need to be controlled for smuggled guns (that’s a whole chapter in itself) and police need to actually solve some of these murders and non lethal shootings so there are consequences for these guys. Right now they get away with it.”
Basically, what you are saying is that (illegal) guns are to be blamed. Look at Czech Republic and Switzerland, both countries with (A) easier access to legal firearms (in case of the Czech Republic also shall issue CC) and (B) open borders the same as Sweden. Yet there is no wide gun violence in neither of the two countries (save for the occasional nutjob, who would commit the crime no matter whether armed or not).
Sweden has gang problem first. When you solve illegal guns problems, the gangbangers will just cripple you with bricks and stones instead of bullets. Which may be a consolation to some, but I suppose most don’t really care what kind of weapon put them into emergency room.
We will never solve the “gun problem”. We have several cases of gangs making their own (very nice) suppressed submachineguns. But it is so easy for them to get hold of military hw so there is no need for that today.
I appreciate you guys joining the discussion and giving us some insight to the situation in Sweden. Can you discuss how your murder rates are tabulated? They seem impossibly low for a country that has so much of other types of violence and that has areas where even the police won’t go.
First of all, crimes get “written off” and do not show in the statistics at all most of the time. They have basically not caught any of the criminals that are shooting. So the statistics are false.
Typical scenario for a home invasion is that you only report it to the police for insurance reasons. If they magically manage to get the guy (almost never happens) he gets put away for the worst crime. All the other crimes gets written off. You will not be able to sue for damages or anything because there “was no crime”.
The perp gets out after 2/3 of time served and probably deported (but only on paper, they stay). The sentences are very low. So there is no incentive to not do crimes.
Also there is a strange custom among criminals to only shoot each others in the leg. That gets reported the same as a bar fight basically. Not as an attack with deadly weapon, or as attempted murder = lower sentences if caught.
Tldr: The Police has an incentive to lower the reported crime rate so they appear to be competent (they are not). The statistic institute in Sweden is a political organ = incentive to show good statistics = socialist bs statistics.
On the other end the police report every seized illegal plant of weed as a separate drug bust to get some nice statistics there. So basically the statistics lie.
The statistics lie? Well what about that 0.7 per 100,000 people homicide rate. Is that a lie too?
Murder rate is counted according to the number of intentional homicide victims.
The issue of whether the perps are identified/caught/convicted does not affect it.
Unless you want to claim that there are cleaning squads secretly taking away bodies away from the Swedish streets in order to keep the murder rate low.
Bungameng, reported murder rates can and have been manipulated in some jurisdictions. As an example from the US, When Chicago authorities were under pressure to reduce that city’s outrageous murder rate a few years ago, they stopped including bodies where the cause of death was uncertain. One police officer wrote about a woman’s decomposed body found fastened to a chair with wires, but which wasn’t counted as a murder because the medical examiner wasn’t sure how the woman had died.
Is it like in the UK where a dead body isn’t considered a homicide until someone is convicted for it?
My US city has a serious problem with gangs. They are responsible for 90% of shootings. Thirty years ago, they shot to wound. Now, it’s shoot to kill. I expect your situation will deteriorate similarly.
A tiny subset of the criminal population is responsible for the majority of truly heinous crimes. As an example, a notorious prison gang in Arizona (The “New Mexican Mafia” AKA “New EME”) plotted the murder of the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC). When the authorities learned of this, a Phoenix-area gang task force cooperated with the FBI and ADC gang intel specialists. Over 70 hardcore gang members and allies were arrested in one night, of which about 42 ended up back in prison. Crime in Maricopa County plummeted. The murder rate dropped over 50% the next year.
Ahh yes Supernaut242. The reason people are criminals is because the government isn’t giving enough “free”stuff away.
No, the criminals in the street are just emulating the criminals in government taking stuff from people that produce it and giving it to people that don’t.
The criminals in the street are just cutting out the middle man.
“…economic and social stratification needs to be lessened, borders need to be controlled… ”
So, in other words, not Socialism, but National Socialism….. 🙂
You’re just being precocious. It’s where all of Europe is heading. Again. But I suspect it is too late to stop the Muslim onslaught. Too many generations of Europeans passed, and the native population have gotten too soft. The most they’ll end up doing is slinging increasingly antagonistic verbal mud. While the invader slings real ordnance.
The future of America is staring you in the face if liberals have their way. That will solve ALL the problems! No guns and free abortions for all! They would rather you be dead than be able to defend yourself against anyone.
Sweden, yes!
It’s more than just Socialism. It’s blind adherence to any political, social, economic or religious ideology that makes you incapable of free or critical thought. You’re bound by a closed-loop thought process that basically rationalizes “If what we’ve done hasn’t worked, it’s just proof that we must do more of what hasn’t worked.”
Sweden? The entire country seems to have the “Stockholm Syndrome”
I have friends in Europe and it is sad that they have the wolf at their door and won’t even acknowledge or admit to it. We are now reaping the results of 60 years of ingraining pacifist submission thinking into every school child in Europe. Nationalism is bad, that’s why you see more people flying their home flags in the US than fly them in their own country.
Now that this pacifist, non-aggression, liberal brain-washing has worked out so well in Europe, they are attempting to do it in the U.S…. but the people are resisting.
I do suspect that in some of the Northern European countries at least, there will be a tipping point where they will realize that they are effectively surrendering their countries to Muslim extremists and will actually make an attempt to get their country back. Probably too little too late though.
please point them towards Sweden. So far this year we have had 30 explosives go off this year and one mass shooting along with numerous minor shootings. This cannot be happening as our Supreme Dear Leader stated that these things do not happen in other advanced countries. These type of things only happen in the USA. Godam America!
Henrik B dont know what hes talking about.
First.. I am a Swede.
Licensing time for a pistol is about a week, where I live, it differs from wich region you live in.
But you can have Ar-15s and other sporting rifles.
There is a difference between a hunting-permit and a sporting-permit.
With a hunting-permitt your gun can hold a maximum of three rounds, but with a sporting license you
can have almost whatever rifle you want. As long as it is semi.
We have ARs, Tavors, Sig 556 and more on the scene. All calibers too, 5.56, 300 blk, 308W….. etc.
Don´t know Henrik Bs background but its probably more towards the hunting scene and not the IPSC, sporting scene.
Close analysis of Swiss gun laws also shows how silly it is for Handgun Control to point to Switzerland as a model. If-as Handgun Control claims-Switzerland’s lenient licensing system is the reason Switzerland has so little handgun crime, then Handgun Control ought to commit itself to reform of several American laws.
Hey liberals! Post a sign on each of your lawns stating that you support gun control, and that guns will not be found in your homes. And then watch what happens.
Here in Northern Kentucky (Greater Cincinnati Metro), we can openly carry WITHOUT a permit, and we can conceal carry with one. If anyone breaks our doors in with the intent to cause harm, and why else would they break our doors in, then we can shoot them on the spot! THAT GOES FOR THE POLICE, TOO!
Our police officers KNOW we can shoot them if they misbehave, and they are very polite with the public. AS IT SHOULD BE!
We would NOT be found liable, negligent, or any of that other nonsense. The law abiding live, and the criminal is dead or jailed, as it ought to be. We are ALLOWED to protect ourselves, and our sheriffs fully support us! Here in N KY, the crime rate is very low, and it’s a great place to live in the U.S. As they say, an armed society is a polite society, and our police officers fully reflect that attitude. They actually welcome our help in bringing criminals to justice.
OUR way of life SHOWS that you CANNOT stop crime by keeping guns out of law abiding citizens’ hands. Gun control is the law, which applies to those who obey the law. Criminals, by definition, are those who do not obey the law, and therefore, will not obey any gun control laws. Duh.
“Oh gosh darn golly gee, Billy Bob, that sign right there says we can’t carry our guns past it, into the schoolyard.” Is the gun-free school zone sign going to enforce itself, and prevent the criminals from carrying their guns past it? Of course not! It’s just a sign! It does not have a gun or a trigger finger!
Yeah, we still speed on the freeway like Jeff Gordon. But any criminal caught here causing trouble otherwise is usually new to the area, and it isn’t long before they’re caught. With a seven county population of roughly 500,000, you won’t find a more peaceful place to live in the U.S. than Northern Kentucky.