When gun grabbers play their mind games they use international gun crime stats as a trump card. For some reason, they consider Europe in general and the UK in particular a template for American gun control—despite the fact that U.S. citizens have a Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms no matter how many people die “as a result.” OMG! People die from guns in a country where people have the right to keep and bear arms? Who’d a thunk it? More importantly . . .
Why think about it?
When it comes to violent crime, objective statistical analysis is far less crucial than gun control advocates would have us believe. Whether or not a person is “likely” to be a victim of violent crime is less important than whether they are or aren’t.
Americans who choose to arm themselves against that possibility are doing so from a strictly binary perspective. More to the point, they’re tooling-up for their own benefit, not society’s. And why not?
Despite MikeB and others’ willful ignorance about the Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. Americans exercise the right to protect themselves with firearms for their own personal good.
And here’s the thing: in countries where society’s “needs” come first, where individuals do not have the right to keep and bear arms, people still get shot.
A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder, after a man was killed in a gun and grenade attack in Greater Manchester.
Click here for the BBC report. Note: if you see one-eyed suspect Dale Creighton [above] please contact the authorities. And run like hell.
Meanwhile, don’t tell me that this attack was an outlier. There are plenty of gun crimes—including horrific spree killings—in the UK, France, Germany, Norway and all the other pro-gun control countries on the other side of the pond.
Ah, but they’re relatively rare. Yes, but—
Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 per cent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offences in the UK since Labour came to power.
The total number of violent offences recorded compared to population is higher than any other country in Europe, as well as America, Canada, Australia and South Africa . . .
A breakdown of the statistics, which were compiled into league tables by the Conservatives, revealed that violent crime in the UK had increased from 652,974 offences in 1998 to more than 1.15 million crimes in 2007.
It means there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe.
Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland.
By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population. [source: telegraph.co.uk]
Re: firearms-related deaths remember that “gun deaths” (which includes suicides) in The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave (that’s us) are a relatively insignificant cause of death—no matter how you analyze relative levels of guns violence between countries.
Anyway . . .
If private gun ownership makes Americans selfish so be it. Submitting to governmental authority, abandoning the ability to defend oneself by force of arms, means placing your fate in the hands of people who couldn’t give a damn whether you as an individual live or die.
All humans are selfish. Personal and thus genetic survival is Job One. Always has been, always will be. By creating a society that maintains the right to keep and bear arms our forefathers aligned society’s interests with the individual’s.
Gun grabbers who fancy the European gun control model should seriously consider joining MikeB and moving abroad. Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways: personal freedom and gun control. Choose. We have.