Posted on 1/12/2005, 3:28:43 PM by neverdem
Crime: The most pre-eminent scientific group in America has produced a definitive analysis of our decades-long experience with gun control and shattered what has become an article of faith among proponents.
The 328-page report by the National Academy of Sciences is based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, a survey of 80 gun-control laws and some of its own independent study.
It could find no evidence to support the conclusion that government restrictions on firearms reduces gun crime, gun violence and gun accidents.
As noted by John Lott Jr., resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and frequent contributor to this page, this stunning indictment of the ineffectiveness of gun-control laws was produced by a panel set up during the Clinton administration. All but one of its members were known before their appointments to favor gun control. No NRA shills here.
Lott credits the report for pointing out the obvious: Criminals who use guns to break laws will break laws to use guns. He also notes that the report failed to include in its analysis how gun-ownership restrictions may restrict defensive uses of firearms and endanger potential victims.
Hale DeMar of Wilmette, Ill., recently faced criminal charges for the successful defense of his family from a felon who invaded his home not once, but twice. Seems he violated Wilmette's handgun ban.
Suppose DeMar obeyed the ban and the outcome was different. Suppose the family was slain by the intruder. Instead of DeMar facing up to a year in jail, a $2,500 fine for not having an Illinois Firearms Owners Identification Card and a $750 fine for violating Wilmette's handgun ban, the morning headlines would have read something like, "Family Slain — Police Have Few Clues."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
How can they state the last sentence with certainty?
Is that such a difficult concept!!!!!
The anti-gun people are not going to surrender their moral high ground just because of a few facts. No matter how much their position is undermined by these pernicious findings, they are right and they know they are.
But the real agenda was never the control or reduction of crime. The disarming of the civilian population is the singular goal they are pursuing, and with the civilians disarmed, the resistance factor is decidedly much lower.
Bang
Of course, that's the reason for gun control.
This report is important because it will be useful (dare I say possibly instrumental) in allowing us to show those naive misguided souls (like the people with the MMM bumper stickers) that the politicians who support gun control are not do-gooders trying to prevent crime, but evil facists/elitists.
Oh. Wonderful. Now
we have the global warming
people on our side . . .
IIRC, I don't think so. I believe they recommended further study.
But the real agenda was never the control or reduction of crime. The disarming of the civilian population is the singular goal they are pursuing, and with the civilians disarmed, the resistance factor is decidedly much lower.
Anyone who doesn't understand this shouldn't be trusted to operate heavy machinery, raise children, vote, etc. The use of the crime issue and the emphasis on "sporting use" (echoes of Nazi Germany's 1938 weapons law) are just convenient and persuasive (for the useful idiots) means for the string-pullers to accomplish their goal.
ping
Conversely, if you want off my ping-list, let me know.
And my apologies for any redundant pings.
The Second Amendment...
America's Original Homeland Security!
Damn. I thought this was a Peter Sellers thread.
Thanks for the ping Joe. Good article.
That's the problem. Gun control is a religion, not logic. It's one of the several subsects of liberalism. Logic plays no part in their beliefs. The rest of us aren't people who have facts on our side. We're heretics who question their worship of the total state contol.
There are even a number of @$$holes even on this forum who believe in gun control. I won't name any, but most people know who they are.
Ironic, isn't it, that the supreme court case that supposedly allows gun control (miller) claimed that the second amendment didn't apply because a shotgun with a barrel length of less than 18 inches has no military purpouse........(never mind that it was the favorite weapon in the trenches of WWI which was the last war that the U.S. was involved in at the time)
Interesting chart, but co-relation is not causality. Many factors influence criminal behavior, and the prospect of getting killed by a home-owner certainly will make criminals more unwilling to break into homes. Personally I expect that incarcerating more career criminals (e.g. 3 strikes legislation) has more to do with the drop in crime, given that a relatively small number of offenders commit the majority of crimes. Take them out of circulation for long periods of time and the crime rate will certainly fall. That said, it is my opinion that the 2nd Amendment does protect an individual right, and since the 14th Amendment, the states are limited as well. The legal question (imho) is what standard - rational, intermediate, or strict scrutiny should be applied to measure the governmental interests opposing the individual interests. I think the framers spell it out clearly. By definition the militia referred to in the 2nd Amendment has the missions defined in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution ("To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;") then arms which are useful in carrying out these missions are clearly protected as an individual right. A useful shorthand for this (as per the Miller decision) is "whatever arm is used by the army."
It won't be long for "Skeptic" magazine to do a hatchet job on this story and this study.
And isn't it even more ironic that the justification for the federal and various state AWB's is that the banned weapons are "weapons of war?" If anything, Miller protects them (even if semi-auto) far more than so-called "sporting guns"). Further irony occurs when the same people cite Miller as being a justification for gun control, and specifically an AWB. This last bit shows that they either haven't read the case, that their reading comprehension is at about the level of my non-reading 3-year-old or that they're just a bunch of lying sacks of $hit.
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