Posted on 06/11/2010 11:52:01 AM PDT by neverdem
John Lott, the nation’s premier expert on guns and crime, has offered more proof that more guns equal less crime. Writing at the Big Government website, Mr. Lott offers a counterintuitive truth: “President Obama surely didn’t intend it, but he deserves some credit for last year’s 7.4 percent drop in murder rates. His election caused gun sales to soar, and crime rates to plummet.”
Gun sales soared because Americans rightly feared the leftist president would try to severely restrict the right to own firearms, particularly handguns. Liberals fear guns despite evidence demonstrating that higher rates of gun ownership mean lower rates of crime.
Gun sales started rising in October 2008, Mr. Lott reports, but in November, 2008, sales shot up 450,000 above November 2007. By October, 2009, “about 2.5 million more Americans bought guns than during the previous year.
Concomitantly, Mr. Lott writes, the murder rate dropped 7.4 percent, the largest decrease since 1999. That year, Clinton factotum Elena Kagan was pushing tighter gun control following the Columbine school massacre. But “Americans were worried that more gun bans were coming,” Mr. Lott writes. “[G]un sales soared.”
When Mr. Lott studied concealed carry laws a decade or so ago, he found, again, that guns stop crime: “By adopting shall-issue [concealed carry permit] laws, states reduced murders by 8.5 percent, rapes by 5 percent, aggravated assaults by 7 percent and robbery by 3 percent.” As well, if states that didn’t have right-to-carry laws had adopted them, “citizens might have been spared approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies.”
Writing in Human Events, U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., reports that FBI data from 2007 showed lower rates of homicide (30 percent less), robbery (46 percent less) and aggravated assault (12 percent less) in states with liberal carry laws versus those without them. Overall, the violent crime rate in right-to-carry states is 22 percent lower.
After Florida enacted its concealed carry law in 1986, the violent crime rate dropped 32 percent and the murder rate dropped 58 percent. Another interesting datum: 40 percent of felons interviewed for one research project said that fear of an armed victim deterred their crimes.
The simple truth, as Mr. Lott and liberal criminologist Gary Kleck have repeatedly demonstrated, is that an armed society is a safe society. “[R]obbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist,” Mr. Kleck wrote in his book “Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America,” “were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist.”
These facts are hardly shocking. Criminals want compliant, helpless victims. Helpless, of course, is how some on the left see Americans, one reason they target Americans who pack heat.
The data on guns and crime justify liberal carry laws. Society is safer when government does not impede the right to own a gun.
So, in a roundabout way, we can thank President Obama for the recent drop in violent crime rates.
But the data AREN’T “ir-ignorable”.
Rom 1:18 tells us that the wicked suppress information that exposes a truth that they don’t like.
Nice timing - I’m in the middle of writing a piece on why Gates’ ratcheting up restrictions on personal gun ownership by military members is so completely wrong-headed. If ANY of the people in the room with Maj Hassan had been carrying, there would have been far fewer victims. Don’t know how far I’ll get, but it’s gotta be said.
Colonel, USAFR
“Liberals fear guns despite evidence demonstrating that higher rates of gun ownership mean lower rates of crime.”
Tell the American public WHY that is the case, John. The left despise gun ownership because it is very, very DIFFICULT (and damned dangerous to TRY) to enslave an armed people.
He has to do something, even though he's unwittingly creating the environment that promotes multiple-victim shootings, i.e. places where everybody is supposed to be disarmed. This is nuts!
Gun Control and Mass Murders by John R. Lott Jr.
Although data is the plural form of datum, it requires a singular verb or modifier when it's used as an abstract mass noun, such as information. Editors who insist on making data plural when it sounds awful to the ear are just annoying.
Information is - Data is.
(Don't bother flaming me. You won't convince me that "data are.")
Liberals fear guns because they are primitive and superstitious.
We should never forget that just maintaining our freedoms is never enough. Each of us should ponder the question: how can our gun rights be advanced?
Those opposed to gun rights spent many decades trying to erode them by insidious means. We are mistaken if we think we have achieved more than a temporary victory with gun rights in the present.
District of Columbia v. Heller was decided with a 5-4 vote. A single Supreme Court justice, a single heartbeat, decided that Heller, and by extension, the rest of America, could “keep” their gun rights.
One person. And don’t for a minute assume that this decision is set in stone. Right now, a single justice might have decided that Heller went “too far”, and should be “toned down” with the upcoming case, McDonald v. Chicago.
In McDonald, remember that right now, the trial court has held in favor of Chicago, as well as the 7th US Circuit Court. That is two strikes.
If gun rights win in this case, we will have “won the battle” with only a single bullet. No time to be celebrating.
There is a way, however, that gun rights might be able to “win the war”, for at least a generation or two.
This is to realize that the real enemy of gun rights in the United States is our out of control federal government. In fact, it is so out of control, it may be beyond the ability of the federal government, and the political parties, to get it back under control.
Fortunately, there is another way. The individual States are right now forming blocs to assert their authority in the face of the overgrown federal government. One of a dozen of these blocs is based on the gun rights of those States citizens, out of federal jurisdiction.
But likely in the face of a national disaster, such as an economic collapse, the individual States may need to call a constitutional convention, to put the federal government back into order.
Since about 1910, the progressive movement of the time put propaganda into the public schools, that a constitutional convention is “Unthinkable. It would be controlled by radicals.” This is a lie. There is nothing radical about a constitutional convention, as whatever is decided there must be ratified by 38 States to go into effect.
And the only thing that 38 States would agree to is that the power of the federal government is out of control. So this would be the sole focus of such a convention. Restoring the federal government to its proper constitutional framework.
Which, among many other things, means keeping their hands off of gun rights.
So what is demanded of us as citizens? To support our States, and to encourage them to stand up for our gun rights. If they have to, and call a constitutional convention, we the people can stand behind them with encouragement, that they do the right thing for our nation.
And our rights.
news I can use
Bob Heinlein was right.
You obviously don’t listen much to Canadian hockey broadcasters.
Laws don’t stop criminals - GUNS DO.
If liberals aren't willing to trust soldiers to carry arms - it's over. That's brain-dead beyond brain-dead....
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