“Hundreds of thousands of American lives hang in the balance.”
Liar.
The murder rate in the U.S. is around 18,000 per year, a rate not too different than many countries with extreme gun control.
Arbitrary Comparisons Between Countries
The U.S. has a high gun murder rate, whereas a country like England with strict gun controls has almost no gun murders and a very low murder rate. Doesn’t this show that gun control is effective in reducing murder rates? Not exactly. Prior to having any gun controls, England already had a homicide rate much lower than the United States (Guns, Murders, and the Constitution: A Realistic Assessment of Gun Control, Don B. Kates Jr.). Japan is another country typically cited (see Japanese Gun Control, by David B. Kopel). (Briefly discussing the difference in homicide rates between England and the U.S. is Clayton Cramer’s, Variations in California Murder Rates: Does Gun Availability Cause High Murder Rates?)
Gun control opponents can play similar games. The Swiss with 7 million people have hundreds of thousands of fully-automatic rifles in their homes (see GunCite’s “Swiss Gun Laws”) and the Israelis, until recently, have had easy access to guns (brief summary of Israeli firearms regulations here). Both countries have low homicide rates. Likewise this doesn’t mean more guns less crime.
The U.S. has a higher non-gun murder rate than many European country’s total murder rates. On the other hand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Mexico have non-gun murder rates in excess of our total murder rate.
Incidentally in 13th century Europe, several studies have estimated homicide rates in major cities to be around 60 per 100,000. (Even back then, the equivalent of coroners, kept records.)
There are many, many factors, some much more prominent than gun availability that influence homicide rates and crime in general. (See this excerpt from 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Report and GunCite’s “Is Gun Ownership Correlated with Violent Deaths?”)
Due to the many confounding factors that arise when attempting international comparisons, this approach would appear to hold little promise for determining the influence of gun levels (or handgun availability) on violence rates.
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvinco.html
Using my estimates (which is just as good as libs using their Magic 8 Ball )over 90% of those murders were with stolen guns.
Common core math to arrive at those numbers over the next 5 years? It’s not the bottom line number anymore, it’s the process used to arrive at the conclusion that’s important. :>}
What about knives? What about all the 3rd world hell holes in which women and children cannot defend themselves from predators, both inside and outside of government. Lieberals always lie.
When you factor out black on black murders it goes down by almost half.
Do you mean ‘homicide’ rate? That is the term used in vital statistics. That means if you have to kill someone in self defense, that counts as a homicide, but it is justified, so cannot be considered murder. Take a look at knife slaughter in other countries (including so-called civilized places) that outlaw personal gun ownership. Humans are no less violent in other countries than in America. Take a look at the lovely South AFrica post-Apartheid. I think Americans are pretty restrained all things considered. However, as the lawless ones continue to immigrate into our country unfettered in the notion of civilized behavior, that certainly does a lot to drive up the numbers. No one in ‘power’ seems to want to deal with that for some strange reason.
Which number is reduced significantly if you subtract the number of gangsters dying in combat with other gangs. Hardly representative of the gun owning demographic.