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Why does America have so many guns?
The Washington Post ^ | 19 December 2012 | Harold Meyerson

Posted on 12/19/2012 7:34:08 PM PST by MinorityRepublican

Compare the rate of murder by gun in the United States to the rate in any other advanced industrial nation, and you’re forced to draw one of two conclusions: Either there are far more homicidal people in this country than just about anyplace else on Earth, or far more guns. We must either be home to more people who succumb to murderous rage or who kill out of the coldest of calculations, or it’s easier to pick up a gun and start shooting here than in any comparable country.

And yet, I’ve never heard even the staunchest gun advocate make the case that Americans are inherently more homicidal than everyone else. They repeat ad nauseum that people, not guns, kill people; but they don’t argue that there’s something about Americans that make them kill more than their counterparts in other nations.

Meanwhile, look at the numbers. In the United States, there are 3.2 gun homicides per 100,000 residents every year. Switzerland has the next highest rate of any advanced Western democracy, at 0.7 per 100,000. After Switzerland, the rate drops to 0.5 in Ireland and Canada; 0.4 in Sweden and Finland; 0.2 in New Zealand, Spain and Germany; 0.1 in France, Britain and Australia; and a flat 0 in Japan.

Want to argue that we have 32 times the rate of dangerous mental illness that they have in Australia? That Americans are characterologically 16 times more murderous than Spaniards or Germans? I thought not.

But in America, people who snap are a hell of a lot more likely to have a gun close by. The rate of gun ownership in the United States is 89 per every 100 people. No other advanced society has a rate even close to that.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: banglist; commieagitprop; gunownership; guns; strawman
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To: MinorityRepublican

Back before the 1960s there were no gun laws. Everyone’s pay barely covered the necessities for life.

Now there is extra paper money and people can afford more.


41 posted on 12/19/2012 7:53:00 PM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (REOPEN THE CLOSED MENTAL INSTITUTIONS! Damn the ACLU!)
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To: Wonder Warthog
Evidently the WP thinks being murdered with a gun makes the victim deader than murder with some other implement of violence.

Jerry Clower, from Liberty, Mississippi could explain how you can't get no deader than stone-cold-dead, right there.

Sorry, that's a southern thing.

/johnny

42 posted on 12/19/2012 7:54:00 PM PST by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: MinorityRepublican
the 2010 General Social Survey showed that 50 percent of adult Republicans owned guns, while only 22 percent of adult Democrats did.

So what. Most of the gun murders are perpetrated by Democrats.

43 posted on 12/19/2012 7:54:34 PM PST by CaptainK (...please make it stop. Shake a can of pennies at it.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

America has so many guns because it’s a guaranteed right in the Constitution...Why do you ask such simple questions???


44 posted on 12/19/2012 7:54:34 PM PST by Route395
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To: Theoria

That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that, but as many will testify here who dont live in the big cities, they often go months or years between murders.


45 posted on 12/19/2012 7:55:21 PM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh Communists, they are coming out of the woodwork more and more these days. Remember a time where a Commie would hide the fact that they were a Commie..now they are free and clear about their intentions..I guess when you have a Commie in the White House it makes a Commie feel pretty good about themselves. Apparently the 2nd Amendment means nothing to these buffoons


46 posted on 12/19/2012 7:55:31 PM PST by Sarah Barracuda
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To: MinorityRepublican
And yet, I’ve never heard even the staunchest gun advocate make the case that Americans are inherently more homicidal than everyone else. They repeat ad nauseum that people, not guns, kill people; but they don’t argue that there’s something about Americans that make them kill more than their counterparts in other nations.

Well, it's a point, but I'm not sure it's a valid one. However, Harold, by the same token, ever hear of Lenin, Mao Ze Tung, Pol Pot? How about Hitler, Mugabe, Idi Amin, Assad, etc., etc., etc.???

The Founding Fathers knew the dangers of a strong central government and intentionally created a system built on the concept of the balance of power.

The balance of power is the reason for the Second Amendment and the balance of power is why so many Americans have so many weapons. To guard against the actions of gun-grabbing nanny-state bedwetters like you and the leftists you love.

It's all about the balance of power, Harold. Get used to it . . . . . . . . . or MOVE to one of those tyrant-controlled nations you seem to admire where the people don't have guns, but the tyrants at the top do!

47 posted on 12/19/2012 7:55:49 PM PST by DustyMoment (Congress - another name for anti-American criminals!!)
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To: Buddy Sorrell
Unarmed citizens are subjects not free men.

Exactly!

48 posted on 12/19/2012 7:56:08 PM PST by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it)
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To: MinorityRepublican
Unfortunately for the U.S., we are simply a violent country.

If you disregard gun murders in the U.S., and just take the numbers for all other methods of murder (strangulation, knife, blunt object, etc.) we still have a rate of 1.8 per 100,000.

Compare that to the U.K., where the murder rate of all methods combined, INCLUDING gun murders, is 1.1 per 100,000.

stats referenced and discussed here

So, yeah, these stats show that we have a violent culture, but it also shows that guns aren't the cause. Law abiding gun owners use guns to protect themselves and others from the violent culture.

Oh, yeah, and our founding documents acknowledge that we have the God given right to own guns. Any other argument is moot.

49 posted on 12/19/2012 7:57:31 PM PST by Washi (Socialism is Slavery)
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To: MinorityRepublican

We like to shoot guns because it’s fun.


50 posted on 12/19/2012 7:59:05 PM PST by stuartcr ("Everything happens as God wants it to, otherwise, things would be different.")
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To: MinorityRepublican

“In the United States, there are 3.2 gun homicides per 100,000 “

Well yeah, limit the stats to a particular tool and the numbers get skewed to where the tool is common. Duh.


51 posted on 12/19/2012 7:59:18 PM PST by ctdonath2 ($1 meals: http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com)
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To: MinorityRepublican

We like to shoot guns because it’s fun.


52 posted on 12/19/2012 7:59:24 PM PST by stuartcr ("Everything happens as God wants it to, otherwise, things would be different.")
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To: MinorityRepublican
I'd take wild west American style justice over european-asian style communism any day. It's a difficult trade off between a few suicidal whackjobs vs. Lenin/Hitler/Mao style extermination. All of the massacres commited in America don't hold a candle to all of the slaughter commited by regimes in europe and asia. they have no room to talk, and can STFU as far as I'm concerned. The main difference being we try to prevent those types of wholesale killing sprees from happening here.
53 posted on 12/19/2012 7:59:24 PM PST by factoryrat (We are the producers, the creators. Grow it, mine it, build it.)
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To: MinorityRepublican



54 posted on 12/19/2012 7:59:41 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine (It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!)
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To: MinorityRepublican

So we can make sure other HELL HOLES stay safe....


55 posted on 12/19/2012 8:01:33 PM PST by goodnesswins (R.I.P. Doherty, Smith, Stevens, Woods.)
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To: MinorityRepublican
Hey liberals, subtract out your precious inner city animals from your crime statistics and write about this again.

A bit different light on things now?

56 posted on 12/19/2012 8:02:05 PM PST by doorgunner69
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To: MinorityRepublican

It makes no difference if the murder rate is by guns or other means. If guns were banned there is absolutely no evidence our murder rate would decrease. Our gun murder rate may decrease, but other tools of murders would likely rise.


57 posted on 12/19/2012 8:03:18 PM PST by Fzob (In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. Jefferson)
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To: MinorityRepublican

“Compare the rate of murder by gun in the United States to the rate in any other advanced industrial nation”

Notice the use of the word “advanced industrial” to intentionally exclude countries like Mexico that have high gun murder rates even though guns are banned.


58 posted on 12/19/2012 8:05:33 PM PST by ScottfromNJ
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To: MinorityRepublican
Why does America have so many guns?

Because we are the land of the free and the home of the brave

59 posted on 12/19/2012 8:14:32 PM PST by paul51 (11 September 2001 - Never forget)
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To: MinorityRepublican
people who snap

Lanza did not snap. He meticulously planned and executed mass murder. His is the face of pure, unadulterated evil!

60 posted on 12/19/2012 8:20:25 PM PST by Alaska Wolf (Carry a Gun, It's a Lighter Burden Than Regret)
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