From my friend BL at the shadowy organization, Big Tobacco, Wal-Mart Apologizing, Global Warming-Supporters, Who Are Doing It All To Kill Innocent Iraqis:
Time to get all mathematical.Reliapundit adds: Gun ownership restriction laws have no relation to gun crime. Not anywhere in the world. Violent crime is cultural, not weapons-based. The violent criminal will use whatever weapon he feels is sufficient to get the job done. If he thinks you're unarmed, then you are a more likely target. So gun ownership by law-abiding citizens is actually a deterrent. Since no law can disarm the criminals we are more likely to reduce gun crime by arming people.
We have about 10,000 annual gun homicides in the USA.
That means, in any given year, the odds that any given American firearm will be kill someone is 1 in 27,000.
The British have, in England and Wales, about 75 a year. But that's out of only 125,000 firearms. The odds that in any given year, a British firearm will kill someone is 1 in 1,666.
Conclusion: A British gun is more than 16 times as likely to kill as an American gun.
Crimes are stopped and criminals are caught by armed citizens everyday.
9 comments:
One of the reasons why many crimes in Britain are likely to happen is because they make it a crime to act in self-defense, as this American Spectator article tells. Their laws, if that's what they're to be called, are some of the most insane I've ever heard about.
Stepping aside from the mishmash of contradictory points attempting to be made here, here's a queston:
Let's say that the UK relaxed some gun laws, and as a result, gun ownership doubled.
What do you believe that would do to their yearly total of 75 murders?
reduce or no change
the number of guns is not a predictor of gun violence.
some places with high amounts of guns have relatively no gun violence - like vermont.
and israel. and switzerland.
and many other places.
Doubling UK gun ownership would do nothing to the murder rate??
What if we took that number and doubled it again, to have 500,000 British gun owners? Do you still believe that they would have 75 (or less!) murders a year?
I thought that the article was trying to say that UK guns are more likely to kill than US guns. Now I'm confused- is it just the first 125,000 that kill?
BTW - I don't believe the incredibly low British murder rate from the post- I think Pastorius meant "750", not 75.
I stand corrected!
according to this Government report, there were in fact, only 50 shooting victims in the recent year they tracked it (2005/06).
yeah: i mean it.
and u r right: the number is too low.
i think that scotland yard is re-investigating 3000 deaths of muslim women as honor-killings.
not many were with guns.
theres more than one way to skin a cat.
the key to gun violence is the underlying culture: we are a more violent culture than the uk - principally because southern culture and black culture and drug cultures here are very violent and have been for a long long time.
all studies prove that per cpita gun ownership is not predictive of gun crime.
the culture is the key.
but IF MORE LAW ABIDING PEOPLE HAVE GUNS THE CRIME GOES DOWN. this is a fact. many MANY criminals are caught and crimes aborted by gun-toting citizens.
criminals are more likely to rib a house that has a sign on it that says "DISARMED PACIFIST" then one with an NRA sticker on it.
ALSO: if blacks had been armed in post civil war and jim crow era there would have been fewer lynching.
AND GUN OWNERSHIP was a KEY point for the racists back then in the civil war era; they LITERALLY ARGUED IN COURT that blacks were not to be given full rights because that would mean they could own guns.
armed people are not gonna be victims of genocide.
an unarmed jews wears a yellow star of david.
an armed jew wears a blue and white flag of israel.
self defense is a universal human right.
and people need to defend themselves with guns in many many places.
people who feel they need a gun must be allowed to get them.
it is THEIR RIGHT.
i agree with the NRA that people committing ANY crime with a gun should go away FOR LIFE.
and i agree that we need better background checks and that these can and should be down in 24 hours.
a community of law abiding citizens which is armed is a very very SAFE place to live.
especially ion emote areas where a cop/sheriff can;t be there for a long time.
then u gotta defend yourself.
guns don't kill people. they defend people from those who might do them harm and take what is rightfully theirs.
I know my comment comes a bit late, but... it really does stretch credulity to claim that multiplying the number of guns by 432 (by my calculations, that would equal the number in the USA, adjusting for population) would not result in more murders. Of course, it's true that the murder rate has very important cultural determinants. But to say that the prevalence of guns has no effect... come on. Look at school shootings. You think we don't have disaffected schoolkids over here too?
BTW, the overall murder rate is very much lower - whether you include other weapons or not. Check NationMaster.
Besides, how can you separate guns and culture? Guns from the culture of guns? Surely, the two are linked?
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