The US accounts for approximately 40% of civilian firearm ownership in the world. Since it's regularly claimed that guns cause crime, one would then expect the US to have 40% of the worlds firearm homicides or deaths.
IANSA states that there are about 1000 firearm deaths/day, 250 of which are of a military nature. The remainder are homicides (560), suicides (140), and unintentional (50).
So let's do some crunching.
US firearm homicides/day (34)/World firearm homicides/day (560)= 6.1%
A discrepancy of 33.9% if guns cause crime.
US firearm suicides/day (~46.5)/World firearm suicides (140) = 33.3%
A discrepancy of 6.7% if guns cause suicide.
US firearm unintentional and unknown deaths/day (2.77)/ World unintentional firearm deaths/day (50) = 5.5%
A discrepancy of 34.5%.
So the US is missing about 190 homicides, 10 suicides, and 17 unintentional deaths by firearm/ day according to the anti's own numbers. So while the US does have a higher number of suicides by firearm than many nations, it does not have higher suicides overall nor does it equal the percentage of ownership. The US also only accounts for about 1/20th of the firearm homicides and accidents when the anti logic says it should be 8x higher.
So since the private ownership of firearms isn't 'causing' firearm crime or deaths, isn't 'causing' crime of any sort, and industrialization isn't a common factor, perhaps there are other factors involved.
But that would involve groups like IANSA, Brady Campaign, and the VPC taking off their blinders.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Anti Math
IL Senators claiming poverty at $75K+/year
In the middle of Garrett talking to reporters, Senate President Emil Jones Jr., a Chicago Democrat who supports the raises, walked past and loudly quipped that he needed to get some food stamps.
So just a year after a 10% raise and a $750M budget deficit, they think they need more. Hendon, who chairs the committee the bill goes through, won't even let it come up for a vote but has the gall to blame everyone else:
"They want to use the Senate and pimp us, and they keep taking the money," Hendon said of the House.
At least one Senator gets it:
"Let me just say that some of the legislators have missed the point if they think that they need the raise because they're not making $150,000 a year," Garrett said. "We are here as public servants. We're not here to assume that we should be entitled to be receiving major increases every year when the rest of the state and other state employees are suffering."
Guns "Easily Available" in Gun-Free Chicago
Criminologists say there's no clear reason Chicago's murder rate is so much higher, but believe there may be more guns here.
Hmmm, maybe the murder rate has something to do w/ this:
Since the beginning of the year through March, 70 percent of the murder victims had prior arrests records and 97 percent of the offenders had prior arrest records.
So a 97% recidivism rate yet most Daleycrats think the answer is to blame everyone else for Chicago's crime problem. If the easy availability of guns is the problem, you would expect to see higher crime and murder rates in the rest of the state where legal ownership is common. Yet Chicago accounts for 60% of the murders and 35% of overall crime but only has less than 1/4 of the state population.
One interesting bit of mixed-PSH came out though:
And FBI Special Agent in Charge Bill Monroe says despite talk to the contrary, assault rifles aren't the criminals' weapon of choice.
Yet:
"Most of our murders that are occurring out there are not occurring with assault rifles. It's the smaller handguns that are causing a lot of these murders," Monroe said.
No, the handguns are 'causing' them, that would be the criminals.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Fear Mongering.
The Anti's say we exist on it and they are innocent. Their own mailings show that's disingenuous.
More at IllinoisCarry.
