Thursday, July 26, 2012

Anti-Gun Twits, Check Your Facts

In this article, Bloomberg said if the laws aren’t changed, 48,000 people in this country will be killed by guns during the next presidential term.

Ok, let's start with the simple fact that more people die from car accidents every year than firearms. In the last 5 years there have been more than 35,000 deaths per year on average (2006/7 actually broke 40k).

Of the gun-related deaths on a yearly basis (about 30k on average), only 40% of them are homicides. Over 50% of gun-related deaths each year are suicides. Those people would have found another way. That leaves only around 3000 deaths each year to accidents, so we add those to the 40% for homicides and we get around 16k deaths per year by guns that were not self-inflicted. That is less than half the yearly deaths by car, but you don't see them screaming for less cars.

Heck, deaths in automobiles have been climbing as the number of small cars on the road has increased. Why is that? Because those things are death traps! Congratulations, you have a nice little smart car, you're saving the environment... when you or someone else screws up, you're also far more likely to end up dead or seriously injured. Hope you can afford the increased cost of insurance thanks to Obamacare.

On the flip side, as gun ownership goes up, crime rates go down. There are over 2.5 million defensive gun uses by civilians every year, 92% of them are resolved without firing the weapon (the criminal either runs or gives up). On the other side, out of yearly crime rates only 1 million involve firearms, less than half the number of DGUs. The "assault weapon" category of guns only account for around 1% of total gun crimes. I would like to remind everyone that following Australia's ban on firearms their crime rate has been increasing, whereas in D.C. following the repeal of the gun ban their crime rate has been going down. Some people will point at the increased number of "homicides," but they ignore that even self-defense gets counted in police records(justifiable homicide).

Most important of all, let us not forget... CRIMINALS DO NOT FOLLOW THE LAW! If you make guns illegal or harder to acquire, the only people that will be negatively affected is law-abiding citizens.


Another fact; GUN FREE ZONES MAKE GREAT TARGETS! If you are intent on killing lots of people, all you have to do is look for the nearest place that doesn't allow firearms and you now have a target rich environment that is unlikely to be able to defend themselves. In most cases people will not try to counter someone with a firearm unless they are really close. The instinct for survival makes people want to stay hidden or run away, especially when the likelihood of death is greater.

According to the FBI violent crime in 2010 decreased by 6%, and property crime decreased by 2.9%. That'd be pretty consistent with increased gun sales per their national instant check system which puts the gun sales increase between 2009 and 2010 at around 13%.

Meanwhile you have places like Chicago, where handguns were illegal for the longest time and they are one of the deadliest places on Earth. Might be a reason for that...

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