With the continued cry for stricter gun control and the call for the removal of assault weapons, adding magazine limits and more, let’s try those and a few more new laws as an experiment and see what happens to the murder rate! As a supporter of the 2nd Amendment and individual rights, I confess that we have to do something to help make people safer. So let’s try what those calling themselves #gunsense or #guncontrol want.
Let’s start out by enacting laws that require the following: universal background checks; gun registration requirements; gun violence restraining orders; a ten-day waiting period for gun purchases; an “assault weapons” ban; one-gun-per-month limit on handgun purchases; minimum age of 21 to purchase a firearm; ban carrying firearms on campuses; “good cause” restriction for concealed carry permit issuance; limit the buying of ammunition to state-approved vendors; gun-free zones mandated for anywhere that sells alcohol.
Those should be a good start, right? If we can only enact all of those new laws we should be able to
curtail and maybe even reduce the number of murders by a significant amount, I hope. You see, many are clamoring for “common sense gun control,” yet they fail to say just what that is. I have asked many a gun control supporter just what they want and they almost always look at me with a vacant look. Like they had not thought out just what they have been led to believe is the answer. To them, gun control of any kind is what they want. Anything that will help. So I suggest the above as a start to see what happens. (Bear with me and read to the end.)
I mean, we have an “epidemic” of gun violence in the U.S., correct? That’s what the doctors told me when I read their posts, tweets, and articles. We have a crisis of gun murders, right? That’s what Moms Demand Action, Everytown, and Michael Bloomberg have told us, isn’t it? The media tells us all the time that we have a huge problem of gun violence in the U.S. We have a crisis/epidemic of school shootings in the U.S. now, right? That’s what they have blasted all over the media and social networks. So something has to be done about all this, correct?
What would you say if I told you a state has already enacted those laws that I listed above? Any guess as to what
the results were? Well, the murder rate went up 18 percent. WHAT? That is right, the state of California already
has enacted those things (all of them) and the murder rate in that state went up 18 percent. How is that possible? We have been told over and over that restrictions and new laws will help curb the murder and shooting epidemic. I guess not.
As for those claims of a national epidemic or crisis of firearms shootings, murders, and school shootings being a crisis or epidemic, I had to look at the numbers just to see how bad it was. Imagine how surprised I was (not really) when I discovered that instead of increasing sharply or even being higher than in the past, murder and firearms victimizations have dropped dramatically over the last 25 years or so. And not by a few percentage points, but by more than 45 percent each! According to the FBI Crime database (FBI Crime Statistics), murder and firearms victimization has dropped by almost half over the last 25 years. So what about our crisis and epidemic?
Now I do not profess to be a linguist or language scholar, but even I know that when something drops by almost half, it is not anything close to an epidemic or crisis. In fact, by anyone’s standards that would be called a very positive trend. So why are we being told it’s a crisis, epidemic or problem? Maybe because if it was known that it’s not, those people would have no basis for these restrictions and laws? So why don’t people point out these facts to those calling for these new laws and restrictions? We do, but of course are told we are lying, or making stuff up, even with the numbers (facts) available to all.
And what about the school shooting epidemic? We all can agree that is real, can’t we? Well, let us look at the numbers again. National Public Radio (NPR), not known to be a very conservative media outlet, published an article titled “The School Shootings That Weren’t.“ In this very interesting article they say: “This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, nearly 240 schools…reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” Now that is alarming! 240 school shootings in just one year. Anyone can agree that is terrible and should be investigated farther. So NPR did just that, and they reported, “We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.” They report that two-thirds of the reported school shootings reported by the DOE never happened.
Now that is just downright scary that the U.S. Department of Education would report things that are in such error. But they do. And it is picked up and run with by many who support any kind of firearms restrictions that it somehow takes on a life of its own, even when it’s false. If it’s on the Internet it has to be true, right? We hear it over and over again, that firearms are the problem. Murders, firearms victimization and other gun-related things are a crisis. Why do we hear this when the numbers do not support these claims? Because the world has changed. The Internet has made the ability to post and have spread around the nation or world in minutes any claim that anyone wants to make. Even if it’s not true. And many people today are just plain too lazy to do any research for themselves. They rely on others, even when those others may not have the facts (or may have an agenda), to tell them what they should think.
Here is a fun experiment to try. Find someone that wants to have stricter gun control laws or restrictions. Ask them simply why they want them. If they say because of all the murders or school shootings, simply ask them how much have these things gone up over, say, the last 25 years or so. Ask them to tell you what the increase in numbers has been. When they can’t, simply ask them: Then why do you want restrictions? If they point to bogus, made-up numbers, help them out by directing them to the FBI Violent Crime Statistics and ask them to again prove their claim. They can’t.
We live in the instant information age, even if that information may be misleading, or worse, made up. Information takes on a life of its own and becomes fact because so many people read it and tweet it and post it. It must be true, right? The answer? No.
