Refutations of Popular Gun Myths
Oct. 26th, 2009 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apharhttp://generalnewsgroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/refutations-of-popular-gun-myths/
MYTH: “The police can protect you.”
---- Police write great reports, but an officer can only protect you if he/she happens to be there when the crime starts.
MYTH: “A handgun in a home is 43 times more likely to kill one of the residents than a criminal.”
---- Bogus. If you remove the suicides from his sampling, his statistic is now “6 times more likely”. Most of the remaining “victims” were multiple criminals living together, where one shot the other in a fight.
MYTH: “More children die of gunfire in America that the next 25 industrial nations combined”
---- Bogus. This "statistics" includes Kuwait(?!) but leaves out Russia and Brazil.
MYTH: “Countries with strict gun laws have less crime”
---- Russia, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil have very strict gun laws and much higher crime than we do. Switzerland has almost 100% handgun ownership. If guns caused crime, Switzerland would be the most dangerous nation on earth, rather than one of the safest. Finland has higher per-capita gun ownership than America, and they also have lower crime rates. Israel has 40% higher gun ownership, and near zero murder, except for terrorists. New York, California, Chicago, and Washington DC have the strictest gun laws in America, and the highest crime rates. Virginia borders Washington DC, yet it has few gun laws and far fewer violent crimes. Vermont has the least restrictive gun laws in America, and their gun crime rate is 48th out of 50 states. Every state that started allowing average citizens to carry concealed weapons saw a decrease in violent crime over the ensuing years. Gun laws have been proven to make things worse, not better.
MYTH: “Guns should be registered like cars”
---- Registering guns only makes sense if you want to confiscate all of them.
MYTH: “What if only one life is saved by more gun laws, isn’t is worth it?”
---- How many lives will be lost because of gun laws? 2.5 Million crimes per year are stopped by armed citizens. What are their lives worth?
MYTH: “The Second Amendment was written when muskets were the primary military arms. The Founding Fathers never would have considered allowing citizens to own assault rifles.”
---- Shall we also ban free speech on television, radio, and the Internet because they weren’t invented in 1791
MYTH: “The Second Amendment was about state militias like the National Guard”
---- We see dozens of statements in the writings of the Founding Fathers that the right to keep and bear arms is a personal right and none that say otherwise. E.g., “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
MYTH: “The police can protect you.”
---- Police write great reports, but an officer can only protect you if he/she happens to be there when the crime starts.
MYTH: “A handgun in a home is 43 times more likely to kill one of the residents than a criminal.”
---- Bogus. If you remove the suicides from his sampling, his statistic is now “6 times more likely”. Most of the remaining “victims” were multiple criminals living together, where one shot the other in a fight.
MYTH: “More children die of gunfire in America that the next 25 industrial nations combined”
---- Bogus. This "statistics" includes Kuwait(?!) but leaves out Russia and Brazil.
MYTH: “Countries with strict gun laws have less crime”
---- Russia, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil have very strict gun laws and much higher crime than we do. Switzerland has almost 100% handgun ownership. If guns caused crime, Switzerland would be the most dangerous nation on earth, rather than one of the safest. Finland has higher per-capita gun ownership than America, and they also have lower crime rates. Israel has 40% higher gun ownership, and near zero murder, except for terrorists. New York, California, Chicago, and Washington DC have the strictest gun laws in America, and the highest crime rates. Virginia borders Washington DC, yet it has few gun laws and far fewer violent crimes. Vermont has the least restrictive gun laws in America, and their gun crime rate is 48th out of 50 states. Every state that started allowing average citizens to carry concealed weapons saw a decrease in violent crime over the ensuing years. Gun laws have been proven to make things worse, not better.
MYTH: “Guns should be registered like cars”
---- Registering guns only makes sense if you want to confiscate all of them.
MYTH: “What if only one life is saved by more gun laws, isn’t is worth it?”
---- How many lives will be lost because of gun laws? 2.5 Million crimes per year are stopped by armed citizens. What are their lives worth?
MYTH: “The Second Amendment was written when muskets were the primary military arms. The Founding Fathers never would have considered allowing citizens to own assault rifles.”
---- Shall we also ban free speech on television, radio, and the Internet because they weren’t invented in 1791
MYTH: “The Second Amendment was about state militias like the National Guard”
---- We see dozens of statements in the writings of the Founding Fathers that the right to keep and bear arms is a personal right and none that say otherwise. E.g., “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
