Why More Guns Equal Less Crime; United States Crime Compared To Other Countries

John Lott wrote a book called “More Guns, Less Crime,” and that statement has become a heated debate, especially after the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Those trying to prove that more guns equal more crime love to site statistics comparing two different countries, or irrelevant gun violence information. They love to compare gun murder rates of the U.S. to a country such as England. In these cases they like to point out that England has relatively strict gun control, less guns per capita, and a lower gun murder rate than the U.S. Then these “experts” will site how other countries have fewer guns and fewer murders, therefore they maintain that the phrase “more guns, less crime” strictly doesn’t apply.

The reality is that the comparison of one country to another as it pertains to gun crime is rarely an objective measure of what works on a whole. The real issues being overlooked are the other influences that affect gun crime in each individual country. The only accurate way to make a comparison is to look at the data of one country’s statistics prior to strict gun control and compare how that same country has fared after the strict gun control and limiting laws went into effect.

In the case of those who love to compare England’s gun murder rate to that of the United States, it is true that England has a much lower rate of gun murder. What those who are making that comparison don’t want you to know is that the murder rate in England was even lower before the strict gun laws were in place. They were low before, and yes they are still comparatively low now, but they are still worse. And for those who argue that gun murders in England may have gone up, but now it’s “on it’s way down”, the reality is that it is still higher today than it was prior to strict gun control. So at the very best, strict gun control in that case has had little to no effect on the gun murder rate, and cannot be proven to have had a positive effect.

At the same time the media pundits are pointing out that the United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world (true) they also love to make it appear as if the United States also has the highest rate of murders in the world on a per capita basis (false). They hope to fool you into thinking these comparisons support their claim of more guns actually equaling more crime.

What they are doing, however, is comparing the gun homicide rate of the U.S. with selectively chosen countries with fewer guns and fewer per capita murders in an effort to try to prove their point. They are not using across the board statistics. The truth is that even though the U.S. does have the highest per capita rate of gun ownership, we rank 28^th in the world in per capita gun murders.

And it’s not just murder rates that should be looked at when discussing the ability to possess a firearm to protect one’s self. Violent assaults should hardly be ignored when determining if a country is safer before and after strict gun control and outright gun bans. Unless you get away from what the mainstream media is peddling, you’ll rarely here that England is quite violent compared to the U.S. Britain has been named the most violent country in the European Union, sporting 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The U.S.  has a paltry-by-comparison 466 violent crimes per 100,000 people. This leaves the United States out of the top ten countries in the world in this category, largely due to the citizens’ ability to defend themselves against violent attackers.

The “experts” on gun control like to leave out another important fact: In the United States between 1992 and 2011 gun ownership went up by 300% and 18 more states added concealed carry during that time. Between those same years violent crime in the U.S. was reduced by 49%. Not only did violent crimes decrease as a “per gun ownership” rate, but overall! I would call that more guns, more guns on the street in the hands of law-abiding citizens, and less crime.

As an example of how strict gun control works here in the United States when it is allowed to be implemented, let’s take a look at the murder capital of the U.S. and the city with the most strict gun laws in this country—Chicago. Chicago's top political brass continues to make gun ownership for law-abiding citizens as hard as possible, while they continue to struggle with the most violent crime and murder rates in the U.S. Last year Chicago alone had over 500 of the deaths by gun homicide in the United States.

The point Lott was making in his book is that in an individual country—compared to itself—with reduced gun controls and bans, reduces the violent crime and murder rates in that same country. At the very worst, statistics of a rare country could be argued to have had no effect. There has not been conclusive evidence that more guns ever equals more crime.

Those opposed to the legal carry of concealed weapons love to point out that not one of the mass shootings in the United States in the last 30 years has been stopped by an armed civilian with a concealed carry permit. This statement proves informative as to the mind and arguments of the anti-gun propagandists--like Wisconsin Swiss cheese it's both stinky, and full of holes. This is another flat out lie by those who resort to any means to influence the masses when they find that the real stats don’t support their claims.

It would be more accurate to say, “There hasn’t been a mass shooting where a concealed carry holder has had the legal opportunity to prevent a mass murder.”

Those who quote the first sentiment fail to include the fact that almost every public mass shooting in the past 30 years has happened in a “no gun zone.” The law-abiding citizens who would have had the potential to stop the mass shootings were prohibited by law from doing so. Those who had the means to save lives did as concealed carry holders do—abide by the laws. The current state and federal laws in place have possibly allowed more deaths than could have been prevented had armed citizens been allowed to exercise their right to not be a victim.

Also, by definition, a mass shooting has to involve multiple murders of innocent people. The truth is that we don’t have any idea how many have been prevented by concealed carry holders—since they never occurred in the first place. Often murders are prevented by the mere presence of a firearm without even one shot being fired. One example can be found here. http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html

You are also never told by the anti-gun lobby about the fact that law-abiding gun owners across the United States prevent home invasions, rapes and other violent assaults on a daily basis because of their ability to own and use a firearm to defend themselves and their loved ones.

Perhaps the answer to the violence in our country lies in a different place than the smooth-talking anti-gun politicians would like you to believe. Perhaps the solution lies in a firearm in your gun safe, your purse, or preferably, on your hip.

In the next article we’ll set aside both sides’ interpretation of what our Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is, and take a look at the founding Fathers’ intent behind the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms.

The Real Solutions To Mass Murders, School Shootings And Gun Violence

Is it time to look outside the box at the real culprit of the gun violence in the U.S? Is there one simple solution that would dramatically reduce violence and gun crime like the mass shooting we just saw at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut?

Or, is it more realistic to admit, hard as it may be, that there may be no one item or issue creating the culture of violence in America?  Is gun violence or violence in general intricately woven into the fabric of our country? Or as H. Rap Brown said back in the 60s, “Violence is as American as apple pie.”

Perhaps we need to closely observe which threads need to be cut from our fabric, and which are required to remain for the long-term existence of this country and her people?

Without a doubt we need to look at all the pieces of the puzzle if we are serious about getting to the bottom of the American culture of gun violence and the causes of the mass school shootings. Perhaps our culture has made a change for the worse in other areas that have slipped our attention in the past few decades, and especially today in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook.

The fabric of our nation is in much worse shape today than it has ever been. Maybe there is some merit to those pointing to violent movies and video games infiltrating the minds of our young. Even the war movies of a few decades ago chose to show death with someone falling, or maybe an arm or hand in the picture going limp. Today if there’s not blood, it’s a dud. And the more the better it seems, at least in terms of movie profits.

Then we’ve got the hypocritical Hollywood movie stars making increasingly more violent movies. Then they spout off about how we should ban the very guns they are glorifying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOt7Fi49PT0

Is it the music we allow our children to listen to? Is it the general lack of supervision of our children overall? Are we even able to supervise our children properly in our technological age--or do we even care? Perhaps we’re just too afraid to spend enough time with our children to bring them up properly so we’d rather rely on the government to just eliminate all the “dangerous things” in their lives so we no longer have to take responsibility in supervising them.

Today we’re covering our children’s problems by giving them psychological drugs instead of love. The drug industry and the doctors have become the biggest drug pushers in this country—prescribing drugs they know full well increase the tendency for violence and chance of suicide. These statistics are significant. Some of these drugs increase the odds for violence 12 times more—not compared to those who don’t take them—compared to other drugs that have already been shown to increase these tendencies over those who take no drugs!

Many mass murderers and individuals responsible for domestic violence in the family have been known to be on these medications, yet this is never brought up by those who want to keep your focus on the guns. Anti-gunners continue saying the gun lobby is so rich and powerful at the same time they ignore a much more plausible reason for crime—the pharmaceutical companies. This is partly because the pharmaceutical industry is many times more powerful than the gun lobby will ever be.

Is our culture desensitizing the upcoming generations to violent behavior? Have we become too afraid to stand up for what’s right for fear of offending someone who may not agree with us? It seems our ability to do the right thing has become overshadowed by our fear of offending.

Mass murder is tied to the ability, along with the willingness, to resort to this type of violence. That doesn’t come from any one item. In the absence of guns there are plenty other means to do more severe, and more instantaneous, and more catastrophic damage if one so desires. Focusing on bogus solutions without addressing the real problem might just get us another Oklahoma City bombing.

Every time an outrageous shooting occurs, it doesn’t make sense to focus on an inanimate object just to try and take away some people’s only viable means of self defense. Why vilify those who don’t abuse the privilege to have a firearm just because someone else chose to misuse it? If the media treated vehicle deaths with the same urgency as they do gun deaths there would be breaking news every 52 minutes. But they don’t because it’s not about the deaths. It’s about the guns.

More guns for law-abiding citizens?
If lawmakers want to focus on guns as the cause of violence then they have a duty to view the solution as perhaps being the same as what hospitals have gotten correct for a number of years now. It’s what is sometimes referred to poison/anti-poison. You don’t give penicillin to a cancer patient to fight off the cancer. You give a poison that’s stronger than the poison attacking him or her. If you want to assume guns are the problem, then it’s time to look at what the anti-gunners will consider an inconvenient truth—guns may just be the solution.

As Wayne LaPierre so aptly stated, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.”

The only viable solution that has been proposed to prevent school shootings is to implement concealed carry on school grounds. At the very least, teachers who take the protection of their children seriously should not be prevented from doing what they can to see to it the kids stay safe.

Of course for those teachers who would like to protect the children, it should be mandatory to keep any weapon concealed. I would even argue that those who choose to carry not even mention it to anyone. This is for the same reason mentioned in a previous article about the placement of armed guards at schools. If a criminal knows who is carrying, that person will become the first target. For true safety, keep it concealed.

I don’t advocate that all teachers be armed. I don’t advocate that all citizens should be armed—even law-abiding, mentally competent individuals. Truth is, some just shouldn’t be armed if they don’t like the idea and aren’t comfortable with it. But, if teachers are really serious about protecting their students, why are politicians getting in the way of giving the teachers a fighting chance to keep the children safe? We’ve already seen the ugly alternative too many times. Maybe it’s time to wake up.

If the government wants to start with a quick, simple, and effective means of minimizing the damage caused by deranged gunmen, start by installing tougher doors and locks on classroom doors just like they do now in the cockpits of airplanes. At least this way when the shooting starts, collateral damage can be minimized. It’s much better than huddling in a corner hoping a psycho won’t target your room when he’s done with the one where he started.

Immediately after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, the President stated, “We need to start in our own hearts and homes.” If taken as a possible starting point, and not as rhetoric to deflect all responsibility away from the real cause—the individual—the President’s original comments are 100% correct.

We need to ask ourselves what we can do as individuals to strengthen our moral society. We need to stop deflecting the true cause of our problems in this county. We need to act, and at the same time act in such a way that preserves our liberties that made us the greatest nation in the world instead of being so afraid to offend others that we pussy-foot around the real solutions.

In the next article we take a look at one of the most controversial, and seemingly most illogical, solutions to the gun crime and mass shootings in the United States—the argument that “more guns equals less crime.”

The Anti-gunners, The Connecticut Shooting, And Gun Control Legislation

I’ve found that there tend to be two large groups who continue the push for the limiting, if not outright banning, guns from American society—those who are already protected by armed bodyguards, and those who are uninformed or misinformed about anything to do with firearms—usually by the first group of individuals.

The first group includes those who hold the largest amount of power in our country—the ones who make the laws. The second group has only learned what they “know” by what the first group is telling them. Most of those in the first group also fit nicely into this second category, combining the two to make a scary combination of both being uninformed and making the laws.

Together, these two groups make up a contingent that seems to think they are capable of making laws about an item they know nothing about. This mentality is like allowing PETA, or vegetarians, make the laws regulating the beef and poultry industries.

My perception was further confirmed to be correct when I heard Senator Diane Feinstein talk about her legislative proposals for gun control. It wasn’t so much about what she inserted into the legislation as much as it was her absolutely ignorant statements about guns that showed she is an absolute idiot about guns. Here's part of what she said:

She mentioned that AR-style weapons are used by holding them at the hip, and spraying bullets at people. She mentioned that 5 rounds of ammunition is enough for self defense. She is also proposing legislation that could ban items such as competition trigger parts (while out the other side of her mouth she's saying is protecting sport shooting). She doesn't want the ranchers in the Southern states bordering Mexico to have guns with enough ammunition be able to defend themselves and their loved ones from the drug cartels coming across the border with fully automatic weapons. And, she want's to outlaw .22 caliber rifles and any other rifle with a folding front site.

Perhaps she wouldn't mind having her own bodyguards with only five bullets available to protect her if she’s ever attacked. Or perhaps she’s listening to her other ignorant colleagues about how to hold and shoot a sporting rifle. In any case, my first couple paragraphs have been substantiated by her own comments.

As for the largely uninformed general public, the effect of the anti-gun marketing campaigns is all too obvious. The truth about guns is rarely heard in the hands of the largely anti-gun media. With the financial backing of anti-gun billionaires the media is supremely biased toward the anti-gun lobby in their reports.

Because of the current situation, it’s now more important than ever for people to seek out the truth about guns and the recent school shootings instead of simply eating what you are being fed.

In the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, those with the anti-gun agendas have now gotten what they have been hoping for—a public tragedy they can parlay into their true anti-gun agenda. They can now focus on the guns used in the shooting as a way to gain a foothold on the mountain they’ve been waiting for years to climb.

Next time we’ll take a close look at what’s being said by the anti-gun lobby, what they aren’t telling you, and why they hope you never find out.

The History Of Gun Registration And Gun Control

What is the true underlying reason behind gun registration? The unknowing gun owner (and non-gun owners) often wonder, “Why should I worry about registering my guns? If gun registration will help reduce the type of shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut why should I be opposed to registration?”

This is exactly what those proposing a national database of registered guns want you to think—that registration will somehow prevent crime, make you safer, that there is no other reason for it, and therefore no reason you should be against it.

First, keep in mind that the state of Connecticut did require “assault weapon” registration at the time of the most recent school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. Yet, the registration law did nothing to prevent one of the worst school shootings in history. The conversation about this should stop right there because that alone sufficiently shows that gun registration won’t prevent gun crime.

But for the sake of those who want more I will point out that, second, criminals don’t register their guns. (This is really the most important reason—rule number one—as to why registration has no effect on crime.)

Gun registration doesn’t prevent guns from being stolen and doesn’t prevent them from being used in crimes. Criminals get their guns by stealing them or purchasing them through other criminals This means that even if a gun was registered, if it’s stolen, and if the police documented that information, that still doesn’t prevent the criminal from committing a crime in the future with the stolen gun even though it was registered.

In short, it’s more than obvious that gun registration will have no effect on gun crime whatsoever, no matter what the media and anti-gun politicians are peddling.

Gun registration is a redundant process requiring more government dollars (your tax dollars) for another money-wasting program. When a law-abiding citizen purchases a firearm, the serial number is already documented and given to the police department. Since you need a photo ID with your current address to purchase a gun anyway, this is the same as law enforcement or the government knowing exactly how to track a gun to the rightful owner. In other words, law enforcement already has the ability to track a gun to the person who purchased it. As the laws currently are, tracking a gun takes nothing more than a routine amount of energy.

Even in the face of these simple facts, new gun legislation is being proposed right now on adding more gun registration. The only logical reason—and the hope of the anti-gun population—is that this list will facilitate the eventual full confiscation of all firearms.

Since there is no evidence whatsoever to back up the claim that gun registration will reduce gun violence, what additional purpose could gun registration possibly have?

It makes sense here to look at what the anti-gun lobby won’t tell you about the history of the countries that have been successful in tricking their citizens into registering their firearms. Gun control and total confiscation starts with the registration of firearms.

Even Attorney General Janet Reno said, "Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal."

Those who have committed murder in the largest degree are the dictators that have first disarmed their citizens—Mao Tze Tung, Josef Stalin, Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. History suggests that the largest mass murderers are corrupt governments.

“All political power comes for the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns,that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party”
- Mao Tze Tung, Nov. 6, 1938

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents (translated—people who disagreed with the government), unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Hitler stated, “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. So let’s not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country.”

The Nazis used gun registration lists when conquering areas of Russia to go door to door to remove the guns of the law-abiding citizens promising them safety in return.

Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

Gun control was established in China in 1935 and between 1948 and 1952 20 million political dissidents (those who disagreed with the government) were rounded up and killed.

Of more recent time, Uganda established gun control in 1970. They didn’t waste any time, as from 1971 to 1979 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and murdered.

Pol Pot ,was responsible for killing 27 percent of his own ‘educated’ and unarmed citizens in Cambodia.

Even after knowing all this, the anti-gun advocates like to make the ludicrous claim that they have to register their vehicle and that there are numerous other regulations on their vehicle, as if that somehow pertains to gun registration.

First, no one is interested in confiscating vehicles—even though, ironically, they are involved in thousands more deaths than guns. I would also ask those who so proudly proclaim their favor of registration, “How many drunk driving fatalities has vehicle registration prevented? How many vehicular homicides?” And, “How does vehicle registration work in preventing car-jacking and outright theft of vehicles?” Using the vehicle registration ideology, based on absolutely no connection between the registration of vehicles and the reduction of vehicular deaths or crimes, why would anyone in their right mind think registering a firearm would have a useful effect against gun crime? Remember rule number one—criminals don’t register their guns.

In the face of how gun registration continues to pan out in the other countries who have adopted it, it would be hard for even those bombarded by grossly inept governmental misinformation not to see that firearm registration is just the start of banning and confiscating the guns from the law-abiding citizens of a nation.

Sure, this drastic change to the future firearm landscape is hard to fathom when all your liberties are still intact. But history is a great teacher and it would be worth heeding those from other countries--many who are calling out from their graves--who are warning us what the end result will be.

As Bradlee Dean said, “The civil government that desires such a monopoly of force [the only ones with guns] is a threat to the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens, for that government has [at that point] ceased to be “of and for the people.”

No matter what the claim, there are no good reasons for the registration of guns—except to those who want to take them. In other words, the goal of gun registration is to have a readily available list for when the time comes to ban guns just for the sake of banning guns. This should make it very apparent to the now newly informed, that gun control is not about the guns—it is about control.

Next we discuss real solutions to our crime in the United States that will actually work.