“A moment’s reflection shows that Liberalism is entirely negative. It is not a formative force, but always and only a disintegrating force.” —Francis Parker Yockey
The House voted today to override the Governors’ veto of Senate Bill 88 on the heels of the Senate voting to override last week. The vote was 251 to 111. It should be important to note that the Governor and his faithful went into overdrive to build support for sustaining the veto, to include a walking tour of Lincoln street area of Manchester in the vicinity of Hayward and Somerville Streets. It was there where Attorney General stated, “And we will be providing drug dealers and street gangsters with a new right to respond using more violence in public places…”
At the Governor’s press conference the morning before the house leaders’ press conference, Chief Robert Wharem, President of the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, told WMUR, “Senate Bill 88 is one of the most dangerous bills we’ve had come before us in our time…” while he had roughly a dozen other police chiefs gathered around him, seeming to imply he speaks for all New Hampshire Chiefs. The difference here is many likely opted to stay home and not politicize this bill, remaining within the confines of their sworn oaths.
At the end of the day, none of their Charlatanry, pandering or demagoguing held any political water, resulting in the veto override which now means the bill is law. Now SB 88 is law. The streets will not run red with blood and responsible, law-abiding citizens will not be prosecuted for lawfully defending themselves against violent attacks.
But to be expected, whenever there is a gun crime it will be certain that the critics of the bill will point to this law as a manifestation of that crime, ignoring the fact that criminals with guns will still commit crimes. They did so before this law and will continue to do so even after this law.
This law protects law-abiding citizens, not Criminals. On the coattails of Senate Bill 88’s passage we will likely hear be hearing next from the Brady Bunch about the enormous social costs of gun violence. Guy Smith, Author of Gun Facts, has undertaken a most complete compilation of data. Here are just a few examples:
Myth: The social cost of gun violence is enormous
Fact: Because guns are used an estimated 2.5 million times per year to prevent crimes, the cost savings in personal losses, police work, and court and prison expenses vastly outweighs the cost of criminal gun violence and gun accidents. The net savings, under a worst-case scenario, is about $3.5 billion a year.257
Fact: Guns are used 65 times more often to prevent a crime than to commit one.258
Fact: The medical cost of gun violence is only 0.16% of America’s annual health care expenditures.259
Fact: Drunken drivers killed 15,935 people in 1998260 while homicides with guns were 12,102 for the same year. Drunken drivers continue to kill people randomly despite a decade of increased strictness and social pressure against drunk drivers.
Myth: The social cost of gun violence is $20-100 billion
Fact: One “study”261 included the lifetime earnings of people that die from guns, not just the true social costs. This included lost incomes of criminals killed by law-abiding citizens, and costs associated with suicides, and the “emotional costs experienced by relatives and friends of gunshot victims, and the fear and general reduction in quality of life … including people who are not victimized”. If the same methodology were used to calculate the social savings from private gun ownership, we would see a benefit to society of half a trillion dollars, or 10% of the 1999 US Gross Domestic Product.
Fact: Another “study”262 started by polling people how much they would be willing to have their taxes raised in order to reduce firearm violence by 30%, and then projected these bids to the entire U.S. population. This seriously flawed methodology does not measure the “cost” of the problem, just what people are willing to spend to reduce the problem.
Fact: Social saving from private ownership is not used in these studies. One study263 indicated between 240,000 and 300,000 defensive uses of firearms, as described by the victim “… almost certainly had saved a life.”
I have found it an utterly useless exercise to argue any of these facts with liberals. Liberals make up their own facts and statistics and play political twister with ours. (See, definition of, “is”) So just never mind them…let them loose their breath, faint and do all that stupid crap liberals do and one year from now we can come back and revisit what resulted….
257 Suing Gun Manufacturers: Hazardous to Our Health, Sterling Burnett, National Center for Policy Analysis, 1999
258 Taking Dr. Gary Kleck’s estimate of 2.5 million gun defenses each year, divided by the FBI estimates of crimes committed with a firearm.
259 Shooting in the dark: estimating the cost of firearm injuries, Max W and Rice DP, Health Affairs, 1993
260 Compiled by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
261 The Financial Costs of Gun Violence, Linda Gunderson, Annals of Internal Medicine, September 21, 1999
262 Gun Violence : The Real Costs, Ludwig, Cook, 2000
263 Armed Resistance To Crime, Kleck, Gertz, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, no. 1, 1995: 150
