“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” —Vladimir Lenin
Kathy Sullivan wants gun control, indeed. “We need to take the guns away now!,” She declares. Sullivan says a, “majority of Americans believe that the time has come for action.” But the anecdotes, facts, and statistics belie her assertion.
Facts are curious things. Sullivan sources Mother Jones Magazine attributing an absence of mass killings in Australia to the 1996 gun ban. “Firearms Homicides fell 59 per cent and suicides, 79 per cent. Sullivan fails to mention, however, the violent crimes spiked in Australia.
In 2001, the Bureau of Criminology found no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime. In fact, firearm murders rose to their highest levels ever in 2006 to 16.3 per cent. Assaults rose 49.2 per cent; Robbery: 6.2 per cent; Sexual Assaults increased one-third and overall crime rate went up 42 per cent.
Sullivan says, “Do we seriously need more research to tell us that a law eliminating semiautomatic handguns and assault weapons would have a major impact on reducing these mass slaughters? Not really.” I agree with Kathy Sullivan. The United States has already had that experiment in 1994 with the, “Assault Weapons ban.”
In 2004 a National Research Council panel noted the ban as, “not having any clear impacts on gun violence, due to the relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban … Another study conducted by the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, found no statistically significant evidence that either the assault weapons ban or the ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds had reduced gun murders.”
Kathy Sullivan concedes there is a dangerous amount of violence in video games and films, while ignoring those Hollywood elite who made a television commercial for Mayors Against Guns, pleading, “Stop the violence now”, despite many of those actors having had roles films depicting shooting and killing.
The Facts
According to FBI.gov, Violent crime in 1992 was 757.7 per 100,000 people and a murder rate of 9.3 per 100,000. In 2011, the figures revealed a violent crime rate of 386.3 per 100,000, showing a 50 per cent decrease; a murder rate of 4.7 per 100,000, showing a 54 per cent decrease over 1992. Moreover, in urban areas with populations greater than 250,000 the crime rate remains double the national average, as is the murder rate.
Comparing the U.S. to other nations, as Kathy Sullivan did above, In 2011 UK had 1,361 violent crimes per 100,000, three times the U.S. Crime Rate. The United States has 186 areas where the urban population is 250,000 people or greater, six times the U.K. with only 32 areas where the population is 250,000 people or greater.
Unlike the UK or Australia, the U.S. is gun ownership has skyrocketed in the last 20 years. In 1992, roughly ten states legally allowed their citizens to carry firearms for personal protection. By 2011, the number spiked to nearly 40 states. Women are the fastest growing segment of society to own guns.
Currently, firearms dealers are having problems keeping up with the demand for semi-automatic firearms and handguns presently targeted by the ban To say that a majority of Americans want these guns banned is not a well-supported assertion.
Kathy Sullivan’s denigration of the NRA and Sturm Ruger who employs many Granite Staters, coupled with pleas for more restrictive, intrusive big government does not change the facts. Viscera will not change the fact that crime in the U.S. is down, while gun ownership went up. Violent crime in urban areas often, with strict gun control policies is double the national average. When people in government talk about “sensible gun policy,” they mean to take away the guns owned by law-abiding citizens incrementally. Registration, fingerprinting and a fee would be required for those who currently own semi-automatic rifles. Like an arrest booking with a fee, simply for owning asemi-automatic rifle or handgun.
In 2012, many people used firearms to thwart violent crime, many instances without a shot ever being fired. In a recent blog post, I detailed such examples, picking mainly people over the age of 65, many of which were women, who defended themselves with guns. Guns put a frail 79-year old woman on even par with a 210-pound thug who has just kicked in her door. Just another hard cold fact, yet Kathy Sullivan lives in a world where thugs will rule the day, the death penalty is abolished and citizens are unable to defend themselves.
