“Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.” —Lucius Annaeus Seneca
On February 7, 2012, I wrote, “America’s Democrat Mayors Ruining The Country For Decades. The entry followed Kurt Badenhausen’s article in Forbes detailing America’s ten most miserable cities.
Badenhausen examined America’s largest metropolitan areas with a minimum population of 256,000 people and ranked each area on factors consisting of, 1) average unemployment rate between 2009 and 2011; 2) median commute times to work for 2010 based on U.S. Census data; 3)violent crimes per capita from the FBI’s 2010 Uniform Crime Report; 4) how pro sports teams fared in the area over the past three completed seasons. 5) the change in median home prices between 2008 and 2011; 6) foreclosure rates in 2011 7) Property tax rates based on median real estate taxes paid and median home values in 2010 per the U.S. Census. 8) corruption based on convictions of public officials over the past decade in each region, as tracked by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. 9) income tax rates 10) Weather in each metro on factors relating to temperature, precipitation and humidity.
While Badenhausen looked at all the aforementioned factors, I was curious how many of the America’s Ten Most miserable cities were run by the Democratic machinery. Not surprisingly…all ten.
A significant factor in quality of life for people in general is the notion of how safe people feel where they live. Badenhausen’s most miserable cities also have soaring crime rates. Liberals love to tell us that not having strict gun control means crime runs rampant, yet all the plethora evidence we have provided here this past six months tells us otherwise.
In the last six months, the nation has been in a strident political war over guns and the second amendment. Emboldened by the re-election of Obama, gun-grabbing liberals set about to strip America of its’ right to keep and bear arms. They continually lie to the American People in the process, telling us, Nobody is going to take your guns away. Despite ongoing arguments in the Federal courts by the government to ban guns completely. Michael Bloomberg and his Mayors Against Illegal Guns has spent millions of dollars advocating to take away guns.
In their quest to grab the guns, liberals are bold in their endeavors about twisting, contorting and massaging facts about crime as a means to their end. Universal Background checks are the buzzword of the day. Anti-gun Liberals are using phrases like, “Sensible Gun Policy,” to advocate for European-style gun control.
National Review on line’s Kevin D. Williamson wrote on May 3,
“The gun-control debate is one of the most dishonest arguments we have in American politics. The argument about gun control is at its root a way to put conservatives on the defensive about liberal failures, from schools that do not teach to police departments that do not police and criminal-justice systems that do not bring criminals to justice. The gun-control debate is an exercise in changing the subject.”
On January 10, I wrote an Op-ed for the Eagle Tribune and discussed the U.S. homicide rate of 4.8 per 100,000, which is much higher than that of the U.K. or other European nations as Williamson points out (1.1 for France, 1.0 for Australia). But the fact is there is little correlation in Europe between gun regulation and homicide. Switzerland’s homicide rate is lower than countries with draconian gun laws like the United Kingdom and Sweden.
Cuba, is a police state and has tight gun laws. Cuba’s homicide rate, however, is higher than the United States at 5.0 per 100,000.
When the lame stream media talks about “gun deaths,” they gloss over the fact that a majority of those deaths are suicides — more than two-thirds. Not conventional crimes but intentionally self-inflicted wounds in the wake of personal human despair, not the blood running in the streets as we are duped into believing. Among non-fatal gunshot injuries, about one-third are accidents.
We the people are beleaguered daily by the liberal, biased mainstream media about the bane of “assault weapons,” despite the fact that these ill-treated semi-automatic rifles account for so few homicides. 358 in 2010, to be precise. We the people are beleaguered with a barrage of stories about weapons of war on our streets, laying siege to America.
Legally owned fully automatic weapons have been used in exactly two homicides in the last twenty-five years, one of which was a police-issued weapon…used by a wayward police officer to murder a troublesome informant.
Kevin Williamson tells us about Deputy managing editor at National Review Robert VerBruggen, who has long labored over the various inflated statistical claims about the effects of gun-control policies made by both sides of the debate. You will not, in the end, find much correlation. There are some places with very strict gun laws and lots of crime, some places with very liberal gun laws and very little crime, some places with strict guns laws and little crime, and some places with liberal gun laws and lots of crime. Given the variation between countries, the variation within other countries, and the variation within the United States, the most reasonable conclusion is that the most important variable in violent crime is not the regulation of firearms. There are many reasons that Zurich does not much resemble Havana, and many reasons San Diego does not resemble Detroit.
The Left, of course, very strongly desires not to discuss those reasons, because those reasons often point to the failure of progressive policies. For this reason, statistical and logical legerdemain is the order of the day when it comes to the gun debate.
ThinkProgress’s Zack Beauchamp, cites a study that asserts, “States with loose gun laws have higher rates of gun violence.” Beauchamp invites the reader to glean the meaning that there is more gun violence in states with relatively liberal gun laws. However, to reach the author’s conclusions, a supplementary measure of “gun violence,” was included.
The authors seek to blame Chicago’s high rate of crime on a so-called “crime-gun export rate.” from neighboring states. The fallacy works like this: If a gun sold legally in Indiana ends up being used in a crime in Chicago, that gun is counted as an incidence of gun violence in Indiana.
Redistribution of “crime” wealth. Anti-gun liberals manipulate gun crime statistics to blame Chicago’s horrific crime epidemic to peaceable neighboring communities. Williamson writes, And if we took the “gun-crime export rate” to be a meaningful metric, we would need to consider the fact that it accounts only for those guns sold legally. It should be pointed out of course that states like Illinois that do not have many legal gun sales will not generate a lot of records for “gun-crime exports.” Kevin Williamson also points out the flaws in this liberal fallacy in that it is probable that lots of guns sold in Illinois end up being used in crimes in Indiana; the difference is, those guns are sold on the black market, and so do not show up in the records. The choice of metrics is just another way to put a thumb on the scale.
The Ever-Powerful Gun Lobby in Washington. We are barraged by liberal assertions that the National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful and feared lobbies on Capitol Hill. Despite that assertion by the lame stream media, what you likely have not seen is what the true fact is. For campaign contributions, the NRA is not anywhere near the top five…or top ten…or top 100: It is No. 228. In the realm of cash-outlays for lobbying the NRA holds at Number 171 in the list. So its all crap.
The National Beer Wholesalers Association and the American Federation of Teachers, hold prominently in the top-20 PACs, along with the National Auto Dealers Association, The liberal, biased, anti-gun mainstream media has many believing that the NRA purchases its loyalty from politicians on Capitol Hill, despite the bare fact that donations follow the votes, not the votes following the donations.
America’s leftist-progressive democratic Mayors bring to urban areas policies and agendas that serve as little more than a healthy petri dish of blight and urban decay. despite the 20-year decline in violent crime throughout the United States high-crime remains in cities such as, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Oakland, St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Newark. Inversely, when Republican Jerry Sanders handed the mayoralty of San Diego over to Bob Filner in December, the city has fallen down toward the bottom of the rape-and-murder charts.
America’s Democratic-Progressive Mayors are ruining the country. Crime-ridden streets, poverty and suffering are the net products of progressive social policies. Progressives will continue to to tell lies, the lame stream media will continue to facilitate those lies, enabling corrupt and ruinous policies and the gun debate will continue to march on awash in the fake statistics of progressives, confabulations and charlatanry of the Bloomberg contingent. Guns are just one more item on the list of most-favored corrupting liberal cornerstones.
