Monday, January 02, 2006
Firearm Fibs
Why can't Johnny shoot?
I was brought up with a gun in my hands; took lessons sponsored by the NRA when I was 8. Became a sharpshooter when I was 10, but lost the medals years later. Was on the Rifle Team in high school (well Military Prep School to be more correct), and was the team leader my senior year. At the Academy, we learned how to handle every small arm in the US inventory up to and including machine guns and even mortars. There was nothing against such training then; people knew we might have to go into the Army at 18, so best learn to shoot now. With that background, it was easy for me to get into sniper school a few years later during the Korean War (“Police Action!”).
City folk are frightened by guns, I guess. That is where the anti-gun movements begin, in the liberal-based blue cities. What they miss is the fact that many of our youth will have to go to war at some time in their lives, and because of that they will have to learn how to shoot well, and how to take care of their weapons. It is stupid to penalize them for 18 years, and then expect the Army to do all the teaching, thus slowing up the training process, as well as producing a lesser quality of marksmen.
Marksmen are made, not born, and they are essential to the Army. It is criminal to give a recruit only basic training, and then ship him out to combat. He hasn't learned to shoot well by then. He needs to have over 2,ooo rounds of supervised practice on the range.
Funny, the odds are far, far greater for being killed or maimed by a car than a gun, but the Leftists aren't very frightened by cars. They are more likely to be stabbed with a knife than hit by a bullet also, but Leftist houses are full of lethal knives. Yet no one is proposing that we ban knives. Probability is that the less that guns are used by criminals the more that knives will be used!
It has been shown definitively that there are approximately 3 million incidents reported to the police where a citizen defended himself and his family from a criminal, most of the time by simply showing the criminal (brandishing his weapon) that he was armed and ready. (Ref 2) Yet, neither the police nor the media publicize these incidents because they both are on the side of gun-controllers, particularly in the big blue cities.(Ref 2)
It has also been shown that when a nation confiscates the weapons of it's citizens, the crime rate surges drastically higher and higher. This is clearly shown by the crime statistics of the UK and Australia.(Ref 2) Cause and effect? Sure it is! It has also been shown how the passing of home defense and carry laws, even concealed carry, drastically reduces shootings. The Left knows this, yet persists in instituting more gun laws.
The reverse cause and effect holds also. Criminals are not all stupid. When they believe they might get shot for breaking and entering a home, they think twice.
Banning guns, by the way, does not take guns off the streets, it merely disarms ordinary citizens. The best example of this is Washington DC, which has very stringent gun laws. Their homicide rate leads the nation. The criminals will not turn in their guns, no matter how many laws are passed. After all, they ARE criminals!
Now there is another sinister thought behind the anti-gun people. They are Leftists, for the most part, remember? Communists, Socialists, Humanists and “Fellow Travelers”all. What is their long range agenda? To foster insurrection and revolution to take over America by any means possible. What would make that easier? To have a populace that could not defend itself on the spot, long before our soldiers and police could possibly get there to defend them.
We must thank God for the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in formulating the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
So one of the first items on the Leftist agenda is to disarm the people. Not themselves, of course, since they consider themselves above the law anyway. Can you think of a more accurate reason for the passionate, determined and almost suicidal pursuit of anti-gun legislation by Leftists? It is not fear. It is not sympathy for the victims. It is for power, in my opinion.
Such laws do not save lives; they cost lives: rapes, assaults, and other criminal acts to be perpetrated on the public—remember those 3 million incidents? So let us look at the official Census Bureau statistics for 2001: In the chart “Death from Firearms, by Age, 2001” we find the following:
All causes: 29,573 (802-undet.; 11,348 homicides; 16,869 suicides; 802 un'kn)
Under 5: 82 ( 15-unintentional.: 66 were homicides)
5-14: 333 ( 84-unintentional; 6-undet,: 180 homicides; and 90 suicides)
15-19 2,523
20-24 : 4,164
25-44: 11,425
45-64: 6,664
65-74: 1,998
75 -over: 2,385
Note that the total homicide deaths for young children 14 and under was : 246.
For the same year, there were 1,426,325 violent crimes, 16,037 murders, and 90,063 forcible rapes out of a total reported number of crimes of: 11,876,669. Another approximately 3 million crimes were not included since they were foiled by people that had a firearm available. (It is just about a given, of course, that the number of rapes is far higher but are not reported.)
(Suicides are to me a separate issue since it is not clear that availability or non-availability of a gun would affect this number, there being many other means for committing suicide should the person decide to do so.)
So here is my analysis: Out of a total of 14, 876,669 attempted crimes. 3 million were foiled because of availability of a weapon by the intended victim, and at a reasonable guess of about 50% success rate in prevention of crime if a weapon is available, another approximately 5.9 million crimes of all kinds could have been foiled or eliminated.
Thus more than 123 child murders, and overall about 8,000 murders, 45,000 forcible rapes, and over 713,000 violent crimes could have been prevented by gun-owning householders.
Leftists know this, but it is highly inconvenient for their agenda to recognize it. There is a clue here somewhere!
The NRA states the figures:260 million guns registered in the US, and over 60 million gun owners, out of a total population of 290 million citizens. What if 4/5ths or more of the citizens owned guns? Could we reduce the probable future residual violent crime number from around 713,000 to under 100,000? Or reduce the remaining potential number of murders from around 4,700 to less than 1,000, that is, from about 12,700 overall down to less than 1,000? I would expect so!
The one and only statistical assumption I made is in the 50% chance that having a gun available would deter crime. This statistic is not possible to get, so it was made on the assumption of equal chance that having a gun available would or would not deter a crime. Of course, any positive percentage at all would result in a net gain!
My conclusion is that household possession of guns is a very positive influence in stopping violent crimes, murder and rape. More law-abiding people should buy guns for home protection.
References:
US Bureau of the Census. 2003; Statistics on Death and Crime in the US
The Seven Myths of Gun Control, Richard Poe, Forum Press, 2001
Why can't Johnny shoot?
City folk are frightened by guns, I guess. That is where the anti-gun movements begin, in the liberal-based blue cities. What they miss is the fact that many of our youth will have to go to war at some time in their lives, and because of that they will have to learn how to shoot well, and how to take care of their weapons. It is stupid to penalize them for 18 years, and then expect the Army to do all the teaching, thus slowing up the training process, as well as producing a lesser quality of marksmen.
Marksmen are made, not born, and they are essential to the Army. It is criminal to give a recruit only basic training, and then ship him out to combat. He hasn't learned to shoot well by then. He needs to have over 2,ooo rounds of supervised practice on the range.
Funny, the odds are far, far greater for being killed or maimed by a car than a gun, but the Leftists aren't very frightened by cars. They are more likely to be stabbed with a knife than hit by a bullet also, but Leftist houses are full of lethal knives. Yet no one is proposing that we ban knives. Probability is that the less that guns are used by criminals the more that knives will be used!
It has been shown definitively that there are approximately 3 million incidents reported to the police where a citizen defended himself and his family from a criminal, most of the time by simply showing the criminal (brandishing his weapon) that he was armed and ready. (Ref 2) Yet, neither the police nor the media publicize these incidents because they both are on the side of gun-controllers, particularly in the big blue cities.(Ref 2)
It has also been shown that when a nation confiscates the weapons of it's citizens, the crime rate surges drastically higher and higher. This is clearly shown by the crime statistics of the UK and Australia.(Ref 2) Cause and effect? Sure it is! It has also been shown how the passing of home defense and carry laws, even concealed carry, drastically reduces shootings. The Left knows this, yet persists in instituting more gun laws.
The reverse cause and effect holds also. Criminals are not all stupid. When they believe they might get shot for breaking and entering a home, they think twice.
Banning guns, by the way, does not take guns off the streets, it merely disarms ordinary citizens. The best example of this is Washington DC, which has very stringent gun laws. Their homicide rate leads the nation. The criminals will not turn in their guns, no matter how many laws are passed. After all, they ARE criminals!
Now there is another sinister thought behind the anti-gun people. They are Leftists, for the most part, remember? Communists, Socialists, Humanists and “Fellow Travelers”all. What is their long range agenda? To foster insurrection and revolution to take over America by any means possible. What would make that easier? To have a populace that could not defend itself on the spot, long before our soldiers and police could possibly get there to defend them.
We must thank God for the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in formulating the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
So one of the first items on the Leftist agenda is to disarm the people. Not themselves, of course, since they consider themselves above the law anyway. Can you think of a more accurate reason for the passionate, determined and almost suicidal pursuit of anti-gun legislation by Leftists? It is not fear. It is not sympathy for the victims. It is for power, in my opinion.
Such laws do not save lives; they cost lives: rapes, assaults, and other criminal acts to be perpetrated on the public—remember those 3 million incidents? So let us look at the official Census Bureau statistics for 2001: In the chart “Death from Firearms, by Age, 2001” we find the following:
All causes: 29,573 (802-undet.; 11,348 homicides; 16,869 suicides; 802 un'kn)
Under 5: 82 ( 15-unintentional.: 66 were homicides)
5-14: 333 ( 84-unintentional; 6-undet,: 180 homicides; and 90 suicides)
15-19 2,523
20-24 : 4,164
25-44: 11,425
45-64: 6,664
65-74: 1,998
75 -over: 2,385
Note that the total homicide deaths for young children 14 and under was : 246.
For the same year, there were 1,426,325 violent crimes, 16,037 murders, and 90,063 forcible rapes out of a total reported number of crimes of: 11,876,669. Another approximately 3 million crimes were not included since they were foiled by people that had a firearm available. (It is just about a given, of course, that the number of rapes is far higher but are not reported.)
(Suicides are to me a separate issue since it is not clear that availability or non-availability of a gun would affect this number, there being many other means for committing suicide should the person decide to do so.)
So here is my analysis: Out of a total of 14, 876,669 attempted crimes. 3 million were foiled because of availability of a weapon by the intended victim, and at a reasonable guess of about 50% success rate in prevention of crime if a weapon is available, another approximately 5.9 million crimes of all kinds could have been foiled or eliminated.
Thus more than 123 child murders, and overall about 8,000 murders, 45,000 forcible rapes, and over 713,000 violent crimes could have been prevented by gun-owning householders.
Leftists know this, but it is highly inconvenient for their agenda to recognize it. There is a clue here somewhere!
The NRA states the figures:260 million guns registered in the US, and over 60 million gun owners, out of a total population of 290 million citizens. What if 4/5ths or more of the citizens owned guns? Could we reduce the probable future residual violent crime number from around 713,000 to under 100,000? Or reduce the remaining potential number of murders from around 4,700 to less than 1,000, that is, from about 12,700 overall down to less than 1,000? I would expect so!
The one and only statistical assumption I made is in the 50% chance that having a gun available would deter crime. This statistic is not possible to get, so it was made on the assumption of equal chance that having a gun available would or would not deter a crime. Of course, any positive percentage at all would result in a net gain!
My conclusion is that household possession of guns is a very positive influence in stopping violent crimes, murder and rape. More law-abiding people should buy guns for home protection.
References:
US Bureau of the Census. 2003; Statistics on Death and Crime in the US
The Seven Myths of Gun Control, Richard Poe, Forum Press, 2001
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