‘Gun Control Fails,’ Say Statistics from … Gun-Control Advocates
All you need to know: the key gun statistics, straight from the gun-control groups themselves. Related: Happy New Year! Chicago Murder Tally Hits 500 for 2012
December 29, 2012 - 12:00 am
Fiction 7: Gun Control Reduces Mass Murders
For purposes of statistical analysis, we must be wary of how “child” is defined in order to identify relevant crime data.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word “childhood” as: “The time from birth to puberty.” OED defines “puberty” as: “The period during which adolescents reach sexual maturity and become capable of reproduction, distinguished by the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics.” There seems to be general agreement that puberty completes by age 15, so children are ages 0-14.*
The FBI gives domestic violence its own category. One FBI study showed that while overall violent crime rates were declining, domestic violence rates increased. Perhaps nothing creates a destructive explosion like feelings of betrayal mixed with passions like lust, attachment, and anger. Violently powerful emotions may explain why 54% of all child mass murder victims occur during domestic violence.
Children are more likely to be killed by a stranger during non-domestic mass murders, as happened in Newtown, Connecticut. Ron Borsch notes: “The number one copycat target of the active killer is schools (38%, includes pre-school and K-12).” With the exception of 2004 and 2006, these incidents occur 7 to 8 times annually in the U.S., with an average of 2.5 child victims per incident**:
The civilian firearms inventory grew about 72 million since 2000 — but non-domestic child mass murder rates did not increase:
In the years 2003-2006, carry-restricted states were safer from non-domestic child mass murders. However, after 40 states attained RTC status in 2007, RTC states averaged a lower rate, while non-RTC states saw their rate increase:
For the period of 2007-2010, RTC states’ mass murder rate averaged 0.057, a 31% drop from the 2000-2006 average. Non-RTC states’ averaged a 0.070 rate, an increase of 97% over the 2000-2006 period. For the period of 2000-2010, RTC states experienced a 59% drop in their mass murder rate, while non-RTC states’ rate more than doubled (111%):
The data show no benefit derived from additional gun control laws already prevalent in carry-restricted states.
Except for 2005-2007, domestic violence accounted for most child mass murder victims. The overall trend shows domestic violence accounting for more child murders:
Fiction 8: Gun-Control Advocates Care About Other People, Gun-Rights Activists Are Selfish
Do gun banners want a serious discussion about making children safer? President Obama’s daughters attend a school with armed security, so having responsible, trained adults on-site is a reasonable consideration.
Based on the crime data presented in this article — again, all the data come from countries and organizations supporting the most extreme forms of gun control — the gun-ban movement promotes a fatally flawed agenda whose outcome includes:
- More women raped;
- More blacks murdered;
- More people experiencing fear;
- More school children murdered;
- And the individual’s civil rights infringed.
If civilian disarmament is a righteous, caring agenda, why must gun-control advocates manipulate their own data to manufacture “proof” of its validity?
And what kind of empathetic people exploit the occasion of murdered children and a distraught public as the proper time to ask for support of their agenda?
* Start Page search: “puberty age.”
** (Data compiled from FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports 2000-2010, plus Florida SHR for those years, plus District of Columbia SHR 2001-2007, and CDC child homicide data for years 2000 and 2008.)