Leftists Exploit Gun Tragedy. . . As Usual

With the Aurora shooting a couples days removed now and emotions cooling, let’s talk rationally about the issue of guns. As usual, the left has hopped on this tragedy in full exploitation mode. They’ve blamed everything from guns to the Tea Party. They are, as always, wrong. Let’s discuss.

As with Gabby Giffords, the left immediately jumped out and pointed their twisted fingers at the Tea Party. This charge was led by ABC News who decided the shooter had to belong to the Tea Party because they found a Tea Party member with a similar name. Naturally, they never bothered to investigate before smearing the Tea Party. Eventually, they were forced to retract this, but not before every other new outlet repeated the slander. Those outlets never withdrew their reports.

Meanwhile, the usual pack of leftist celebrities took to the airwaves to whine that this proves we need gun control. Roger Ebert even whined that this proved that concealed carry laws don’t work because no one in the crowd had a gun. Think about that. In Roger’s mind concealed carry means that someone in every crowd must be carrying a gun even when the theater and law forbid it. What a twisted turd he has become.

In any event, none of this is working. Almost no one on Capitol Hill has called for gun control laws. To the contrary they are running like scared rabbits. Why? Because polls show the public’s support for gun rights at an all-time high. Indeed, an October 2011 Gallup poll found that 73% of Americans would not support gun bans. This was the highest level in 50 years. Incidentally, the same poll showed 68% approval for the evil NRA.

So why doesn’t the public fall for the blathering of the moronic celebrities and professional tragedy exploiters? Easy, it’s common sense.

As I’ve pointed out many times before, gun tragedies are incredibly rare. The United States has 2.5 million deaths annually, but only 12,000 of those are related to guns (0.4% of all deaths) – many of these are shootings by police. This places gun deaths 43rd on the list of causes of death in the United States, well behind diseases, cancers, suicides, diarrhea related deaths, unintentional injuries, measles, falls, drownings, poisonings, fires, asthma and road accidents.

And mass shootings of the type in Aurora are even more rare. For example, in the last 10 years, there have been only seven shooting sprees at schools in the US that resulted in three or more deaths. Moreover, Europe has a comparable mass murder rate, despite its strict gun control laws. Europe saw six such mass murders in the same period, and the European ones had a higher body count. China too has seen a spree of stabbings at schools that have resulted in a vastly higher number of deaths than American shootings. So this problem the celebrity left is whining about simply about doesn’t exist, and people realize that.

Secondly, guns don’t kill people. There are 250 million guns in the United States. If guns “caused” crimes as the left claims, then there would 250 million murders a year. Even if only one in ten people fell under the evil spell of these guns, we would still be dealing with 25 million murders a year. Heck, even one percent means 2.5 million murders. Yet only 12,000 people are killed annually in the United States by guns. That works out to less than 0.004% of guns being used to kill someone. . . 40 out of every million guns in the country. Guns do not cause crime.

We know this from Switzerland too. Everyone in Switzerland is required to own a gun, yet gun crime is virtually nonexistent. It’s so low they don’t even bother keeping official statistics on gun crime. It is, in fact, lower than the gun crime rate in Japan, which absolutely bans guns. Switzerland ranks as the fourth safest country in the world and its violent crime rate is 1/100th that of Britain, where guns are banned.

Moreover, there is strong evidence that guns actually prevent crime. When Britain banned private gun ownership in 1996, crime rates skyrocketed. According to American Enterprise Institute economist John Lott, an examination of information released by the British Home Office showed that the violent crime rate rose 69% following the gun ban (with murders increasing 54%). Interestingly, in the five years prior to the ban, such crimes had been falling consistently.

A county by county examination by Lott of crime rates in the United States, found that right-to-carry states experienced (on average) lower rates of violent crime (27% lower), murder (32% lower), robbery (45% lower) and aggravated assault (20% lower) than states with more restrictive gun laws. Other studies conducted at Vanderbilt University, SUNY Binghamton, Claremont-McKenna College, George Mason University, and the College of William and Mary, have supported Lott’s findings.

So Ebert’s attempt to prove that concealed laws don’t worry through a bad analogy is proven ludicrous by comparison to these statistics.

The truth is the world is full of nuts. And if they want to find a way to kill people, they will find a way. It is better to let decent people arm themselves so they can defend themselves than it is to disarm the very people who would help, leaving everyone at the mercy of the crazies. It’s interesting that our left thinks this way. Why do you supposed they don’t want you being able to defend yourself?