GOP Perpetuating Deadly Myth States with Strictest Gun Laws Have the Worst Crime
October 5, 2015

 
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Both Donald Trump and Chris Christie yesterday repeated a popular (and long debunked) Right-Wing myth that “states with the strictest gun laws have the worst crime”, and BOTH men cited the great state of “Chicago” as their “proof”. I wish I could simply say, “No, the exact opposite is true”, but it’s not that simple. According to Georgia Criminal Appeal Lawyers, states with the strictest guns laws DON’T have the worst crime rates, the improvement is surprisingly small and possibly attributable to other factors such as the poverty rate (Connecticut: strict laws, low crime, low poverty. DC: strict laws, high crime, high poverty.) Yet they go around proclaiming strict gun laws actually make things worse? That borders on criminal and definitely someone we don’t want anywhere near the White House.

In all due honesty, I’d probably fall short of analyzing the link between gun laws & crime, trying to make a broad assumption about such a complex issue without doing weeks of research on all the variables. So instead, I direct you to this excellent article on “Reason.com” (though it relies a bit too heavily on Wikipedia for my comfort) released just last Friday. As they point out, the states with the strictest gun laws have marginally LESS crime than states with the most lax gun laws (eg one stat showing a “Gun homicide rate: 4.02 per 100,000 [in lax states], compared to 3.41 for the other [restrictive] states.”) One example of the complexity: a very rural yet very large state like Wyoming has a very low homicide rate despite very lax gun laws. Does this surprise anyone? You’re not going to see a lot of homicides when your closest neighbor is 3 miles away. Likewise, cities like Chicago & D.C. have a very low number of registered gun owners, yet an extremely high gun homicide rate. The guns are clearly already there. Is pouring MORE guns into Chicago or DC going to make things safer? The problem isn’t “strict gun laws keeping guns out of the hands of the virtuous”, it’s the easy availability of guns… period. Particularly “NON-hunting” weapons intended for “protection” but being used on the streets.

During The Cold War, Ronald Reagan tried to draw a distinction between nuclear weapons that are only used for “defense” vs “First Strike” nuclear weapons in order to justify his nuclear build up against the Soviet Union. But all it did was encourage an arms race with Russia. Increasing our stockpile of nuclear weapons didn’t make us safer, it only raised our anxiety over the likelihood of nuclear war (“Shall we play a game?”)

No, what I want to talk about is this reckless dangerous game Republicans are playing by perpetrating this deadly myth that strict gun laws make gun violence worse. It’s not true. Not even close. But Conservative voters are buying it, then electing politicians that believe it, who in turn start eliminating restrictions on guns that cost people their lives.

A prime example came just last week following the latest mass murder gun shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Within hours, the Republican presidential candidates were already defending gun ownership and shrugging their shoulders when asked “what can we do to stop this?”

Marco Rubio dismissed the idea of any more gun laws, stating that “Crazy people don’t follow gun laws.” True, but do we need to make it easier for them to get one?

Mike Huckabee: “I keep waiting for someone to tell me what new gun law would have prevented this”. Fact: the shooter purchased 13 weapons and a flak jacket inside of 3 years without raising any alarm bells. Why were those guns so easy to get so quickly? Someone that “needs” that much armament in such a short period of time should be required to have a “Dealers” license. Here’s an idea for you Huckster: If we were allowed to track the number of purchases by a single buyer over time, we could spot trends that trigger a more thorough background check. Even the most cursory “beyond medical/criminal” records search would have have found his Facebook page filled with violent rants and support for the defunct “Irish Republican Army” terrorist organization (if you’re going to say, “mass-murderers will just stop logging their intentions on Facebook”, I direct you to Rubio’s statement above about “Crazies” not behaving rationally.) Speaking of which…

Ben Carson also went the “unpredictable crazies” route, declaring “[Gun laws] doesn’t work for crazies.” This demonstrates a glaring stupidity with Republicans: the childish belief laws are only for criminals. As has been frequently pointed out: If your argument against gun laws is that “criminals don’t obey laws”, then why have ANY laws? Why have laws against speeding or stealing? Yet this same person would NEVER say the same thing about our drug laws. Simple game: substitute the word “drugs” for “guns” in ANY comment by ANY Republican on the subject of gun control and ask yourself if they hold the same position. Fun fun fun.

John Kasich followed suit, condemning gun laws with: “You take guns away from people who are law abiding, the people who are going to cause these horrible things are still going to have them.” First, NO ONE is arguing for “gun confiscation”. That’s a straw man argument. Second, clearly, the ONLY two options are Lots of guns or No guns at all. There apparently is no middle-ground in Conservastan.

Donald Trump, when asked what can we do, simply shrugged his shoulders and said “these things happen”, adding that sane people sometimes go nuts so “What are you going to do, institutionalize everybody?” Just what you want in a Commander-in-Chief. Someone, when faced with a difficult matter of Life & Death can’t define the problem, shrugs his shoulders helplessly, and proclaims if you can’t stop EVERYBODY, why bother stopping ANYBODY?

Likewise, Jeb Bush used the helpless “stuff happens” line… clearly channeling his brothers’ Secretary of Defense. My response to “Jebby” is the same as the video’s response to Rummy: “Irresponsible’s a pretty harsh word but basically irresponsible.” Imagine you’re the parent of one of the young people who were murdered last week in Umpqua, or the parent of a child killed at Sandy Hook, and your Commander-in-Chief responds “Hey, stuff happens!”

But Carly Fiorina wins the prize for going “the full Bachmann”, openly declaring as fact something she heard on Right Wing radio. Fiorina “pointed out” that the shooter “managed to get on campus with several guns” despite “being a gun-free zone”. Uh, no. UCC’s campus may of had a “rule” against guns on campus, but it was NOT a “gun-free zone”. In fact, a half-dozen students were carrying concealed weapons on campus that day, and Oregon state law forbids laws restricting “concealed weapons” *anywhere*… including schools.) Worse, the local County Sheriff had written an angry & defiant letter to Vice President Biden following the Sandy Hook massacre, proclaiming that he would refuse to enforce any new “gun-control laws”, which included restricting guns on campus. Now he has 9 more lives to answer for.

NOT ONE of the GOP candidates proposed a solution or even the tiniest suggestion of how to help prevent these things from happening again. Every answer was either “helplessness” or “we need more guns”. Wonderful.

A BIG part of the problem when it comes to passing laws restricting gun ownership is that there is a huge (“Euuuuugh”) number of BADLY misinformed people in this country who (wrongfully) believe the reason for the Second Amendment is “to protect the people from the government.” To protect themselves if “Big Brother” comes knocking on their door. And thus, any move by the government to deny people the right to own a gun gives government “the upper hand”, rendering the people helpless.

This paranoid, delusional fantasy that the U.S. military is going to come knocking on their door to enslave them, toss people that disagree with the government into “FEMA Camps” and force them to drink fluoridated water, is quite simply nuts. Yet these insane people are dictating U.S. gun policy, and people are dying because of it. These same Troglodytes believe every mass murder is a “false flag” operation conducted by the government in order to advance this not-so-secret agenda.

The Constitution does NOT say you can take up arms against the government. The Founding Fathers didn’t write “If you don’t like what we’re doing, you can shoot us.” That does NOT appear anywhere in the Constitution. What DOES appear in the Constitution? The word “treason“… seven times. Number of times “shoot your Congressman” appears? ZERO. Your defense against a government that does things you don’t like? The FIRST Amendment. The Freedom of the Press and your right to “Assemble” into groups and protest using your “Freedom of Speech”. Your right to “petition” the government for a “redress of grievances”. Shooting cops & Congressman? Not in there. I checked.

The people spreading lies & misinformation about a Constitution they angrily demand we “READ” every time the government does something they hate, yet clearly don’t know themselves, are tearing this nation apart. It’s a deadly game they’re playing. Their ignorance is costing people their lives, and they have no answers. Rendered impotent by people with a financial interest in selling military hardware in bulk to paranoid morons, convincing them something that’s simply flat out not true.


 

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October 5, 2015 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, Election, Guns & Violence, myth busting, Politics

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