That phrase is hated and derided by the anti-gun lobby, but it’s starkly and undeniably true.
Further evidence of that truth has just come to light in Britain, where the Home Office’s British Crime Survey has released its latest figures.
Sixty people a week are being wounded as gun crime continues to rise, Home Office figures have revealed.
Firearms incidents rose by four per cent last year to just under 10,000 – meaning that guns are now featuring in almost 30 offences every day.
The number of people killed or wounded rose to 3,048.
. . .
The four per cent year-on-year rise in gun crime comes despite massive police efforts to crack down on illegal firearms.
During 2007 some 49 people were shot dead. down from 56 the year before. The number of serious-injuries also fell, from 424 to 355, but there was a surge in less serious injuries, up five per cent from 2,518 to 2,644.
The number of threats with guns rose by the same proportion to 5,282.
This, in a nation that banned the private possession of almost all handguns in 1997. Even the national Olympic team has to practice abroad.
Why can’t anti-gunners get their heads around straightforward, simple logic?
If you ban guns, only those who respect and obey the law will obey the ban.
Criminals don’t obey the law in the first place. Why are we surprised when they disobey yet another law, banning the tools of their trade?
Banning guns disarms the good guys, not the bad guys. The results are universally the same, and are reflected in the latest figures from Britain. No surprise there.
A gun is an inanimate object. I could place a gun on my desk right now, loaded, cocked, safety catch off, pointing right at me . . . and nothing would happen. Without a finger on the trigger, it won’t go bang. It’s not the gun that’s the threat – it’s the person wielding it.
When a child is killed by a drunk driver, we don’t blame the car – we blame the person behind the wheel. When a pilot misjudges his landing and crashes an aircraft, we don’t blame the plane – we blame the person flying it. Yet, when a gun is used in a crime, the anti-gunners go into hysterics blaming the gun, rather than the person wielding it.
An inanimate object is morally neutral. It’s neither good nor evil. It can be used for good, or for evil, but the good or evil of its use is determined by the person using it, not its own intrinsic nature. I can use a baseball bat for perfectly good and legitimate purposes, like knocking a ball around the park . . . or I can fracture innocent skulls with it. Same bat, same operator, but whether the action is good or evil depends on my use of the bat – not the bat itself.
To argue otherwise makes no rational sense whatsoever.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Logic and rational thought have never been part of the anti-gunners’ platform . . .
In the same way, not all so-called “gun violence” is bad. (I can hear the anti-gunners screaming already!) Gun violence by a criminal is certainly bad. However, gun violence by a citizen legitimately defending him- or herself against criminal attack isn’t bad – it’s good. (Provided, of course, that it uses only sufficient force to stop the attack and doesn’t become vigilante justice.) When a policeman uses his gun to shoot a felon, in general, that’s a good thing: because if he hadn’t, the felon might have hurt or killed him, or someone else, or gotten away to hurt and kill another day.
No, Bambi, not all gun violence is bad.
When you read the screeds of anti-gun propaganda, think about it. Who’s acknowledging reality? The gun-grabbers? Or those who recognize reality when it slaps them in the face?
Peter
The ban sounds like a failure.
Like all Liberal ideas.
It’s an instance of a common political fallacy: “If we tell people to obey the rules, they will.” A Republican equivalent would be abstinence-only sex education: “If we tell teenagers not to have sex, they won’t.” Both parties push the War On Drugs the same way. (“Just Say No”, anyone?)
It’s not limited to the two mainstream US parties, either. Communism is built around one: “If we tell people to work their hardest but only take what they need, they will.” Libertarianism is as well: “If we get rid of all the rules, everyone will play fair.”
(It’s also closely related to the #1 Political Fallacy: “Something Must Be Done. This is something; therefore this must be done.”)
It’s just that, in this case, it makes it even easier for the bad guys to prey on the good guys. Having guns in the hands of upstanding citizens is to crime what immunization is to disease. (It even creates the same ‘herd immunity’ effect that protects those who aren’t armed/immunized themselves, but that only works if enough people do it…)
The fact that politicians the world over continue to shamelessly and repeatedly display such breathtaking stupidity is sad indeed. What’s sadder still is that WE KEEP ELECTING THESE TWITS. The fact that a Schumer or a Clinton — or those who perpetrated the British gun grab –could get more than one term doesn’t speak well for the state of either country.
Think I need to rebuild the bunker much farther away from everything.
Goatroper
I live in Florida, home of some of the finest gun-owner protections in the USA. Working in the hospital, I’ve taken care of a number of felons who have been shot by homeowners acting to protect their property. The simple truth is that gun control works, and allowing people to exercise their right to defend themselves and their property makes the world safer.
Frankly, I don’t understand the American mind. In Australia we have come down hard against having hand guns and semi-automatics. We were never very keen but after 35 people where killed and 25 wounded by a looney at Port Authur, Tasmania in 1996, national laws were bought in and we paid a 1% levy on our federal tax so that we could buy back and melt down most of these weapons. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia for a thorough understanding of our frame of mind.
The notion that guns are somehow morally neutral is a curious notion. If a child is run down by a drunk driver in Australia not only do we do the normal vengeance on the driver but question how he or she managed to be drunk, how they got to be at the wheel of that killing machine disguised as a means of transport, what the conditions were and what we can do about the road surfaces in that area. We don’t want to have the situation recur. So do you.
If an plane falls out of the sky the investigation team looks for everything that could have contributed to pilot error and, quite often, finds some technical tweak or a change in procedure that eliminates the risk. So do you.
The casual availability of guns contribute to the number of successful suicides, the lethality of crime, accidental fatality and the damage done by the deranged. In Australia, we have acted and continued to act to bring down these rates in the same way as car and aircraft accidents. Why not you?