MontanaMilitiaman
Regular posted 03-10-2005 03:49
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First off, lets get some numbers straight. These are the 2003 homicide figures from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports:
Total murder victims
14,408
Total firearms
9,638
Handguns
7,701
Rifles
390
Shotguns
452
Other guns or type not stated
1,095
Knives or cutting instruments
1,816
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)
651
Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)
944
Poison
9
Pushed or thrown out window
2
Explosives
4
Fire
163
Narcotics
41
Drowning
17
Strangulation
184
Asphyxiation
128
Other
811
However, as reported here:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/guncrime.htm
quote:
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Note: Crimes include the UCR index offenses of murder, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Source: FBI, The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
In 2003, about 67% of all murders, 42% of all robberies, and 19% of all aggravated assaults that were reported to the police were committed with a firearm.
According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2001 about 39% of the deaths that resulted from firearms injuries were homicides, 57% were suicides, 3% were unintentional, and 1% were of undetermined intent. (See table on firearm deaths by intent by age group).
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http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/02/1720514.php
quote:
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"The leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435,000
deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths), poor diet and physical
inactivity (400,000 deaths; 16.6%), and alcohol consumption
(85,000 deaths; 3.5%). Other actual causes of death were
microbial agents (75,000), toxic agents (55,000), motor
vehicle crashes (43,000), incidents involving firearms
(29,000), sexual behaviors (20,000), and illicit use of
drugs (17,000)." (Note: According to a correction published
by the Journal on Jan. 19, 2005, "On page 1240,
in Table 2, '400,000 (16.6)' deaths for 'poor diet and
physical inactivity' in 2000 should be '365,000 (15.2).'
A dagger symbol should be added to 'alcohol consumption'
in the body of the table and a dagger footnote should be
added with 'in 1990 data, deaths from alcohol-related
crashes are included in alcohol consumption deaths, but not in
motor vehicle deaths. In 2000 data, 16,653 deaths from
alcohol-related crashes are included in both alcohol consumption
and motor vehicle death categories." Source: Journal of
the American Medical Association, Jan. 19, 2005, Vol. 293, No. 3,
p. 298.)
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For what it is worth, according to
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs00/mv1.htm there were 132,247,286 registered private and commcercial vehicles in the United States in the year 2000. To quote the enemy,
quote:
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There are approximately 192 million privately owned firearms in the U.S. - 65 million of which are handguns.
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http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/factsheets/?page=firefacts
While
http://gunsafe.org/position statements/Guns and crime.htm puts the number at 235,000,000. Both of these sources are admittedly biased, but they are each biased in a different direction. This means that there are probably between 190 and 250 million privately owned firearms in the United States. So, interestingly enough, we find that even though there are many more firearms than vehicles privately owned in the United States, there are many more deaths from vehicles. If all we are interested in is preserving a person's right to live, as stated, then it seems like controlling the rampant abuse of automobiles ought to be a far higher priority than firearms. Yes, most of the vehicular deaths were accidents--this makes no difference. It is irrelevant. The people are still dead and the intent and means by which they got that way doesn't really matter if all we are doing is seeking to preserve life.
Now, if there are over 190 million firearms in the United States, and somewhere around 30 ,000 or so will be used to injure or kill someone whether intentionally or by accident, then that means approximately .01579% of firearms will be misused. That would seem acceptable to me, but I may be admittedly biased because I own several firearms and, being that I have never injured anyone or their property with them and have used them only recreationally, and have gotten copious amounts of entertainment from each of them, I have a great amount of interest in keeping them. As a side note, it would appear that if firearms were meant to destroy living tissue, mine must be broken because they do very little of this. I do hunt, but I do so for the meat. One may say that firearms were meant as weapons of war, but so were blades. That doesn't keep them from being applied elsewhere legitimately in our society. Anyways, back to the point. How could we as a society claim to be just if we punish that much of a section of your population for the actions of such an extreme minority? Referring back to the Brady Campaign website, aprox. 39% of American households have firearms. According to here
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2003/tabAVG1.pdf, the average household is 2.57 people for a total of 111,278,000 total households. If 39% of these own firearms, that is 43,398,420 households with firearms. That means that 43,398,420 households own 190 million firearms, and change, or about 4.38 firearms per firearm owning household. Now if we assume only one person per household owns every firearm in the household, which certainly isn't the case at my house, but then, we also have more the 2.57 people and a helluva lot more than 4.38 firearms--then that means there are 43,398,420 gun owners in the United States. If we increase this number to 1.5 gun owners per gun owning household, or divided evenly between one and two gun owners per gun owning household, we get 65 million and change--which is about the commonly accepted number of gun owners in the United States. These 65 million gun owners own 190 million + firearms for about 2.9 firearms per firearm owner. Each firearm has a .01579% chance of being misused or abused to injure someone so if we multiply this number times the average number of firearms owned by the average firearms owner, that means, if my math is correct, that only .045791% of all firearms owners will injure someone with a firearm either intentionally or accidentally. So you want to punish 99.954209% of the gun owning population or about 22% of the United States population for the actions of this minority? That hardly seems like something we could call justice...
Crimes committed with firearms have been falling recently and has appeared to level off at its lowest state since the 1970s. This despite the fact that most researchers agree there was a surge of gun ownership directly after 9/11. American's may be different than other people on earth, in fact, there is little doubt that they are. Americans felt vulnerable after the terrorist attackers and naturally sought means to defend themselves, not necessary against terrorism, but against other more domestic threats as well.
Now, if mere ownership of firearms among the general populace was responsible for increases in crimes involving firearms, we would expect that the number of crimes involving firearms has increased along with firearms ownership since 9-11, but this has not been the case, as the graph in the above Bureau of Justice Statistics website shows. In fact, quite the opposite, in the years immediately following Sept 11th of 2001, crimes committed with firearms are shown to have dropped, despite the rise in gun ownership. This makes it fairly easy for one to conclude that firearms ownership is not to blame for firearms crime in the United States, and following from this, removing weapons, forcefully if necessary, from the civilian population will have little affect on crime involving firearms in this country.
This can be seen, not to repeat myself too much, at the accompanying link, where I have created a chart on another forum which shows that there is absolutely no relationship whatsoever between a state's gun control laws and their rates of violent crime.
http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=303758
So again, with a legal system based, at least in theory, that one is innocent until proven guilty, the burden of proof lies with the prosecutor to show that the defendant is guilty beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt. This means that we do not have to show that the Second Amendment reduces crime but merely that it has no affect on crime--it is up to those of you who wish to restrict or remove this right to show that doing so will reduce crime. There is very little evidence to support this.
