Statistic tell another story

[JBusch8899]

The Lutheran
September 2001

Statistics tell another story

The presence of guns doesn't cause murder. The only reason a movement for gun control exists is because the following facts have been mostly hidden from the public. I found the majority of this information in the Statistical Abstract of the United States, a government book found in the reference sections of larger libraries.

In the gun-saturated states of Iowa, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, South Dakota and North Dakota, the murder rate was only 1.7 per 100,000 people in 1998. This is about as low as that rate gets anywhere in the world. The murder rates in these states have remained about the same each year since 1943.

Yet in Washington, D.C., and some other large cities, our murder rates are up to 75 per 100,000 per year. The reason for the vast difference between these two areas is family configuration and little else.

If we control family configuration, all correlations between race and crime and between low income and crime disappear. Seventy percent of all prison and reform school inmates come from fatherless homes. The majority of both the murderers and the victims have previous criminal records. That is why high violent-- crime rates can only be found in areas that have had a high prolonged rate of out-of-wedlock births.

Guns also have little to do with a nation's suicide rate. The gun-saturated United States had a suicide rate of 11.3 per 100,000 in 1998. Nearly gun-less Japan's suicide rate was 15.1. Canada's was 13.0. We also had the fourth lowest suicide rate out of 19 western European countries. Their rates varied from 26.1 in Finland to 7.2 in Italy.

Gun accidents killed 1,134 people in 1996. Motor vehicle accidents killed 43,649; accidental falls killed 14,786-perhaps stairs should be outlawed. Accidental drownings killed 3,488-should we ban swimming and pour concrete over the pools? Fires killed 3,741; drugs and medicines, 8,431; and the list goes on.

The last thing the gun-control people say is that control of guns reduces murder and violent crime. Wrong again. People living in England and Australia where guns are banned have violent-crime rates (rape and assault) twice as high as the gun-saturated United States. Car theft is three times higher in those countries than ours. Burglary is also 30 percent higher.

I could say more but this shows some of the social ramifications caused when people turn from God and the family structure collapses.

By: Anthony Rust

Article obtained from the link @:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3942/is_200109/ai_n8957191

To go to the latest U.S. statistical abstract:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/

 

[B36]

Thanks

.Thank you very much for taking the time to make this post

 

[One of Many]

Another possible explanation:

Consider the density of the population per square foot of ground. In western states the people are more likely to be spread far apart, so there is less social interaction and friction between hotheads. In eastern states and huge cities throughout the country, people are jammed together like sardines in a can, and that results in a lot of anxiety and stress reactions between people.

Guns don't cause crime, but they may make it easier to commit crimes. That doesn't mean that guns should be controlled, it means that people should be controlled. People that have demonstrated by their actions that they can not be trusted with weapons should be restricted from possessing weapons, and the people that have not shown themselves to be untrustworty should be left alone with regard to gun controls.

 

[Fosbery]

A good read and great at dispelling the myth that guns cause crime. However, I personally think crime is more to do with poverty than with a lack of present fathers (not that a lack of present fathers is not a bad thing). You get more single-parent families in poor areas and more crime in these areas, so the statistics will say both are the culprit.

 

[trapperjohn]

You get more single-parent families in poor areas and more crime in these areas, so the statistics will say both are the culprit

I would strongly disagree that poverty leads to crime. Lots of poor people don't steal. The fact that there is crime and single parent families in poor areas doesent mean anything except that they have something in common.

I believe that certain lifestyles that lead to crime and broken families also lead to poverrty.


what we often have in these neighborhoods is a mindset where crime and poverty are a symptom.

 

[Standing Wolf]

The reason for the vast difference between these two areas is family configuration and little else.

The so-called "family configuration" is largely a function of so-called "welfare." The more so-called "welfare" dollars in a given area, the more fatherless children, drug and alcohol addiction, illiteracy, violent crime, et cetera,

 

[1911 guy]

Poverty and crime

Poverty causes crime like guns cause crime. Lots of poor people are honest as the day is long and white collar crime is on the rise. The values that define a civilized society are becoming scarce.It's warped ethics that cause crime, not economic status.

 

[JBusch8899]

The cause of crime

While a number of factors influence one's decision to commit a criminal act, the only cause of crime (or the only one which really matters) is the decision of the individual to act upon his urge to perform said deed.

In other words: The mens rea + The actus rea = The proscribed act.

After all, God did and still does allow us all free will.

The only varients worthy of consideration is the degree of the violation. Those being, dependent upon jurisdiction: intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, negligently; or in specific cases, strict liability, mental culpability or depraved indifference.

 

[GT]

Personally I think violent crime is racially motivated.

The inner-city blacks were recruited by LBJ and his minions to become welfare whores rather than productive citizens, and blame all their troubles on whitey.

Once the government took over the role of father, the angry black men they created became a sub-class of criminal conspirator leaving the mothers and grandmothers to fend for themselves.

Now single parenthood by multiple absentee fathers is considered part of Black "culture" rather than simply dysfunctional (cf: "baby-daddy).

Now that brown is the new black it is happening all over again.

Until the so-called "minorities" can accept white anglo-saxon Western Civilization as a positive guiding principle they are doomed to a short, angry and violent life (despite being the wealthiest group of "people of color" in the history of the world as we know it).

Only issue I see is making sure I keep my guns to avoid becoming caught in the crossfire or part of a gang initiation.

G

 

[Fosbery]

Sure lots of poor people are not criminals, but lots of single parent children are not criminals either. I grew up with barely any contact with my parents and left home when I was 14. And I've not committed any criminal offence that I'm aware of and I had a succesful military and then civillian career. Annocdotal of course, but a good example I think.

 

[another okie]

I live in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the union. We have some crime, but a relatively low rate compared to many other places. We have a low rate of single parent families, though it's much higher than it was fifty years ago. Poverty is only loosely associated with crime. The reason the gun grabbers like to claim poverty is the cause of gun violence is that most people don't think of poverty as caused by behavior (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't) but it's pretty hard not to see fatherless families as a choice rather than a condition.