1. While the United States has the most fatalities from mass shootings in the 34 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development because of our large population, Norway (recall the Anders Breivik massacre), Finland, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland have double the ratio, ijReview reported.
The top 5 countries for mass shootings per capita all have “restrictive” gun policies.
2. Pew Research has reported that gun homicides are down 49% since 1993.
3. The National Review Online published an article in 2010 on the relationship between gun control and mass murders in Europe and America. It explored the misperception that mass murder is an exclusively American phenomenon. The author is John Lott, well known author of More Guns, Less Crime.
There are some very interesting facts:
Nearly twice as many people are killed by hands and fists each year than are killed by murderers who use shotguns. People are 60 percent more likely to die from a knife or sharp instrument than rifles and shotguns combined.
As homicides with guns have gone down, the data also shows that the amount of people killed by hammers, clubs and other blunt instruments continues to rise each year though not to the level of gun deaths yet.
5. As the threat of losing the right to gun ownership looms, people are racing to buy them. The FBI recorded 2.78 million background checks in December 2012 surpassing the 2.01 million checks in November by 39 percent. This is up 49 percent since December 2011 when 1.86 million checks were recorded by the FBI.
Prior to the latest call for gun bans, the share of U.S. households with a gun was falling and has been falling for decades, from 54 percent in 1977 to 32 percent in 2010, according to the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey. There are currently 307 million legal guns in our country.
Gun dealers call the Obama administration’s calls for broad gun control measures a gun-buying stimulus.
6. From 1980 – 2008, males were 77% of the homicide victims and 90% of the offenders. Men were also the victims over females by a 3 to 1 ratio. Men offend at a rate 9 times higher than females. Given this stat, men should be banned, not guns – following leftist logic.
7. Many of the homicides in cities are gang and drug related. From 1980 – 2008, the number of homicides involving gang violence had quadruped since 1980. During the same time period, gun involvement in gang-related homicides increased from 73 percent to 92 percent. It seems that a gun ban will not affect this since gangs generally use illegal guns. The illegal gun trade is alive and well.
Twenty-five percent of the gang-related homicides were under 18 years. Youth under 18 were also 19% of persons killed by family members and 18 percent of persons killed during a sex-related crime.
8. In 2008, 59% of young child homicide victims were killed by a parent, 10% were killed by some other family member and 30% were murdered by a friend or acquaintance. This points to a serious cultural problem and the choice of weapon seems almost irrelevant when the real issue is violent, perverse behavior resulting from mental defect or drug abuse.
9. Would banning guns affect the violence in our society?
During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower.
IN SUMMATION
The leftist websites are distorting the facts. If they have something they want to prove, they conduct a study with predetermined results to back it up.
If we take too many gun rights away from legal gun owners, we will have succeeded in limiting the right of the people to protect themselves. We will not have addressed gangs, poverty, poor education and career training, child abuse, drugs, mental illness, or the illegal gun trade.
National Review Online also asked the question Friday – is the media encouraging mass shootings by giving them the publicity they crave?
The solution is to take guns away from crazy leftists who are overwhelmingly gang members.
Well, I could send you the link, but since it’s propaganda, I guess there is no point.