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The Life-and-Death Cost of Gun Control
johnrlott.tripod.com ^ | December 2nd, 2008 | John R. Lott, Jr.

Posted on 12/03/2008 12:27:30 PM PST by neverdem

Banning guns is in the news. India practically bans guns, but that didn’t stop the horrific Muslim terrorist attacks this last week.

A football player concerned for his safety violates New York City’s tough gun control regulations by carrying a concealed handgun, and people call for everything from banning NFL players from carrying guns to demanding that the athlete serve many years in jail.

Where is the sympathy or debate in either case over letting people defend themselves? Given that the terrorists smuggled their machine guns in with them, would anyone argue that India’s extremely strict gun licensing and artificially high prices for guns helped prevent the terrorist attacks? In fact, the reverse is more likely the case.

Would Plaxico Burress, the New York Giant’s receiver who was arrested yesterday, really have been safer just trusting the police to protect him?

Terrorism

In India, victims watched as armed police cowered and didn’t fire back at the terrorists. A photographer at the scene describedhis frustration: “There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything. At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, ‘Shoot them, they’re sitting ducks!’ but they just didn’t shoot back.”

Meanwhile, according to the hotel company’s chairman, P.R.S. Oberoi, security at “the hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapons because of the difficulties in obtaining gun permits from the Indian government.”

India has extremely strict gun control laws, but who did it succeed in disarming?

The terrorist attack showed how difficult it is to disarm serious terrorists. Strict licensing rules meant that it was the victims who obeyed the regulations, not the terrorists.

Academic research has continually found that police are the single most important factor in reducing...

(Excerpt) Read more at johnrlott.tripod.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: banglist; bombay; johnlott; mumbai; plaxicoburress
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This was originally posted at a URL linked to Foxnews.com., but you can see what happens when you try it. By looking at the URL from the author's website, you can see that it was intended as an OpEd column.

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/FoxNewsLifeDeathGunC120208.html

Foxnews.com downgraded it to a blog essay that you can't access directly. I had to go to the author's website.

1 posted on 12/03/2008 12:27:30 PM PST by neverdem
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To: neverdem

Hits it on the head regarding India.

Loses it regarding Buress. Why would Buress go out to a place that he does not feel safe in the first place? Bottom line, Buress was an idiot.


2 posted on 12/03/2008 12:30:09 PM PST by FlipWilson
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To: neverdem
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

BUT, ACCORDING TO DIANE FINESWINE, BABS BOXER, CHUCKY SCHUMER, ET AL – OOOOO – GUNS ARE SOOOO DANGEROUS!! In what may be a perverse form of population control, these MORONS – many of whom are themselves armed or have armed people around them -- would prefer us to have to call 911 – and DIE while the cops are en-route.

These murderous muzzies are HERE and the more of us who CARRY CONCEALED, the more of them we can “off” BEFORE they kill on the scale of their recent activities in Mumbai.

WHY THEY WANT OUR GUNS!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73SsNFgBO4


3 posted on 12/03/2008 12:31:30 PM PST by Dick Bachert
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To: neverdem

Part of this quote has been posted - I just found the whole thing - it’s GOOD.


“Never Forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t allow him to do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.”

-Alexander Hope, from the novel “Hope” by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman


4 posted on 12/03/2008 12:32:15 PM PST by MrB (The 0bamanation: Marxism, Infanticide, Appeasement, Depression, Thuggery, and Censorship)
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To: neverdem
The terrorist attack showed how difficult it is to disarm serious terrorists. Strict licensing rules meant that it was the victims who obeyed the regulations, not the terrorists.

Such is ALWAYS the case.

Here's what I would like to see: some analysis of the cost of IMPLEMENTING India-style (or Brit- or Aussie- , etc.) gun control in this country. I don't mean the cost of the bureaucrats, or even the cost in terms of higher street crime or vulnerability to terrorism...no, I mean the cost in blood and treasure to disarm 90 million Americans, even if only a few percent of them decide that they, uh, strenuously disagree with the proposition. Because when the NY Slimes, the Brady Bunch, and all of our gun-grabbing, tyrant-wannabee pols figure it out, they will long for the days when a powerful NRA and the Republican Party protected THEM from US.

5 posted on 12/03/2008 12:36:59 PM PST by Ancesthntr (An ex-citizen of the Frederation dedicated to stopping the Obamination from becoming President)
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To: JohnRLott

See comment# 1.


6 posted on 12/03/2008 12:37:41 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi min oi)
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To: FlipWilson
Loses it regarding Buress. Why would Buress go out to a place that he does not feel safe in the first place?

Tell that to Sean Taylor of the Redskins.

Bottom line, a lot of these guys don't feel safe ANYWHERE. If Burress was legally packing, he's nothing more than an African-American Barney Fife. If the gun was unlicensed, that's a different story.

7 posted on 12/03/2008 12:37:41 PM PST by ssaftler (Imagine January 20, 2013)
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To: neverdem

Guns are dangerous only to a criminal or an out of control government. Kinda hard to tell the difference.


8 posted on 12/03/2008 12:41:38 PM PST by o_zarkman44 (Since when is paying more, but getting less, considered Patriotic?)
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To: neverdem

It seems to continually be lost on the gun-grabbers that if the bad guys can smuggle in tons of drugs then they can smuggle in tons of guns, for recreation purposes only, of course!!!


9 posted on 12/03/2008 12:43:10 PM PST by PORD (People...Of Right Do)
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To: ssaftler
Bottom line, a lot of these guys don't feel safe ANYWHERE. If Burress was legally packing, he's nothing more than an African-American Barney Fife. If the gun was unlicensed, that's a different story.

What, are you kidding? A black man can't get a gun license in New York!

10 posted on 12/03/2008 12:49:39 PM PST by mvpel (Michael Pelletier)
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To: neverdem

11 posted on 12/03/2008 1:29:45 PM PST by Pipe Dog
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To: neverdem
I was thinking the same thing. The lack of private gun ownership was definitely a big factor that allowed a group of less than a dozen terrorists to run rampage for days in a city of millions. Once the terrorist knocked out the few visible local policemen, the citizens of Mumbai had no other protection other than to hunker down until other security forces arrived.

IMHO this is also at least part of the reason for endemic violence from drug gangs in our southern neighbor, Mexico. Of course, in Mexico even when local police are available, they are often unreliable because they are bribed by drug mafias.

12 posted on 12/03/2008 1:33:53 PM PST by LuxAerterna
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To: Ancesthntr
Ancesthntr wrote: " I mean the cost in blood and treasure to disarm 90 million Americans, even if only a few percent of them decide that they, uh, strenuously disagree with the proposition."

The problem might be much more sinister than what your post implies. Consider what happened shortly after the French revolution in the late 1700's.

At that time Committees of Public Safety sought out supposed traitors, spies and aristocrats-in-hiding. People like Robespierre incited the mobs to take vengeance upon anyone perceived to have caused the poor state of the french economy at that time.

If I were a present day politician, my thoughts would be directed to how to set the ship of state back on a level keel. This foolishness by the socialists who are about to take the helm can only lead to their own demise.

13 posted on 12/03/2008 1:36:58 PM PST by An Old Man (Lead, Follow, or get the hell out of the way)
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To: neverdem
Sent a copy of this story to Glenn Beck, after some apparently anti-gun, anti-2nd Amendment goofball sat in for him on his radio show yesterday.

The guy was making RIDICULOUS comments, such as WHY does any professional football player NEED to carry a gun?

Sounds like a typical comment a liberal anti-gun maggot would make.

The question SHOULD be, WHY does a law-abiding citizen's RIGHT (along with a proper MEANS to effect such defense) to defend himself/herself STOP at some political boundary, such as "Little Hitler", anti-gun RINO Bloomberg's Peoples Republic of NYC?

14 posted on 12/03/2008 1:50:26 PM PST by DocH (Hussein Obama: Leader of an America-Hating Socialist /Black Nationalist Sleeper Cell)
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To: neverdem
Toys “R” US

The media can’t be blamed for some of the left out information and misimpressions about guns. For example, the news coverage over the weekend about a shooting at a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California gave the wrong impression about guns. It seemed the perfect fit –- two couples squabbling over who would get a toy resulting in a deadly shoot out. Surely this demonstrated the dangers of letting people have guns for self defense.

But political correctness made it difficult for local authorities to even admit a simple and important fact — the two couples were members of rival gangs. As Palm Desert city councilman Bob Spiegel told The L.A. Times, there were apparently “two rival groups shopping at the store.” Even stories that mentioned the gangs often left the mention until the end.

Ah-Ha!
I KNEW there was more to this shooting. Thios is the first time I've seen/read/heard that it was gang bangers shooting each other.

Not even FoxNews mentioned the gang connection.

15 posted on 12/03/2008 2:15:39 PM PST by Condor51 (Obama believes in Karl Marx. I believe in Sun Tzu.)
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To: Condor51
Not even FoxNews mentioned the gang connection.

Did you see what FoxNews did with this column. Check comment# 1.

16 posted on 12/03/2008 2:21:10 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi min oi)
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To: MrB

Good quote, worth a ping. Thanks


17 posted on 12/03/2008 2:52:03 PM PST by Red Boots
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To: MrB

Thanks for the quote.


18 posted on 12/03/2008 3:23:25 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi min oi)
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To: ssaftler

From what I have read, it was not “licensed” but my question to you is, WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER NEED TO ASK PERMISSION FROM THE GOVERNMENT (at any level) TO EXERCISE A RIGHT, a God-given, Natural RIGHT? Why would you make the comment you do about “If the gun was unlicensed, that’s a different story.”??? What does “licensing” have to do with whether or not Buress had/has a RIGHT to carry a firearm for personal protection? When you have to get PERMISSION from anyone to exercise a RIGHT, it is no longer a RIGHT but a privilege extended by the ones you must beg permission from, to be granted or withheld at their whim.


19 posted on 12/03/2008 4:03:36 PM PST by dcwusmc (We need to make government so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub.)
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To: dcwusmc
WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER NEED TO ASK PERMISSION FROM THE GOVERNMENT (at any level) TO EXERCISE A RIGHT, a God-given, Natural RIGHT?

First, take a chill pill!

My point here is that Bloomberg is going ape-$h!t over the fact that Burress should do jail time just on the gun charge.

My initial retort was that sports figures are targets because of their fame and money. There was a recent article in either ESPN Magazine or The Sporting News talking about how nervous most of these players are and want protection, especially after Sean Taylor got shot and killed IN HIS OWN HOUSE.

If they are willing to go through whatever red tape (legal or otherwise according to you) in their state of residence, then the least other states can do is to respect those laws. Hell, if two guys get married in Massachusetts, doesn't New York have to recognize them as legally married, even though such a marriage is illegal there?

20 posted on 12/03/2008 4:15:17 PM PST by ssaftler (Imagine January 20, 2013)
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