The main cause of deaths caused by guns is ... guns? Isn't that a tautology?
I agree that something must be done but the problem is doing something effective and enforceable. California already has UBC's and Red Flag laws and we have almost one mass shooting per week (one in 8.3 days). The fact that we have fewer deaths than the national average is small comfort...
Michael - Just saw you are having a Skeptics meet & greet on the 26th... Hopefully for the next one can you give more notice? Would love to join but too short notice.
I invite anyone reading this to visit Rufo's Twitter page [1] or Website [2] and compare what he actually says and does to whatMichael claims. Rufo hasn't participated in the gun control debate to any significant extent. Rufo devotes most of his time to exposing racism, sexism, and pornography in schools and corporations. For example, he and a law firm are representing Jodi Shaw against Smith College in federal court. They allege [3] that Smith forced Shaw to undergo ritual racial humiliation and tasked her with implementing policies that racially segregated and discriminated against students.
In 2021, the public became aware that Disney was forcing its employees to engage in a critical race theory training program [4] that denounced America as fundamentally racist, had its white employees complete a "white privilege checklist," and included exercises on "decolonizing" bookshelves. When the story broke, Disney's first reaction was to issue a press release denying that the company is racist. Incredibly, it offered as proof the fact that it had produced the movie Black Panther, which used race as a factor to determine the writers, director, cast and crew. In other words, Disney's defense against an accusation of racism was to provide an example of the company practicing racism.
Disney went on to lie about Florida’s recently enacted Parental Rights in Education law, which Christopher Rufo supported. Disney called HB 1557 “the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill,” even though the measure does not contain the word “gay.” The law simply asks teachers not to instruct their students on (as the law states) “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” prior to the fourth grade. Disney and its allies evidently cannot wait that long. Instead, they are desperate to discuss sexuality with children ages 5 through 8.
In 1967 the Florida legislature granted Disney the authority to operate as its own local government. Disney benefits by having control over all building projects and by having the ability to issue taxpayer-funded bonds. The corporation also receives tax benefits. And apparently Disney thought it could use its unique position to interfere in government affairs. Critics of the special district classification argue that it gives Disney an unfair advantage, even hindering competition, thereby harming consumers. None of Orlando’s other theme parks have been given the special district designation.
The concern regarding the decision to end Disney's special district classification isn’t about government involvement with the free market. There is nothing free market about the special privileges Disney has received. This gives it an unfair advantage over other businesses, including the benefit of not having to go through normal regulatory and approval channels to build its rides, as other theme parks have to do. In fact, Disney has free rein to build whenever it wants, unlike other businesses in Florida. Allowing its special district status to end after five decades may seem like revenge, but it is actually just and long overdue.
Mass shootings are exceedingly rare, but in an attempt to make them appear commonplace, you say that "119 per day, or five per hour, shot dead by a firearm." What you don't say is that you are quoting statistics from 2020, a year in which gun deaths were twice that of the previous year, and most of those were suicides or instances where a police officer used a gun to defend himself or others. The number you should have given is closer to 53 per day for 2020, or 28 per day for a typical year, and most of those deaths occur in parts of the country where gun laws are the most strict. What you also fail to mention is that the number of lives saved each day by use of a firearm is far greater than even the inflated homicide numbers you gave.
Regulations bar the CDC from conducting original research of the defensive use of firearms. But after the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order allowing the agency to review existing studies on causes of and ways to reduce gun violence. As to defensive uses of guns, the CDC report said, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies. … Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
Criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck estimates that Americans use guns for defensive purposes 1.2 million times each year and that 1 in 6 Americans who have used guns defensively believe someone would have died but for their ability to use a firearm for that purpose. Even if we use the most conservative estimate of the number of defensive uses of a firearm each year (500,000), that amounts to approximately 83,333 lives saved annually or 228 lives saved each day -- far more than the number of gun homicides. Kleck believes that the true number is closer to 200,000 lives saved annually or nearly 550 lives saved each day by using a gun for defensive purposes. Though you (and MSNBC, CNN, etc) don't discuss them, many examples where concealed handgun permit holders have stopped likely mass public shootings have been compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center [1]. In none of these cases have permit holders ever accidentally shot a bystander or themselves been mistakenly shot by responding officers.
According to you, Second Amendment defenders believe "that there should really be no further gun control measures," and "nothing should be done." Gun control advocates claim to be the only ones who care, and many Americans go along with the idea that further regulation is the only available option.
Of course, gun rights advocates have never claimed that nothing can be done. When NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre spoke out eight days after Parkland, he called [1] for armed security officers in schools. The NRA’s National School Shield program has helped lead that effort [2]. The Republican governor in Florida got legislation allocating half billion dollars a year to put one police officer in each public school. Conservative commentator Dan Bongino, who handled Presidential security as a member of the Secret Service, has spoken [3] extensively about how to harden schools and other potential targets. He has also pointed out [4] the need to address the mental health crisis that gun-control advocates ignore.
In July 2020 top Democrats introduced legislation to get police out of schools. Senator Chris Murphy told [5] his fellow lawmakers, “Police shouldn’t be in schools.” Senators Chris Murphy (CT) and Elizabeth Warren (MA), along with Representatives Ayanna Pressley (MA) and Ilhan Omar (MN), introduced the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act that would prohibit federal money to be used to fund police in schools. The effort to keep police out of schools also had the backing of the two major teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA).
Many Republicans understand that a lone officer in uniform becomes the first target in school shootings, as attackers know that if they kill the officer, they will have free reign to continue their massacre. Putting a guard in every school is also very costly. Some Republicans have therefore called for letting teachers and staff carry permitted, concealed handguns — a proposal that is supported by most parents of K-12 students, according to a Rasmussen survey [6]. Police are also strongly in favor [7] of abolishing gun-free school zones.
Despite this strong level of support, the mainstream media considers the idea of arming teachers to be out of the bounds of serious discussion. But to varying degrees in 20 states [8], K-12 schools are already allowing teachers and staff to carry guns. The fears of gun control advocates haven’t been realized. Outside of a firearms training class, there has only ever been one accidental discharge of a gun by a these teachers or staff in any of these schools, occurring after-hours in a Utah school restroom. No one was shot. Furthermore, no teacher or staffer has ever lost control of his or her gun. No mass public shooting has ever occurred in a school that allows teachers and staff to carry.
"That Oswald was a psychopathic hate-filled anti-Kennedy pro-Castro Communist in search of notoriety (i.e., the ultimate explanation) is secondary to what is important in determining the proximate cause of Kennedy’s death — Oswald’s gun." That's got to be one of the wackiest things you have ever said, Michael.
"But for the gun, none of these mass public murders would have happened, and only a handful of those who died by gun suicide would be dead." Have you ever heard of bombs, fires, planes, cars, rope or other objects being used to kill? In a typical year, four times as many people are killed with a knife as a rifle. Also, compared to a rifle, four times as many people are killed with hands, feet or a blunt object such as a hammer. Do we need knife-control and hammer-control legislation? Must we regulate hands and feet somehow? If you really cared about saving lives and were consistent, that is what you would demand. Isn't murder already illegal, no matter the weapon? Since, by definition, criminals ignore the law, how is the simple act of passing a new law going to take guns out of the hands of criminals, let alone prevent them from substituting some other weapon? Why are the rates of gun violence not lower in those parts of the country that have the strictest gun laws?
Following the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act’s imposition of a five-day waiting period for the 32 states previously not subject to such waiting periods, gun control supporters expected those states would have seen a reduction in crime, compared with the other 18 “control” states. But according to The Journal of the American Medical Association: “Our analyses provide no evidence that implementation of the Brady Act was associated with a reduction in homicide rates. … We find no differences in homicide or firearm homicide rates to adult victims in the 32 states directly subject to the Brady Act provisions compared with the remaining control states.”
The Left wholeheartedly supports assisted suicide, but hates the idea of allowing a person to commit suicide with a gun. The study did find a decrease in gun suicides for men over 55. But the overall suicide rate remained unchanged. Men over 55 simply resorted to other means to kill themselves. Women mostly kill themselves with poison. Suicide statistics in countries that have tight gun control laws don’t support the argument that removing guns will reduce suicide rates on the whole. For example, Lithuania has very few guns but a very high suicide rate.
Ultimately, government would have to ban everything to prevent suicide - cars, cliffs, water, you name it. Instead, we must realize that the means to kill ourselves are not really the problem -- it is the grief that causes us to think suicide an appealing option.
Predictably, you cherry-picked and misrepresented the Australia model. In 1996, a man in Australia killed 35 people with a semi-automatic firearm. In the wake of that tragedy, the country enacted legislation mostly prohibiting automatic and semiautomatic rifles, imposing stricter licensing requirements and ownership rules, and funding a buy back program which succeeded in removing one-sixth to one-third of the nation’s guns from public circulation.
Prior to the 1996 program, both suicide and homicide rates in Australia had been decreasing for ten years. Since Australia had few mass shootings beforehand, the buy back had little measurable effect [1] on overall gun violence. In addition, while the law affected just gun ownership, non-firearm deaths went down by approximately the same amount as firearm deaths, suggesting that the reduction in both types of deaths had nothing to do with the firearm ban. Australia also had far fewer guns in the country than America. There is no practical way for the US government to take away everyone's weapons without causing an insurrection.
There is actually no simple correlation between homicide rates and gun-ownership rates or gun laws. This has been shown numerous times, by different people, using different data sets. Robert Verbruggen took state gun-ownership levels reported by the Washington Post (based on a Centers for Disease Control survey) and compared them with murder rates from the FBI: no correlation. The legal scholar Eugene Volokh has compared states’ gun laws (as rated by the anti-gun Brady Campaign) with their murder rates: no correlation. David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner failed to find a correlation even between gun ownership in a state and gun murders specifically, an approach that sets aside the issue of whether gun availability has an effect on non-gun crime. (Guns can deter unarmed criminals, for instance, and criminals without guns may simply switch to other weapons.)
Dishonest gun-control advocates love to present a series of cherry-picked countries with lower murder rates and with fewer guns per capita. We’ve all seen it many times. The United States, with a murder rate of approximately 5 per 100,000 is compared to a variety of Western and Central European countries (also sometimes Japan) with murder rates often below 1 per 100,000. This is supposed to fill Americans with a sense of shame and illustrate that the United States should be regarded as some sort of pariah nation because of its murder rate.
Note, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries, most of which are very unlike the United States. They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are frequently very small (such as Norway, with a population of 5 million) with very locally based democracies (again, unlike the US with an immense population and far fewer representatives in government per voter). Politically, historically, and demographically, the US has little in common with Europe or Japan.
What is the criteria for deciding that the United States shall be compared to Luxembourg but not to Mexico, which has far more in common with the US than Luxembourg in terms of size, history, ethnic diversity, and geography? It makes little sense to claim Sweden should be compared to the US, but not Argentina. Such assertions ignore immense differences in culture, size, politics, history, demographics, or ethnic diversity. Comparisons with mono-ethnic Asian countries like Japan and Korea make even less sense. We are never allowed to compare the US to middle income countries like Uruguay, Russia, or Mexico because that would show that the US is actually a remarkably safe place in global terms on top of having many more legally owned guns than those countries.
For an example, consider the article [1] titled “The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country.” After mistakenly using the "gun related" killings rate instead of the murder rate the author, Max Fisher, carefully constructs his comparisons of the US with his curated list of “developed” countries, as well as a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point that the US is unusually violent. So-called "gun-related killings" include accidents and suicides. But of course, the reason most people are concerned about gun violence is because of homicides. Many people commit suicides with ropes and cars, but we don't talk about banning ropes and cars. Moreover, many people die from accidents involving power tools, ladders, and other items. Again, we don't talk about banning those things.
Fisher's list of countries is based on one by the OECD [2], which is highly political and not based on any objective economic or cultural criteria. Mexico is an OECD country, but is conspicuously missing from Fishers analysis. Why? Because Mexico - in spite of much more restrictive gun laws - has a murder rate many times larger than the US.
Why not use the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.” The OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers similar to Turkey and Mexico. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.
We find that the US murder rate looks [3] very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates). The US has a rather low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members. Venezuela's murder rate is more than ten times that of the US, despite having extremely strict gun laws. Upon closer analysis, the cherry-picked examples in this Quillete article meet a similar fate.
Sometimes it's hard to keep up with your self-contradictions. After trying to scare us with (false) statistics intended to portray the US as uniquely violent, you talk about "our understanding that, except in rare and exceptional circumstances, designated law-enforcement officials have a monopoly on the use of force," so there is never any need for citizens to acquire firearms for self-defense. But, actually that comes right after you, talking about the police in Uvalde, says "well-armed good guys spent over an hour restraining parents desperate to rescue their children while the mass murderer continued his slaughter inside the elementary school," putting "the lie to this trope" that we can rely on the police to protect us. Therefore, Americans should give up their guns?
Just wanting to pass more laws doesn’t mean that you “care.” Someone willing to commit mass murder isn't going to be stopped by a gun law. Quite the contrary, such criminals often target areas with strict gun control because they know such laws make it easier for them to victimize law-abiding citizens. Gun rights advocates routinely suggest proven methods to reduce gun violence, but shills for the Democratic Party reject anything but laws that have already proved ineffective. For Democrats, scoring political points is more important than saving lives.
I read the article instead. thanks, it's good.
The main cause of deaths caused by guns is ... guns? Isn't that a tautology?
I agree that something must be done but the problem is doing something effective and enforceable. California already has UBC's and Red Flag laws and we have almost one mass shooting per week (one in 8.3 days). The fact that we have fewer deaths than the national average is small comfort...
Michael - Just saw you are having a Skeptics meet & greet on the 26th... Hopefully for the next one can you give more notice? Would love to join but too short notice.
I invite anyone reading this to visit Rufo's Twitter page [1] or Website [2] and compare what he actually says and does to whatMichael claims. Rufo hasn't participated in the gun control debate to any significant extent. Rufo devotes most of his time to exposing racism, sexism, and pornography in schools and corporations. For example, he and a law firm are representing Jodi Shaw against Smith College in federal court. They allege [3] that Smith forced Shaw to undergo ritual racial humiliation and tasked her with implementing policies that racially segregated and discriminated against students.
In 2021, the public became aware that Disney was forcing its employees to engage in a critical race theory training program [4] that denounced America as fundamentally racist, had its white employees complete a "white privilege checklist," and included exercises on "decolonizing" bookshelves. When the story broke, Disney's first reaction was to issue a press release denying that the company is racist. Incredibly, it offered as proof the fact that it had produced the movie Black Panther, which used race as a factor to determine the writers, director, cast and crew. In other words, Disney's defense against an accusation of racism was to provide an example of the company practicing racism.
Disney went on to lie about Florida’s recently enacted Parental Rights in Education law, which Christopher Rufo supported. Disney called HB 1557 “the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill,” even though the measure does not contain the word “gay.” The law simply asks teachers not to instruct their students on (as the law states) “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” prior to the fourth grade. Disney and its allies evidently cannot wait that long. Instead, they are desperate to discuss sexuality with children ages 5 through 8.
In 1967 the Florida legislature granted Disney the authority to operate as its own local government. Disney benefits by having control over all building projects and by having the ability to issue taxpayer-funded bonds. The corporation also receives tax benefits. And apparently Disney thought it could use its unique position to interfere in government affairs. Critics of the special district classification argue that it gives Disney an unfair advantage, even hindering competition, thereby harming consumers. None of Orlando’s other theme parks have been given the special district designation.
The concern regarding the decision to end Disney's special district classification isn’t about government involvement with the free market. There is nothing free market about the special privileges Disney has received. This gives it an unfair advantage over other businesses, including the benefit of not having to go through normal regulatory and approval channels to build its rides, as other theme parks have to do. In fact, Disney has free rein to build whenever it wants, unlike other businesses in Florida. Allowing its special district status to end after five decades may seem like revenge, but it is actually just and long overdue.
1. https://twitter.com/search?q=Christopher%20rufo&src=typed_query
2. https://christopherrufo.com/
3. https://gettr.com/post/plmket8a9c
4. https://www.city-journal.org/racial-politics-at-disney
Mass shootings are exceedingly rare, but in an attempt to make them appear commonplace, you say that "119 per day, or five per hour, shot dead by a firearm." What you don't say is that you are quoting statistics from 2020, a year in which gun deaths were twice that of the previous year, and most of those were suicides or instances where a police officer used a gun to defend himself or others. The number you should have given is closer to 53 per day for 2020, or 28 per day for a typical year, and most of those deaths occur in parts of the country where gun laws are the most strict. What you also fail to mention is that the number of lives saved each day by use of a firearm is far greater than even the inflated homicide numbers you gave.
Regulations bar the CDC from conducting original research of the defensive use of firearms. But after the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order allowing the agency to review existing studies on causes of and ways to reduce gun violence. As to defensive uses of guns, the CDC report said, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies. … Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
Criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck estimates that Americans use guns for defensive purposes 1.2 million times each year and that 1 in 6 Americans who have used guns defensively believe someone would have died but for their ability to use a firearm for that purpose. Even if we use the most conservative estimate of the number of defensive uses of a firearm each year (500,000), that amounts to approximately 83,333 lives saved annually or 228 lives saved each day -- far more than the number of gun homicides. Kleck believes that the true number is closer to 200,000 lives saved annually or nearly 550 lives saved each day by using a gun for defensive purposes. Though you (and MSNBC, CNN, etc) don't discuss them, many examples where concealed handgun permit holders have stopped likely mass public shootings have been compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center [1]. In none of these cases have permit holders ever accidentally shot a bystander or themselves been mistakenly shot by responding officers.
1. https://crimeresearch.org/2022/05/uber-driver-in-chicago-stops-mass-public-shooting/
According to you, Second Amendment defenders believe "that there should really be no further gun control measures," and "nothing should be done." Gun control advocates claim to be the only ones who care, and many Americans go along with the idea that further regulation is the only available option.
Of course, gun rights advocates have never claimed that nothing can be done. When NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre spoke out eight days after Parkland, he called [1] for armed security officers in schools. The NRA’s National School Shield program has helped lead that effort [2]. The Republican governor in Florida got legislation allocating half billion dollars a year to put one police officer in each public school. Conservative commentator Dan Bongino, who handled Presidential security as a member of the Secret Service, has spoken [3] extensively about how to harden schools and other potential targets. He has also pointed out [4] the need to address the mental health crisis that gun-control advocates ignore.
In July 2020 top Democrats introduced legislation to get police out of schools. Senator Chris Murphy told [5] his fellow lawmakers, “Police shouldn’t be in schools.” Senators Chris Murphy (CT) and Elizabeth Warren (MA), along with Representatives Ayanna Pressley (MA) and Ilhan Omar (MN), introduced the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act that would prohibit federal money to be used to fund police in schools. The effort to keep police out of schools also had the backing of the two major teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA).
Many Republicans understand that a lone officer in uniform becomes the first target in school shootings, as attackers know that if they kill the officer, they will have free reign to continue their massacre. Putting a guard in every school is also very costly. Some Republicans have therefore called for letting teachers and staff carry permitted, concealed handguns — a proposal that is supported by most parents of K-12 students, according to a Rasmussen survey [6]. Police are also strongly in favor [7] of abolishing gun-free school zones.
Despite this strong level of support, the mainstream media considers the idea of arming teachers to be out of the bounds of serious discussion. But to varying degrees in 20 states [8], K-12 schools are already allowing teachers and staff to carry guns. The fears of gun control advocates haven’t been realized. Outside of a firearms training class, there has only ever been one accidental discharge of a gun by a these teachers or staff in any of these schools, occurring after-hours in a Utah school restroom. No one was shot. Furthermore, no teacher or staffer has ever lost control of his or her gun. No mass public shooting has ever occurred in a school that allows teachers and staff to carry.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2AQN5cEBSU
2. https://www.nationalschoolshield.org/training/
3. https://rumble.com/v16blsn-what-really-happened-in-uvalde-ep.-1778-the-dan-bongino.html
4. https://video.foxnews.com/v/6306960862112
5. https://youtu.be/_8CGN0lmJqQ
6. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/gun_control/most_adults_with_school_aged_kids_support_arming_teachers
7. https://crimeresearch.org/2018/04/surveys-teachers-staff-carrying-guns-show-surprising-support/
8. https://crimeresearch.org/2018/03/states-allow-teachers-staff-carry-guns/
"That Oswald was a psychopathic hate-filled anti-Kennedy pro-Castro Communist in search of notoriety (i.e., the ultimate explanation) is secondary to what is important in determining the proximate cause of Kennedy’s death — Oswald’s gun." That's got to be one of the wackiest things you have ever said, Michael.
"But for the gun, none of these mass public murders would have happened, and only a handful of those who died by gun suicide would be dead." Have you ever heard of bombs, fires, planes, cars, rope or other objects being used to kill? In a typical year, four times as many people are killed with a knife as a rifle. Also, compared to a rifle, four times as many people are killed with hands, feet or a blunt object such as a hammer. Do we need knife-control and hammer-control legislation? Must we regulate hands and feet somehow? If you really cared about saving lives and were consistent, that is what you would demand. Isn't murder already illegal, no matter the weapon? Since, by definition, criminals ignore the law, how is the simple act of passing a new law going to take guns out of the hands of criminals, let alone prevent them from substituting some other weapon? Why are the rates of gun violence not lower in those parts of the country that have the strictest gun laws?
Following the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act’s imposition of a five-day waiting period for the 32 states previously not subject to such waiting periods, gun control supporters expected those states would have seen a reduction in crime, compared with the other 18 “control” states. But according to The Journal of the American Medical Association: “Our analyses provide no evidence that implementation of the Brady Act was associated with a reduction in homicide rates. … We find no differences in homicide or firearm homicide rates to adult victims in the 32 states directly subject to the Brady Act provisions compared with the remaining control states.”
The Left wholeheartedly supports assisted suicide, but hates the idea of allowing a person to commit suicide with a gun. The study did find a decrease in gun suicides for men over 55. But the overall suicide rate remained unchanged. Men over 55 simply resorted to other means to kill themselves. Women mostly kill themselves with poison. Suicide statistics in countries that have tight gun control laws don’t support the argument that removing guns will reduce suicide rates on the whole. For example, Lithuania has very few guns but a very high suicide rate.
Ultimately, government would have to ban everything to prevent suicide - cars, cliffs, water, you name it. Instead, we must realize that the means to kill ourselves are not really the problem -- it is the grief that causes us to think suicide an appealing option.
Predictably, you cherry-picked and misrepresented the Australia model. In 1996, a man in Australia killed 35 people with a semi-automatic firearm. In the wake of that tragedy, the country enacted legislation mostly prohibiting automatic and semiautomatic rifles, imposing stricter licensing requirements and ownership rules, and funding a buy back program which succeeded in removing one-sixth to one-third of the nation’s guns from public circulation.
Prior to the 1996 program, both suicide and homicide rates in Australia had been decreasing for ten years. Since Australia had few mass shootings beforehand, the buy back had little measurable effect [1] on overall gun violence. In addition, while the law affected just gun ownership, non-firearm deaths went down by approximately the same amount as firearm deaths, suggesting that the reduction in both types of deaths had nothing to do with the firearm ban. Australia also had far fewer guns in the country than America. There is no practical way for the US government to take away everyone's weapons without causing an insurrection.
There is actually no simple correlation between homicide rates and gun-ownership rates or gun laws. This has been shown numerous times, by different people, using different data sets. Robert Verbruggen took state gun-ownership levels reported by the Washington Post (based on a Centers for Disease Control survey) and compared them with murder rates from the FBI: no correlation. The legal scholar Eugene Volokh has compared states’ gun laws (as rated by the anti-gun Brady Campaign) with their murder rates: no correlation. David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner failed to find a correlation even between gun ownership in a state and gun murders specifically, an approach that sets aside the issue of whether gun availability has an effect on non-gun crime. (Guns can deter unarmed criminals, for instance, and criminals without guns may simply switch to other weapons.)
1. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425021/australia-gun-control-obama-america
Dishonest gun-control advocates love to present a series of cherry-picked countries with lower murder rates and with fewer guns per capita. We’ve all seen it many times. The United States, with a murder rate of approximately 5 per 100,000 is compared to a variety of Western and Central European countries (also sometimes Japan) with murder rates often below 1 per 100,000. This is supposed to fill Americans with a sense of shame and illustrate that the United States should be regarded as some sort of pariah nation because of its murder rate.
Note, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries, most of which are very unlike the United States. They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are frequently very small (such as Norway, with a population of 5 million) with very locally based democracies (again, unlike the US with an immense population and far fewer representatives in government per voter). Politically, historically, and demographically, the US has little in common with Europe or Japan.
What is the criteria for deciding that the United States shall be compared to Luxembourg but not to Mexico, which has far more in common with the US than Luxembourg in terms of size, history, ethnic diversity, and geography? It makes little sense to claim Sweden should be compared to the US, but not Argentina. Such assertions ignore immense differences in culture, size, politics, history, demographics, or ethnic diversity. Comparisons with mono-ethnic Asian countries like Japan and Korea make even less sense. We are never allowed to compare the US to middle income countries like Uruguay, Russia, or Mexico because that would show that the US is actually a remarkably safe place in global terms on top of having many more legally owned guns than those countries.
For an example, consider the article [1] titled “The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country.” After mistakenly using the "gun related" killings rate instead of the murder rate the author, Max Fisher, carefully constructs his comparisons of the US with his curated list of “developed” countries, as well as a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point that the US is unusually violent. So-called "gun-related killings" include accidents and suicides. But of course, the reason most people are concerned about gun violence is because of homicides. Many people commit suicides with ropes and cars, but we don't talk about banning ropes and cars. Moreover, many people die from accidents involving power tools, ladders, and other items. Again, we don't talk about banning those things.
Fisher's list of countries is based on one by the OECD [2], which is highly political and not based on any objective economic or cultural criteria. Mexico is an OECD country, but is conspicuously missing from Fishers analysis. Why? Because Mexico - in spite of much more restrictive gun laws - has a murder rate many times larger than the US.
Why not use the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.” The OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers similar to Turkey and Mexico. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.
We find that the US murder rate looks [3] very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates). The US has a rather low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members. Venezuela's murder rate is more than ten times that of the US, despite having extremely strict gun laws. Upon closer analysis, the cherry-picked examples in this Quillete article meet a similar fate.
Sometimes it's hard to keep up with your self-contradictions. After trying to scare us with (false) statistics intended to portray the US as uniquely violent, you talk about "our understanding that, except in rare and exceptional circumstances, designated law-enforcement officials have a monopoly on the use of force," so there is never any need for citizens to acquire firearms for self-defense. But, actually that comes right after you, talking about the police in Uvalde, says "well-armed good guys spent over an hour restraining parents desperate to rescue their children while the mass murderer continued his slaughter inside the elementary school," putting "the lie to this trope" that we can rely on the police to protect us. Therefore, Americans should give up their guns?
Just wanting to pass more laws doesn’t mean that you “care.” Someone willing to commit mass murder isn't going to be stopped by a gun law. Quite the contrary, such criminals often target areas with strict gun control because they know such laws make it easier for them to victimize law-abiding citizens. Gun rights advocates routinely suggest proven methods to reduce gun violence, but shills for the Democratic Party reject anything but laws that have already proved ineffective. For Democrats, scoring political points is more important than saving lives.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/chart-the-u-s-has-far-more-gun-related-killings-than-any-other-developed-country/
2. http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/
3. https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wqrkdcRk3OI/Vhv9SLY4LzI/AAAAAAAAIow/dErrDSbDb2c/s1600/murderrate.png