This blogger seems to think the mall shooting is the NRA’s fault. I have to wonder who’s fault they think the thwarted church massacre was? Or who’s fault this is? But Europe has a lower violent crime rate than we do, so it must be the guns! I pointed out that some countries with gun prohibitions have very high violent crime rates, and that others that have a lot of gun possession are relatively crime free.
The thing is, I don’t deny that cultural factors influence violent crime rates. The American criminal culture can be remarkably violent, especially in cities. But it’s hard for me to agree that it’s the guns when states like Vermont are awash with them, and jurisdictions like Washington D.C., in theory, are supposed to be gun free.
I fully believe if you flooded Germany or the UK with firearms, they’d still have murder rates lower than the US. Culturally, their criminals murder less often. I don’t know why that is, but I’m not betting it’s because they end up saying “Damn, I’d kill this guy if I had a gun, but I can’t get one, so I guess he lives today.”
If you comment there, be polite.
The odd thing is this unyielding tendency for anti gunners to put “gun crime” in its own category.
Crime is crime. A person stabbed to death is just as dead as someone shot. A 100 pound woman in a wheelchair mugged & raped by a linebacker isn’t comforted by the thought that he didn’t use a gun.
And they totally fail to add in the sheer number of crimes stopped by the simple brandishing of a firearm. It saved my life, so I can attest from first person perspective that it works.
Given that France has marked off whole areas as non-enforcement zones you can’t really compare our violence levels to theirs.
If we selected 3 neighborhoods in Chicago and told police not to enter and not to enforce the laws, Illinois violence would plummet. Do that for select neighborhoods in other major cities and I bet our violence levels drop to ‘European’ levels.
That’s a good point, and I think something that deserves more study. There have been neighborhoods that the police don’t like to go into in the US. To what extend are these European neighborhoods lawless? I would imagine if that if this is truly a no go zone, as in the French truly do not control these neighborhoods, even for serious violent crimes, then it very well may be the violent crime rate in Europe is greatly underreported.
This is a well-put-together blog, even if I don’t agree with your positions. Based on our back and forth at my place, I doubt we’re going to agree anytime soon. But I learned some new things from you and your commenters, and I feel more informed on the topic now. And thanks for the traffic.
Hey, no problem. Thanks for being reasonable. Too many times people on both sides forget we’re all reasonable people, and can have reasonable discussions with each other.
re: the non-lethality of UK criminals.
I believe it may have to do with their all having read the old nursery rhymes as little kiddies. They know what happens if they kill the goose that lays the golden egg; what might happen if they gobble of granny just to get Red’s goodie basket; or eat the first two little piggies. That is: 1-No more golden eggs, 2-the woodchpper will show up with his ax, and 3-the third pig will be ready and waiting for you to show up…and it won’t be pretty.