Concerning the 32 murders at Virginia Tech University on Monday, let’s not forget the reaction from around the globe. Many other countries, of course think we are insane for allowing these weapons of death to so thoroughly permeate our country (and let’s not forget that students and instructors from other nations were victims also, as noted here).Also, I, like you I’m sure, am starting to hear the argument advocated with greater frequency and emphasis that more guns could have prevented the tragedy, not fewer – I touched on this earlier, but I’m coming back to it again.
I’ve never understood this argument. Never. Guns are the only item, apparently, where (as far as some people are concerned) more of them can decrease the problem they pose instead of fewer. To me, that’s like saying the way to combat a flu epidemic is to create more viruses, or the way to cut down on traffic fatalities due to people driving too fast on a congested roadway is to raise the speed limit.
And the information from this link bears out what I just said, from The Journal of Trauma (let’s look at this from the human health and life sciences perspective, OK?). I think this paragraph goes right to the heart of the matter (re: the results of a study pertaining to gun violence conducted in three major U.S. cities)…
…During the study interval (12 months in Memphis, 18 months in Seattle, and Galveston) 626 shootings occurred in or around a residence. This total included 54 unintentional shootings, 118 attempted or completed suicides, and 438 assaults/homicides. Thirteen shootings were legally justifiable or an act of self-defense, including three that involved law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.Any questions?
7 comments:
you might want to check out some of the reader comments in the online edition of the german publication, der speigel...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,478347,00.html
as well as the page A19 article from yesterday's wapo...
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=9040170
Thanks a lot for this and the Nacchio comment - I'll check it out; lots of stuff going on and it's hard to post as I'd like at the moment.
If the speedway is congested does not matter what the speed limit is raised or lowered too.
Flu shots come from the flu virus.
Need better examples if you are going to change mind sets
The speed limit example is apropos for an area near where I reside accessible to the stretch of road between Old Exits 28 and 24 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, by the way.
OK, how about this, then? The way to win the "war on terrorism" once and for all is to build more and more and bigger and bigger bombs (or bigger and bigger walls to cut off "unfriendlies").
The Journal of Trauma information carries more weight than any example I could come up with anyway (if "mind sets" read this and remain unpersuaded, then I don't see any other way to bring them around - seems crystal clear to me that when you bring a gun into the equation, then the criminal has to some degree won anyway).
NOT even going to touch the war thing! But, the survey, 3 Cities. All we have are the names and some stats. Not a word about toatl population or how many shootings were gang related or drug related. I doubt if there were any laws restricting guns or the sale of guns would have any effect on the total dead in those circumstances. What was the relation to suicide by overdose, jumping ect. compared to guns. I see lots of stats but not all the numbers to make an accurate comparison. Three cities seems to be a small section to base any hard numbers on. My city in Virginia had no where near that number or the perctange of gun crimes in last year or in 1998 when the survey you quote was published. How many lives in the justified shootings were saved? One life lost before natural death is too many. Also one life saved has to be good. So the few justified shootings would be acceptable losses to you. Just to keep guns out of peoples hands? It would see that the law abiding people would suffer with that way of thinking. Again show me a comprehensive unbias survey with no politcal spin and this is a conversation I would love to listen too. Gun ownership is a hot topic you are either for or against. There is no gray area. More guns at Va Tech would have prevented this? Even I do not think that. There are too many people out there that have no respect for others or their rights. And that I think is the fault of everyone who has vote. Instead of teaching our kids that there is evil in the world and how to handle it or that it is OK to lose and you do not have to work hard for anything because it will be provied to you, is a the sad fact of this country. I degess, sorry about that.
No need to apologize - I often have discussions with friends of mine where we think about all of the crazy things we did when we were younger that our kids wouldn't be able to do now, and rightly so (A tad hypocritical? Perhaps, but that's a discussion for another day as far as I'm concerned).
Also, I applaud your realization that more guns at VA Tech would in no way have prevented what happened - if anything, it might have made matters worse. And I'll acknowledge your point that the three cities in the survey aren't representative of some rural locations in this country.
Given that, though, I would just like to ask why locations such as Seattle, Galveston, Memphis (and Philadelphia) aren't allowed to enact their own gun laws. Yes, people like John Lott will come along and tell us about the exceptional cases where concealed carry laws may have saved a life as opposed to the other times someone got mad at somebody else and reached for a gun that happened to be handy (often with drugs involved) and decided to shoot someone instead of trying to punch them instead or hit them with a blunt instrument. I will acknowledge the fact that you live (it appears) in a very different location. Fine - enact your gun laws and let the cities enact theirs; they did something like this anyway in the frontier days based on what I read.
Also, you may be right about the absence of statistics on accidental shootings versus instances where crime was prevented - all I can find on this is from Handgun Control: I consider them to be reliable, but other people don't I know, and I don't know what I can do about that.
As I've said before, if someone owns a gun legally and practices firearm safety, that's their property and it should be respected (and if they use it to defend themselves legally, that is fine with me). Short of that, though, we need to get a MUCH better idea of how many guns are circulating in this country, how are they being sold illegally, and who is buying them (privacy rights be damned on this when it comes to finding out this information as far as I'm concerned - I'm tired of hearing excuses for the murder of dead, completely innocent kids).
There's probably more I could say about this, but I'm done for now.
I just realized that I should clarify something; I said elsewhere that certain laws should be federal (one gun a month, a ban on straw purchases), and they would supersede the state level, but from there down to the local level, there could be accommmodations on concealed-carry and other exceptions that I can't think of at the moment (typing this with one eye open and the hamster running the treadmill in my head is slowing down a bit).
Post a Comment