"They don't have the Constitution on their side; they don't have the facts on their side"
Levin discussed a recent HotAir piece from Jazz Shaw that tells the TRUTH about gun deaths in America, as opposed to the media propaganda spewed by the bought-and-paid-for gov't mouthpieces we call journalists today...
When the President went on television after the Oregon college mass shooting he issued a challenge to the media. He asked them to show America the number of gun deaths as compared to the number of terrorism related deaths since the 9/11 attacks. The media dutifully complied and soon every network, newspaper and magazine was putting up startling graphics, such as this one tweeted by CNN.Insightful, huh?! Well, Mr. Shaw doesn't stop there. Along with explaining the facts that this President and his Media hordes don't want you to understand, we're also provided with basic, thoughtful solutions to the real problems. Allow me to summarize them:
First of all, look at the number of gun deaths on that chart from 2011. It’s 32,351. That’s a lot of gun deaths to be sure. So that’s the total number of murders by gun owners, right? The answer is not only Hell No, but it’s not even remotely close. It’s true that this figure is close to the total number of human lives ended in incidents involving a gun, but that’s all incidents. So how did those deaths happen?
Straight from the CDC where most of the media is drawing their numbers (while not as good of a source as the FBI or the Justice Department) we can find out that of those 32,352 gun deaths, 21,175 of them were suicides. That leaves us with 11,177 deaths to account for. But as it turns out, the FBI records that 8,583 deaths were murders of various sorts involving guns of all types. The remaining roughly 2,500 were accounted for by accidents and unintentional injuries. These include hunting accidents, toddlers getting hold of unsecured weapons and shooting somebody or just plain idiots who proved Darwin right.
Before we move on, those FBI numbers deserve a closer look for a moment since we’re on the subject. What sorts of guns are used in actual crimes? I bring this up because each mass shooting elicits renewed calls for an “assault weapons” ban on guns like the AR-15 style rifle. Are those popular in crimes? Check out the figures from the FBI report.
Take a good look at those numbers. Of the actual 8,583 gun murders committed in 2011, 323 were committed with “rifles.” And that’s all rifles, including bolt action, deer hunting rifles and all the rest. The number committed with so called “assault rifles” were a fraction of that. When you ask how dangerous those rifles are, compare that to nearly 1,700 who were stabbed as well as nearly 500 murdered with blunt objects and more than 700 beaten to death by somebody with their bare hands. Enough said on that topic.
So we’re down to 8,583 intentional killings using guns. That’s still one heck of a lot of bodies, and surely enough to justify new background checks and other restrictions on legal gun purchases, right? Again… not even close. The Justice Department has been studying the question of legal vs. illegal sources of guns used in crimes for decades, going back to this study issued in the early nineties. They admit that the numbers are simply too hard to track for us to pin down exact figures, but the trends are steady over the years. The vast majority of guns used in crimes were gotten through illegal means outside the legal purchase regimen followed by law abiding gun owners. Roughly one quarter of inmates convicted of gun crimes admitted to having stolen a gun in that study. For the ones that weren’t stolen directly, another 2004 study showed that 40% of convicts bought their guns on the black market and another 37% got them through the “gray market” in various illegal methods.
In fact, one study after another has shown that legally purchased weapons which followed all the normal firearms transfer rules accounted for somewhere between six and eight percent of all murders. And the majority of those were domestic violence incidents, violence between family members, crimes of passion and, yes… murders committed by the insane. But let’s give the gun grabbers the benefit of the doubt, round it up and say that ten percent were committed with legally purchases guns. That works out to around 850.
850 is too many people, but it’s a far cry from more than 32,000 per year.
1.) Since most gun deaths are suicides, we must address the seriousness of mental illness in our country. That's not gun control; that's discovering constructive ways, through help and counseling (and perhaps here's where legislative means should focus), to assist in working through the hopelessness and despair, while maintaining dignity and avoiding a violent way out (well before it ever comes to that irrationale).Here's another stark reality that we've become far too accustomed to: Many liberals/progressives/statists don't seem to want to take these basic steps towards correcting the actual problems they feign outrage over. Rather, they seem to only be interested in an excuse to flush the Second Amendment down the social justice drain, while setting up more Americans to be victimized by the criminally sane and insane...
2.) Increased public education in responsible gun ownership can continue to counter the accidents that account for far too many deaths, as well as reduce the number of guns stolen by thieves from homes and automobiles.
3.) ENFORCE THE LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE! (we've heard this one in countless border discussions) Criminals committing murders and other crimes with guns account for the lion's share of actual 'violence'. When they illegally acquire a weapon, that's already illegal. If any 'gun-grabbing' is going to take place, don't you think this is where it should be focused? Not by restricting our law enforcement officers, but by enabling them with the resources to remove the gun from the criminal's hand before it's used in a murder. These laws already exist on the books; they're just not enforced.
"Gun-free zones are not crime-free zones. Gun-free zones are not killer-free zones. They're honey to the bees! There's no such thing, ladies and gentlemen, as a gun-free zone. Criminals bring guns into gun-free zones; they bring other weapons into gun-free zones. They're self-defense-free zones. That's what they are."
