I should add that I did politely ask the NRA to stop mailing me several times before I decided to send them a little of what they had been sending me.

The lunacy of gun control is evident in a bill currently in the California legislature. Some of the anti-gun legislatures are trying to pass a law that each casing must be stamped with a serial number. I guess that way the cops can trace back were the ammo was purchased to find the purchaser. I really have no idea what rational purpose such legislation has. I guess it sounds good. However, since ammo prices will probably triple such bills have all the makings of a tax used deprive law abiding citizens of the right to bear arms.

Are you serious? I know that sarcasm is easy to miss in a forum post.

Yes, lunacy in the sense of cost and implementation and efficacy, but in fact this legislation is not about controlling crime at all but rather a backdoor attempt to make ammunition prohibitively expensive for the law-abiding consumer and put gun manufacturers out of business. It would further burden the responsible citizen, have no effect on the criminal and create a black market for “non-serialized” ammunition which, as most people know, can be homemade. One more leftist charade of ostensible and impracticable do-goodism concealing one more attack on the sovereignty of the individual.

The truth is, the gun control lobby is scared. The widening success of carry laws which began in Florida in the late 1980s and have spread across the country, and the attendant drop in violent crime rates, are why. More than 30 states have loosened gun control laws; results are uniformly positive. Contrary to their propaganda of panic and fear, the misuse of gun ownership is statistically negligible. People are proving to be responsible! Indeed, the entire perverse logic of "gun control" is at last unraveling before our eyes. But California remains one of the minority of states in denial and still determined to maintain the status quo culture of fear, crime and victimization.

One more leftist charade of ostensible and impracticable do-goodism concealing one more attack on the sovereignty of the individual.


Thank You

I laughed my ass off at that statement! I am still laughing right now in fact!

WTFE

Kyle

My pleasure.

What you are forgetting to mention is that the violent crime rate in California has reduced a corresponding amount over this same period! I would probably argue against your assertion that the crime reduction in Florida & other states is a consequence of loosened gun control in for this reason.

This is a much more accurate reading:

The number of conventional bomps dropped on Japan during WWII was approximately twelve million. The number ot atomic bomps tdropped was two. This makes the atomic bomb drops statistically negligable.

Offered with tongue firmly in cheek.

LOL. Good one, Bob.

I think there must be people employed full time to slice & dice gun-related statistics in the U.S.

Just for a refreshing change, here's a report from our northern neighbors:

Gun deaths cut in half, StatsCan says
Last Updated Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:55:08 EDT

The risk of death by gunshot has been cut in half in Canada and is far smaller than in the United States, Statistics Canada says.

In a study issued on Monday, the federal agency notes that Canadian gun-control laws have been stiffened in recent decades and gun registration has been made compulsory, but it draws no conclusions about the cause of the falling death toll.

It says that 816 people — 767 males and 49 females — died of firearms-related injuries in Canada in 2002, the most recent year examined in the study. This represented 2.6 deaths per 100,000 population, down from 5.9 per 100,000 in 1979, it said.

Among males, the 2002 rate was 4.9 deaths per 100,000, down from 10.6 in 1979. Among females, it was 0.3, down from 1.2.

In a cross-border comparison for the year 2000, Statistics Canada says the risk of firearms death was more than three times as great for American males as for Canadian males and seven times as great for American females as for Canadian females.

Because more of the U.S. deaths were homicides (as opposed to suicides or accidental deaths), the U.S. rate of gun homicide was nearly eight times Canada's, the agency says. Homicides accounted for 38 per cent of deaths involving guns in the United States and 18 per cent in Canada.

But even as Canada's rate of gun homicide shrank (to 0.4 per 100,000 population in 2002 from 0.8 in 1979), handguns moved into a dominant role. Handguns accounted for two-thirds of gun homicides in 2002, up from about half in the 1990s, the agency says.

Consistently through the period, about four-fifths of Canadian firearms deaths were suicides, it says.

The problem with this anology is that the population growth of the respective states. The population of California has more than doubled during that time period. The population of Florida, while fast growing, is much slower than California. The population growth dilutes the statistics to give the illusion that the number of crimes is dropping, while in fact they are still increasing in California. The opposite is true in Florida and other shall issue states.

If number of violent crimes per 1000 people drops then the crime rate drops, no matter what state you're in. Total number of crimes in California might have increased, but as you say there are vastly more people in the state now. Am I missing your point?

Since crime rates are calculated on the number of crimes per 100,000 population (hence the word "rate"), growth --or size -- of population is irrelevant.

I strongly suspect that if the inner city gang bangers and drug dealers were separated from the total of all gun violence in America our statistics would look far different. I think all of us would agree they are disproportionately represented, having a several fold higher rate than the rest of the population. I don't have the numbers to back this up, nor am I sure there would even be a way to extract those numbers.

The fact is we have enormous social and cultural problems in our inner cities that breed violence of all types. Guns, and the criminal use of them, are very important status symbols in this culture. Our rural areas have a far higher rate of gun ownership per capita than these gang-infested inner cities, yet these rural areas enjoy far lower rates of gun violence in particular and crime in general. In light of these two vastly different situations, where crime is lower where there are more guns per capita, it becomes very difficult to blame gun crime on gun ownership. There are clearly other forces at work. Until we come to grips with that and address those social and cultural problems that lead to violence, we will never lower crime rates in our inner cities.

Unfortunately, gun control advocates are savy enough to use this situation to further their agenda of removing guns from the hands of private citizens. They know better, but they will continue to very cynically use the plight of our inner cities to further that agenda. They know that we know they are lying. They also know how easily manipulated the general unknowing lazy public can be. They are fighting a propoganda war and the lives of those folks living in our inner cities are simply another tool in their tool box. They could care less about them. Guns are the issue to them; not people. They have focussed on the object and hope the American public will too.

Worthy point, ubiquity. I only looked at those states which had passed these laws. But I went back to the statistics for clarification.

Violent crime in America has dropped every year since 1991, about the time RTC laws became popular. In the period from 1991 to 2004, 17 states adopted and 13 broadened their RTC laws. 38 states currently have a Right to Carry law (RTC), an all-time high.

RTC states have lower violent crime rates, on average: 24% lower total violent crime, 22% lower murder, and 37% lower robbery.

The five states with the lowest violent crime rates are RTC states.

As for crime trends, a study of every county in America by Yale economist John Lott and David Mustard found that RTC deters violent crime while producing no increase in acidental deaths.

If the states which did not have RTC laws had adopted these laws in 1992, 1,500 murders, 4,000 rapes and 60,000 aggravatae assults would have been avoided.

When concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, on average, murders fell by 8.5%, rapes by 5% and assaults by 7%.

One site. There are many.

http://www.kc3.com/CCWSTATS.html

It is just as useless to this debate to introduce Canada -- and I won't bore you with all the disqualifying reasons any statistician and sociologist would cite -- as it is (though tongue in cheek noted), to equate different and unequal types of weapons. The concern is the historic relationship between crime and gun laws in the United States with an eye toward unfettered legalization for any responsible citizen, which is our right.

As a law abiding citizen it is my second amendment right to own a gun.

It is your first amendment right to be able to disagree with me on that point. But your right to disagree stops where my right to own a firearm begins :)

I love my country!

alf

I suppose you can pick and choose numbers to make any point, but this one is really wacky.

Since I live in California, I'll use that as a base. Violent crime rates are higher in Alaska than in California, higher in Nevada and still higher in New Mexico. Louisiana is higher still, and Florida and South Carolina "lead" the nation. Of that list, only California has major restrictions on RTC.

It's really difficult to see a pattern in crime based on just this one metric.

All these quotes on statistics are impossible to interpret. A simple example of statistics gone mad:

Two person office: Boss makes $100k while the secretary makes $20 k. Average annual income is $60k. Boss gets a $20k raise, now the average annual income is $70. Figures tell us nothing. As are the statistics concerning crime. In a village of 100, there is one murder. Murder rate is shown to be 10 per 1,000 population. Small city of 10,000 has 5 murders. murder rate per 1,000 is 0.5 per 1,000. Again, tells us nothing, really.

rrpjr- I can't comprehend how the Lott / Mustard study could posit this: "If the states which did not have RTC laws had adopted these laws in 1992, 1,500 murders, 4,000 rapes and 60,000 aggravatae assults would have been avoided. " as a valid statistical conclusion unless the study addresses (& is able to eliminate from contention) a multitude of other social changes. This was certainly not taken into account, according to the study's co-author:

" In Ohio concealed handgun case Klein v. Leis. Mustard admitted that: 1) the study "omitted variables" which could explain that changes in the crime rate are due to reasons other than changes in CCW laws, and 2) the study did not account for many of the major factors that Mustard believes affect crime including crack cocaine, wealth, drugs and alcohol use, and police practices such as community policing."

Additionally, many claim that the Lott/Mustard study uses too short a time period (& conveniently one where urban crime rates were tending upwards). Unsurprisingly, while the pro-CCW authors are able to find a drop in crime in the data they select & interpret, the anti-CCW author (John Donahue) finds an increase: www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/press/books/chapter_1/evaluatinggunpolicy.pdf

John Lott even took to promoting his study & books with an online persona, "Mary Roth", and gave himself 16 5 star reviews under pseudonyms before being discovered. To be fair fanatical opponents also seem to have the habit of sending out fake emails under his name!
http://timlambert.org/category/MaryRosh/

Well, the one thing that CAN'T be said for CCW laws, is that crime rates did NOT go up. There were no 'shootouts over traffic accidents' and 'blood in the streets'.

During the recently expired 'Assault Weapons Ban', some ONE MILLION + 'assault weapons' were sold to civillians... and crime rates declined.

Gun controllers want to tout laws like the AWB and claim they are 'effective' because crime rates went down... but they were declining ANYWAY. Heck, even after the CDC and DOJ published studies stating they couldn't find any affect of the AWB either way. We don't need laws that don't do anything. We need to punish those who commit crimes, not everyone who doesn't. ;)

That's interesting - from a comment above (about stamped ammunition), the concept of "right to bear arms" appears to have a silent "cheaply" on the end of it.