The Thinking ‘Kat: Gun Control, P2
I rarely check Tumblr. It’s a social media platform that my Meerkat Musings posts automatically get published to, but because this is automatic, I tend to overlook it. On a whim I checked it the other day, and discovered my recent post on gun control had met with a few responses. One, from ‘benjaminfranklincat’, managed to use a lot of words to ultimately say… well, not very much. Their text is below, and the link is here:
I always enjoy an academic egghead article about something the author obviously knows nothing about. I’m not going to go over everything wrong with the article, just the highlights. The author did get one thing right, they are not an expert on guns, US culture or politics. The rest is merely evidence supporting their lack of expertise.
Comparisons between countries or other geographic places are improper and meaningless. There are literally hundreds if not thousand of variables between any two countries, states, and cities that affect crime. The only meaningful comparison would be to look at something like The Small Arms Survey which tracks small arms world wide. A pattern or trend can be identified. These trends are not 100% consistent but they do offer some more accurate insight into guns in private hands. When comparing ALL NATIONS, the trends are that nations with higher rates of private gun ownership tend to be wealthier and more stable. Countries that are more war torn, impoverished and unstable tend to have very tight gun control to the point that no one outside the government is allowed guns. Small Arms Survey is a pro gun control organization and doesn’t like admitting this inconvenient little truth but if you look at their data it becomes clear.
Another method of seeing the effectiveness (or complete failure) of gun control, is to compare what happens when gun control is implemented, before and after. There are literally tens of thousands of gun control laws worldwide. I know of only two times that overall crime, violent crime and murder didn’t go up. Notice I didn’t say anything about GUN crime or GUN deaths. Those are meaningless terms since the crime and murder weapons simply shift to other tools. The two times that crime, violent crime and murder didn’t go up was Australia in the late nineties when they maintained their crime trends (gun control failed in Australia for other reasons) and a law in America that was passed by Republicans and repealed by gun controllers because they didn’t like it. The irony is incredible but true. If the author or anyone can tell me a third time, or more, that gun control didn’t result in an increase in crime, violent crime and murder, I would very much welcome it.
As it is, the author’s home country of England saw such a spike in crime and murder after significantly restricting guns in 1996 that they had to add 20,000 cops to a force of 125,000 to bring crime back down to pre gun control levels. When they tried to reduce the police force after that, crime went back up. They re-added the additional 20,000 cops giving them a force of 145,000. During this same time, their individual rights have been drastically reduced. They are now jailed for speech, to include objecting to immigrant rape gangs, and cannot carry anything which could be a weapon. They literally traded private guns for a police state. The police state has become powerful enough they think they can control speech in America about England. I don’t think they thought that through. Simply put, no one will enforce it, including American police, because we are not British subjects and we will shoot who ever tries. Its one of those cultural things about us liking our freedom. You wouldn’t understand so don’t try to, you will just get a headache.
Additionally, there is this little concern about genocide. More than 100 million people were murdered last century by their own governments in genocides. In all cases, the victim classes were first disarmed by gun control. That continues today. “Oh but this is America we are talking about, that can’t happen there!” During covid, senior elected officials talked about mass internment camps for those who refused to take the mandated experimental poison they called a vaccine. Camps actually happened in Australia, something that didn’t happen before gun control, hence the failure of gun control in Australia. The difference between Australia and America? America resisted the gun control efforts. Americans had their guns and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to put them in camps. Funny how soon y’all forget that.
Some additional numbers the author didn’t note: In America, there are 140 million gun owners with 500 million guns of which 50 million are the so called dreaded “assault weapons.” Very few of these guns are ever used to take a life. With the exception of 2021 during the covid lockdown when gun deaths spiked to 40,000, annual gun death typically runs between 30,000 to 35,000. Two thirds of these deaths are suicide. Murders with guns typically run 8,000 to 10,000. Depending on the study you look at, guns are used in crime annually in America 500,000 to 800,000 times and in self defense 1.5 million to 3.5 million times. This means that guns are used far more often to save lives than to take or even criminally threaten lives.
As to the culture and the interpretation of the second amendment and our history…. Yeah, the author doesn’t get it and I’m not going bother explaining it considering the loss of freedom currently going on in his own country. He should be much more concerned about that.
It seems ‘benjaminfranklincat’ does not approve of comparing nations via their rates of murder or violence, and prefers instead to make use of something they do not link to (indeed, they seem shy about providing sources in general), the Small Arms Survey. They then try to link the presence of guns to greater prosperity. Leaving aside that this is in fact a Red Herring (surely the primary issue over whether or not guns should be everywhere lies in how safe or dangerous they render a country?), does he have any sort of point?
The immediate answer is no. The Legatum Prosperity Index provides some fascinating insights that rather puncture their belief. In 2023, the USA ranked 19th for prosperity, 69th for safety and security, and 29th for personal freedom. The UK ranked 12th, 21st and 17th. Germany ranked 9th, 19th and 9th in the same categories. It seems the attempt to suggest a causal relationship between high rates of gun ownership and prosperity is a failure, and we can make further comparisons. Canada ranked 13th for prosperity, 18th for safety and security, and 14th for personal freedom. Australia ranked 15th, 20th and 20th. Japan scored 16th, 5th and 27th.
If we continue to indulge benjaminfranklincat’s Red Herring fallacy, the most prosperous country in the world is Denmark. Denmark scores 1st, 6th and 2nd in the above categories. Denmark’s homicide rate in 2022 was 0.986 per 100,000 people (referring back to the UN data), much lower than the USA’s for the same year (6.383). Another Nordic country, Norway, ranked as the 3rd most prosperous country in 2023, the 3rd best for safety and security, and the best for personal freedoms. Norway’s homicide rate in 2022 was 0.552. Both Denmark and Norway have more robust gun control laws to the USA.
As to benjaminfranklincat’s reference to violent crime rising in the wake of gun bans, I await his supporting evidence to this claim, but equally, what does he have to say about why so many developed countries (which despite his rather hysterical claims, have not lost their freedoms) are not only considerably safer, but also more prosperous, despite the presence of greater gun control measures?
They go on to repeat some meaningless covid conspiracies, make claims without evidence, and they conclude their Tumbler post with a bunch of entertaining but also thoroughly misleading memes. Let’s see if they can debate in good faith.
