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Authored by: PJ on Friday, December 28 2012 @ 01:46 AM EST |
Re stats, here's an interesting paragraph with footnotes in the brief by the
Violence Policy Center et al which relates to something you've been
discussing:
The devastating effect of handgun accessibility in the
United States is demonstrated by comparing crime statistics in this country to
those of other Western industrial nations. The rate of nonviolent crimes
(burglary, theft, and other property crimes) is similar across countries, but
the rate of lethal violence resulting from crimes is much higher in the United
States. 38 Experts have drawn the unremarkable conclusion that a primary cause
of this disparity is the easy accessibility of handguns in the United States. As
one study concluded: “Our rate of assault is not exceptional; our death rate
from assault is exceptional.”39
_____
38See Franklin Zimring
and Gordon Hawkins, Crime Is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America
52 (1997)
39 Zimring & Hawkins, supra, at 122-123; see also
Susan P. Baker, Without Guns, Do People Kill People?, 75 Am. J. of Pub.
Health 587, 588 (June 1985) (concluding: “People without guns injure people;
guns kill them.”).
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: myNym on Friday, December 28 2012 @ 02:05 AM EST |
Thanks for that list of the "Top Ten", should be interesting
reading.
I note that it doesn't include US v Miller. So I might not
agree with their list. The only thing I find controversial
about DC v Heller is how long the SCOTUS took to get even
that part of it right, and that it was a measly 5-4.
I've only read a summary of the dissents, and I'm sorry, but
those arguments were thoroughly skewered over 20 years ago.
If the summary I read is true to the actual dissents, then
they trotted out that old tired militia canard. That horse
is dead, and has been dead so long only the bones are left.
They really should stop whipping it.
Even back in US v Verdugo-Urquidez (1990) they stated: 'The
Second Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms..."' with no mention of the requirement to be
in a state or federally sponsored militia.
Eighteen years later 4 SCOTUS members still believe
otherwise? Really?
Thanks for the other links also. Always good to know what
the current story is.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: myNym on Friday, December 28 2012 @ 03:04 AM EST |
.. but maybe, just maybe, you might pay attention to the
message and not the
messenger?
If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of
legislation
should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of
examples of
criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot
do so
after a
century and a half of trying -- that they must sweep
under the
rug the
southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910
period, the
northeastern
attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts
at both
Federal and State
levels in 1965-1976 -- establishes the
repeated,
complete and inevitable
failure of gun laws to control
serious crime.
-- Senator Orrin Hatch, in a
1982 Senate Report
Instead of accurate numbers, what we get are
cooked stats
that are routinely debunked.
Keep in mind that the cities in
the US with the highest
murder rates are also the cities that have the
strictest
concealed carry laws. And the deaths in those cities are
counted as
reason to disarm the law abiding citizen further?
Ludicrous. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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