But after many decades of testing this hypothesis, all over the world, in many different circumstances and cultures the best that can be said about gun control is that the benefits are inconclusive. If you want to look at more middle of the road data we have the example of what happened to the murder rate in Washington D.C. when the gun ban was declared unconstitutional. Within one year it dropped to the lowest level since 1985 – a 24 year low. And what about forcible rape? That turned out different. Within one year it dropped to the lowest level since 1967—a 42 year low. Or (via Roberta’s comment) some international data that suggests similar trends. That should be a strong hint that strict gun laws are not the solution to increasing public safety.
But if you want to look at the strongest evidence that gun control is a risk to public safety look at the genocides committed in the 20th Century. From the 1 to 1.5 million Armenians murdered in Ottoman Turkey from 1915->1917 to the 800,000 Tutsi murdered in Rwanda in 1994 gun control enabled the murder of tens of millions of people by their own governments. The evidence continues to mount in places like Darfur. Genocide only occurs when the government knows who owns the guns and/or bans guns.
My comment:
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.I agree with the others, Joe, that it was a wonderful post.Your first couple of paragraphs did indeed contain some points that interested me and to which I'd like to say something. The rest, which I did read by the way, seemed like a repeating of your standard arguments.
About Washington DC, you said after the gun ban was lifted they had all that improvement. That's a little unfair because when I blame gun availability for gun violence I'm told there are other factors, something with which I agree completely. Naturally, the removal of gun control would not be the only factor in any improvement they had. Right? But here's the real problem with what you said. After the gun ban was lifted things changed very little for the people of the District, isn't that so? Didn't the police and politicians conspire to make in next to impossible for them to excercise their newly restored rights? Same thing happened in Chicago a year later. So, for that reason you really can't credit the lifting of the gun ban even in part on the reduced stats for violence.
Your next point is one that always baffles me. How an intelligent man like yourself can believe in that alarmist talk which says genocide can come to America and we better be prepared, is beyond me. It's evidence of paranoia, sorry I don't know how else to respond to it.
Can you really compare the present day US, with all it's divisiveness, to Ottoman Turkey, or even the more recent Tutsi people of Rwanda? All I can say is "It can't happen here," to quote Frank Zappa. It's apples and oranges.
