That would be the gun-control forces. D.C. radio station WTOP has a story from May where gun-control, er -safety, uh -ban activists were protesting a Senate bill that would allow – finally – the law-abiding residents of the city to legally purchase and possess semi-auto pistols. In order to illustrate the obvious folly of the bill, one organization protesting it was joined by “family members whose children were killed in the drive-by shooting violence in D.C. in late March.”
Curious, I went to the linked story, where I was told that:
Two men — Orlando Carter, 20, and Nathaniel Simms, 26 — are being held without bond in the drive-by shooting left four people dead and five wounded in front of an apartment building Tuesday night.
A 14-year-old boy, with nine convictions since 2005, is being held in a juvenile facility. D.C. Superior Court Family Court Judge Elizabeth Wingo described the boy as a danger to himself and others and a flight risk.
All three face murder charges.
(My emphasis.) Gun control works so well, doesn’t it? They’ve done a marvelous job of disarming the law-abiding and leaving them helpless against their feral youths. Hey, if this was England, that 14-year-old would get a get-out-of-jail-free card when he turns 18! Let’s do it some more, only harder!
The argument, as always, is that “more guns equals more crime.” Except it doesn’t. We keep repeating it until our fingers are worn to the bone, but we add a few million firearms to the total in private hands here in the U.S. every year, and for nearly the last two decades, violent crime and firearm-related violent crime keeps going DOWN. Gun laws are relaxed, and violent crime goes DOWN. We’re told endlessly about “blood in the streets” and “Wild-West shootouts” and they NEVER HAPPEN. Here, once again, is the map of concealed carry progress across the nation:
And here are the Bureau of Justice Statistics for violent crime.
Homicide is at rates not seen since the 1960’s:
Non-fatal firearm victimization is way down:
Non-fatal firearm-related crime is also down:
Rape is down:
Robbery is down:
In addition, even burglary is down:
In short, all serious violent crime has been trending down while the “number of guns” in private hands has gone up, up, UP over the same period.
According to this 1997 National Institute of Justice report;
In 1994, 44 million Americans owned 192 million firearms, 65 million of which were handguns. Although there were enough guns to have provided every U.S. adult with one, only 25 percent of adults actually owned firearms; 74 percent of gun owners possessed two or more.—
There were 13.7 million firearm transactions in 1993-1994, including 6.5 million handguns. About 60 percent of gun acquisitions involved federally licensed dealers.
And this isn’t unusual. Typically 3-4 million of those transactions annually are for new guns or newly imported firearms (my Garand and M1 Carbine are re-imports, for example). About half are usually handguns. The rest are used. Bear in mind, this report is for 1993-94. The big news in 2009 was the massive buying of guns even in the midst of an economic downturn. The major difference, it was new guns that were selling. All of the major manufacturers had a banner year.
So when the worst you can say about “more guns on the streets” is that you cannot definitely prove that they help violent crime rates decline, why do people keep pushing the lie that “more guns equals more crime”? Because they live in their own world. Reality is not allowed to intrude.