Thursday, December 3, 2015

Some Basic Gun Facts for the Gun Nuts

Let's establish a number of things about guns-

  1. The U.S. leads the world in mass shootings. We've had more than a mass shooting a day. They happen everywhere. Gun death in general is much more common here than anywhere else too. We're way ahead of the world in guns and gun deaths. The U.S. has the highest gun ownership rate in the world.
  2. States with more gun control have fewer gun deaths. This includes all forms of gun death- homicide, suicide, accidental death, etc. It is absolutely true that homicide specific rates do not correlate directly to gun laws. That is moving the goal posts fairly far though, as accidents and suicides are still gun deaths.
  3. The "good guy with a gun" myth does not hold up to scrutiny. For one, sometimes who the good guy is gets murky. It's more likely gun ownership will kill you than save you (both are actually rare, though). It just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. 
  4. Mass shooters don't really "target" gun-free zones. Many of the "gun-free" zones cited by conservatives aren't even "gun-free." 
  5. A gun in the home doesn't make you more safe. Women in domestic violence situations are at high risk. Over one accidental death a day happens, many involving small children (but we don't know exactly how many), from guns.
Gun statistics are difficult to gather, but they exist. It is true- guns and crime do not move together, based on gun control policy, generally (during the assault weapons ban period, crime went down, but that isn't clearly from the ban). It's also true that having more guns available has meant more gun deaths. Mass killers prefer to use guns too, at least here. If there were less guns, it stands to reason there would be less shootings. That does not mean less violent crime- nothing supports that. I'm not sure that is a good argument to not regulate gun traffic.

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