A few days ago, I blogged this: Block, Walter E. 2013. “New York Times on gun deaths.” April 6.
I got some very interesting material from a reader of the LewRockwell blog (Roy Lieberman) that I would now like to share with this list:
That NYT figure of 30,000 gun deaths is exaggerated because it lumps in suicides (19,766) which comprise the vast majority of those deaths. If guns weren’t available at all, they’d stick their head in the oven and turn on the gas, or slit their wrists with a razor or find another method. Guns are merely another tool, and shouldn’t be held responsible because they don’t point it at someone and pull the trigger themselves.
The most important figure is the actual number of murders for 2011, and the FBI’s own Uniform Crime Statistics show there was a 20-year low of only 8,583 murders (6,220 from handguns; only 323 by any type of rifle including “assault rifles”) in 2011 in the world’s third-most populated nation of 311.6 million.
Meanwhile, the firearm murder rate drops again to only 2.75 per 100,000; handguns are at 2.0.
There are higher murder rates in Argentina (3.0), Zimbabwe (4.8), Phillipines (8.9), Mexico (10.0), Bahamas (15.4), Dominican Republic (16.3), South Africa (17.0), Brazil (18.1), Puerto Rico (18.3), a staggering 39.0 in Venezuela, Jamaica (39.4), El Salvador (39.9), and Honduras (68.4).
So, the next time some ignoramus wants to portray the U.S. as the most violent nation in the world because of its “gun culture,” give them those other countries’ much higher murder rates.
And nevermind the murder rate in Chicago (and in the District of Criminals/Corruption) with 506 murders (2012) all by itself (18.69 per 100,000) with a population of 2,707,120 with some of the strictest gun laws anywhere.
Of course, the anti-gun loonies want to lump-in Accidental discharge (851) [utopia is not an option!], and anything else they can add to make their case that guns need to go.
The CDC reported 11,101 murders in 2011, but the FBIs compiled crime murder numbers is the aforementioned 8,583 so someone is exaggerating. I’ll bet everything the CDC is the guilty one.
2:12 pm on April 9, 2013
