Before I shock you with facts, let me ask you a question: How important is reality to you?That’s a strange question, I know, but think about it for a second. If reality makes you uncomfortable, what should you do?

Should you ignore it? Should you face it anyway? Should you find reasons to get rid of it? Should you attack the person who showed it to you?

You will find nothing in this article about amendments, laws and judges. What you will find here is a fact that has been passed-over by the entire gun control argument.

Here it is; it’s really simple, so think about it for a few seconds:

The anti-gun arguments presume that the state is morally superior to individuals.

Even though they seldom say it explicitly, the gun control proponents believe that average people are too violent and erratic to hold guns. They want the government – the state – to take our guns away because only the state is responsible enough to handle serious weapons.

There is, however, a gigantic problem with this: States are far more dangerous than individuals.

That’s a demonstrable fact, by the way, not merely an opinion. I ran the numbers, and it isn’t even close.

According to the UN’s statistics, total number homicides in which guns were involved in 2010 (or the most recent year reported) were 93,414.

I am as sure as I can be that those numbers are juiced – I have too much experience with the UN (another set of stories, for another day) to think that they left their agendas outside as they crunched these numbers – and I am going to ignore the inclusion of thousands of deaths in Mexico and other places that should be attributed to the US War on Drugs. I’ll accept the numbers as they are.

So, let’s say that guns are legitimately and primarily involved in all of these 93,414 cases. Maybe you think that’s a pretty bad argument for the moral superiority of individuals. But if so, take a deep breath and gather your moral courage. You ready?

The death rate for states is more than 20 times as high.

This figure has been well-documented, by the way. If you want to check it, start with political scientist R.J. Rummel’s Book, Death By Government. (The actual figure may be higher than 200 million.)

So, 93,414 x 100 = 9,341,400 people killed with guns over a century. That’s a bad number, but it’s less than 1/20^th of the 200 million who were killed by governments.

Not possible, you say? Sorry, your beliefs are clashing with reality, and your devotion to reality is at risk.

Read the rest of the article

The Best of Paul Rosenberg

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$bio: Paul Rosenberg [send him mail] is the CEO of Cryptohippie USA, a leading provider of Internet privacy technologies. He is the "outside the Matrix" author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and individual privacy.

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