Homicide Data Show No Justification for Blanket Citizen Disarmament

"Murders in US Are very concentrated, and they are becoming even more so," a new paper by economist and author John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center demonstrates. "Most counties experience no murders, a smaller set where there are a few murders, and then a tiny set of counties where murders are very common."

"Murder isn't a nationwide problem. It's a problem in a small set of urban areas, and even in those counties, murders are concentrated in small areas inside them, and any solution must reduce those murders," Lott concludes.

Compare that to the way anti-gunners first of all blame guns, and then spread things out to create and spread deceptively inane memes like "U.S. Is Global Leader in Gun Violence and Ownership," and "States with weaker gun laws have higher rates of firearm-related homicides and suicides, study finds." (Remember that numbers and rates are two very different things. One death in a low-population area can register as a higher rate than multiple deaths in a high-population area. The gun banners are counting on that confusion.)

The third leg of that stool, and talk about an aptronym considering it's a lie, is "Females at increased risk of at-home homicide by gun violence."

Yes, females and males in criminal households (with the legal and moral distinction that guns — especially stolen ones — aren't "owned, but "possessed") are no doubt more likely to have all sorts of bad things happen to them. It's also true that criminals will be criminals regardless of a state's "gun" or other laws.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been signaling a one-size-fits-all intent following recent "mass shootings" in a state held out by all the leading gun-grab groups as the model for the rest of the country. The upshot? Not only is what they have not enough, but we won't see things turn around as long as other states are free to avoid restrictions.

That's a far cry from the web of deceit Barack Obama spun back when he was trying to scam Americans out of their guns and tried a completely different tack.

"What works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne."

With crime "soaring" 61% under the Lori Lightfoot administration, it's fair to ask, "Exactly what the hell is it that works in Chicago?"

Rather than address the systemic corruption and incompetence that is the hallmark of America's urban Democrat political regimes, the violence monopolists and their media cheerleaders continue to either ignore Lott's work or smear him with ad hominem attacks when they see fit to mention him at all. So, it's hardly unexpected to see USA Today (and it really is no surprise for those who follow such things) out there offering anecdotes to argue that the killings are homogeneously distributed throughout the Republic and across all age groups between everyone in Everytown. And naturally, this is the "expert" conclusion they guide us to:

"It's the guns. It's always been the guns," said Lisa Geller, a public health researcher at the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University.

No agenda there… it's "settled science"!

And just the thing to stop the violence is more "gun laws. For proof, the rights swindlers assure us, look at all the laws imposed in Switzerland, where they have guns but don't have the crime and violence we're told is representative of the whole U.S. (which the county data proves is bull).

The curious thing about that is they're leaving a significant difference between populations being compared completely out of their "analysis." Considering the implications, it's difficult to believe that's not intentional. Especially since what they're pushing is tyranny.

There's one other curious thing, something I noticed right off when I saw the list of counties in Lott's paper and started going down it based on the worst of the worst in terms of the number of murders:

Cook County—the high population center there is Chicago.

Los Angeles County – L.A., of course.

Harris County – that would be Houston.

Philadelphia County – the City of Brotherly Love!

New York City – encompassing five counties.

Those are the "top" five and that's enough to make the point that all of them are Bloomberg cities, members of Mayors Against Illegal (read "Your") Guns. We could keep going down the list and cite Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis…

If the problem were guns, the millions of members of the NRA, GOA, SAF, and the like, arguably the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet, would be the most violent population instead of the most demonstrably peaceable, both in terms of numbers and of rates.

The inconvenient truth those who would rule don't want people to know: The guns aren't the problem. Those who say otherwise are lying.

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook. Reprinted with permission of AmmoLand.

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