THis was a comment in a friends thread that I thought deserved a post on my timeline. A big part of the difficulty (and intellectual falsehoods) of the current gun debate is classifying all crime & harm done with a firearm to be the same. Worse is using statistics involving one type of crime (handguns used in daily homicides in poor urban areas for instance) being used to justify unrelated gun control measures brought on by another type of crime (assault rifles used in statistically rare mass shootings in more affluent areas). The stated goal of many anti-gun folks is to eliminate gun ownership entirely, usually with the hope that all gun crime magically goes away then. The problem here is that it does not actually address the crimes and the motivations of the criminals, it only tries to change the means used. It also alienates the many gun owners who would otherwise be on the same side in looking for answers to reduce or even eliminate crime! Suicides have a different demographics, methodologies & impacts than mass murders do, and both have different demographics, methodologies & impacts than the daily homicides, and all have still different demographics, methodologies & impacts from accidental shootings and even more from negligent yet accidental shootings. We simply cannot continue to lump these all together if we want to make any progress on a solution. Another comment of mine in a different thread is also appropriate here: Let me be even more clear: if your goal is to reduce crime, I will work with you. If your goal is to reduce (or eliminate) gun ownership, I will oppose you.
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 18:31:43 +0000
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