WEEKLY SOUTHERN ARTS
"Sometime the boogaloo 
  • Home
  • Guns, Faith and Murder
  • The Million Dollar Store
  • Artistic Con-cepts
  • Judy Garland - "Soul Singer"
  • Robert & Jimi and the Twenty Seven Blues
  • The Great Pretenders
  • Imagine
  • Me and Junior Parker
  • The Republican
  • Sweet Home Chicago (The Obama Shakedown)
  • The Ballad of Hunter & Joe
  • The 22-yr-old Bottle Blonde
  • Is It Alright...To Be White?
  • Resist the Devil and He Will Flea
  • Music & Reminiscence
  • Lowell George searching for authenticity
  • A Telling Lie
  • Part One: The Monster Is Summoned
  • Like Billy Eckstein Singing to an Empty Club at 1:00 AM on a Saturday Night in 1975.
  • Bent
  • Kelly Joe Phelps
  • Why The Devil Don't Come Around No More
  • Hearing Junior Wells “On Tap'' one more Time
  • Muddy and Me
  • Unwitting Hypocrisy is The Best Kind of Hypocrisy
  • Excess Baggage
  • Excess Baggage pt. 2
  • Fake News Is The New Real News
  • The Death of Billy Graham and Manufacturing Consent
  • American Youth: The Rise of The New Media
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Talk About Slavery and Shit
  • Just Smoke
  • Monkey in a Box
  • How The Children of Sal and Dean Destroyed The World
  • On This Cold Winter's Morn
  • The Crime of the Century
  • Evidence: What The Hell Is It?
  • They Were Pissed: America, Jack Kerouac, and the Beats
  • Negotiating The Maze Of Life and a Blues Shuffle.
  • Everyone Is Hitler (In their own Way)
  • The Mystery of The Giant Balloon Shark
  • Subterfuge and Its Discontents
  • God Debunks Global Warming
  • Day Two: God Continues To Debunk Global Warming
  • Strzoking Russia
  • The Al Franken Effect. Or, How to Destroy America and Lose Elections
  • The Big Maybe
  • The News Apocalypse
  • The Guitarticle (Guitar article)
  • The Nation of Lucifer
  • Slurring Pocahontas
  • Why Everything Good Said About Net Neutrality is a Lie
  • .....and behold, The Cause of Your Demise Is Upon You
  • The Trans-boy That Cried Wolf
  • Believe Nothing
  • Donald Trump Blasts The Heads Off Of Tiny Woodland Creatures
  • The Problem of Hypocrites
  • Roy Moore: Serial Pervert
  • I'm So Frustrated
  • The Devil's Whisper
  • Science Can't Dance
  • You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody
  • Louie C. K.
  • Common Sense
  • Hunting For Witches
  • Living in The Age of "tRump"
  • The Devil is a Hustler
  • The Skinny
  • Eric Dolphy
  • ISIS Rode in On a Donkey
  • "The Manafort Indictment"
  • The Truth About the Middle East
  • Dennis Budimer's "Alone Together" Revisited
  • The Halloween Edition
  • The 20th Century Was Groovy
  • The Salesman
  • The Dossier
  • Elmore James
  • Isle of The Poor
  • The Patriarchy is Alive and Well
  • Moving Napoleon
  • Guns and Guerrillas
  • Playing Four
  • Hollywood and Scumbags
  • Why Everything You Think, Is Wrong
  • Killing Yourself With Terrorism
  • Being Liberal
  • Laced With Hate
  • A Message From Occupy Democrats
  • A Taxing Dilemma
  • What Really Happened with Aid in Puerto Rico
  • Colin Kaepernick and Beyoncé are geniuses. Part 1
  • When the Levee Breaks
  • The Second Coming of Anthony Weiner
  • How to Never Lose a Fight
  • Creating Chaos out of Meaning
  • Crime and Punishment
  • The Man in the Mirror
  • Guitar Gods of the Sixties
  • Entopy: A Play in One Act
  • The Ragged Tale of a Poverty Stricken Economic Genius
  • The Dreamers
  • Hey There Georgy Girl
  • This Is Not a Defense of Joel Osteen. Or is it?
  • The Ballad of Poindexter Glockenspiel
  • The Big Dummy
  • More Florida in Pictures and Text
  • How Do I Hate Thee
  • Florida in Images and More Images
  • "How To Solve The Healthcare Crisis and Why It's So Damned Hard To Fix"
  • The Big Lie
  • The Demise of the West
  • “Good Times! Good Times! You know, we talkin’ bout Good Times!”
  • "Justice My Ass!"
  • Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
  • The Coming Apocalypse and How to Avoid it: a Historical/Biblical Perspective.
  • "Muthafuckin' Chains!"
  • Lies Our Father's Told Us
  • Poetry and Politics - a few mixed verses
  • The Inner Man
  • The Vampire and The Carpet Salesman
  • Comey Speaks!
  • A Word From Nostradamus about the Comey Hearings
  • The Towering Babble
  • Chain of Fools
  • I Got Ramblin' on My Mind
  • Telling Ourselves Stories
  • Shit! Make Me Wanna Holler!
  • Even More Reasons Why The Paris Accords are Total Horseshit.
  • When Life Imitates Satire
  • Jethro and Becky Sue Come To America
  • Random Apocrypha
  • Why The Paris Climate Accords Are Total Horseshit
  • Urban Stories
  • The Kingdom of God: a personal rant
  • Urban Week @ South Beach
  • Serpico Revisited
  • The Road To Surf-dumb. Or, is it The Road To Serfdom?
  • This is Not a Political Article
  • My Hometown
  • What Does This Mean?
  • We're All Fools Sometime
  • One Pill Makes You Larger
  • "What a Maroon!"
  • Secrets and Lies
  • A Tale of Wine and Murder
  • "White House Under Siege!"
  • The Amateur Narcissist
  • Like a Rock
  • The Greatest of Ally of a True Idiot is.....
  • How To Prove someone's a Witch
  • Jesus Was a Sly Dog
  • An Open Letter From The Democratic National Committee
  • The Power of Language
  • The Existential Croûton
  • Random Facebook Thoughts
  • A Play "The Poverty Racket"
  • The Demise of the 4th Estate
  • Love To Hate My Enemies
  • Feelings, Oh, Oh, Oh, Feelings
  • Art or Reality
  • The Prison Yard Blues
  • Who is Richard Spencer and Why Does He Matter?
  • __an excerpt from "The Power of Voltron "
  • A Plea From a Progressive
  • ANTIFA - The Anti Fascists, Fascists
  • Conspiracy Theory
  • 4 More Poems, 4 More Pictures
  • "Are You Freaking People Insane?"
  • 4 Pictures 4 Poems
  • The Ballad of Carlos Slim
  • Pretending What's in Your Head is True
  • The Cognitive Dissonance of a Faithful Democrat
  • The Human Snakepit
  • George Freeman - Unsung Master of the Jazz Guitar
  • The Price of Milk
  • Suspicious Minds
  • Bill O'Reilly Sexual Predator?
  • The New Soldier
  • Orwell Revisited
  • Larry Coryell - The Godfather is Dead
  • A Tiger Beat
  • South Florida - HOT & COOL
  • Jean Paul Sartre & the Existentialist Mojo
  • Culture Matters, Immigration Matters, Sharks Matter
  • Thomas Sowell
  • A Tree Falls In Central Park on a Gay Banker
  • Black Codes From The Underground
  • Does an Idiot know they're an Idiot?
  • A Poem for Pooh
  • It's All or Nothing Baby!
  • Racism is Alive and Well
  • "Shut the Hell Up!"
  • Jerry Seinfeld - Social Pariah
  • A Man Must Nurture His Pet Peeves
  • Not the Usual Immigration Article
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 1
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 2
  • The Bad Seed
  • Dogma Never Sleeps
  • Trump and Clinton Debate
  • Was Jesus a True Pacifist?
  • Brexit Was the Shot Heard Around the World
  • Obama, How Great Thou Art
  • War is Good
  • The Willful Ignorance of Intellectual Children
  • What about All Those Peacful Muslims?
  • Terror! What Terror?
  • Biff and Shorty Play The Blues
  • Forty Miles of Bad Road
  • How Obamacare Became the law of the land: And Other Fairytales for Adults
  • Genteel Republicans vs The Alt-Right
  • Should Drugs be Legal?
  • The Prophet Speaks
  • The Dream Sequence
  • Voting 3rd Party and the Moral Low-Ground
  • Sayonara America
  • What does Never Trump Mean?
  • Barack Obama is the Most Brilliant Man Ever to be President?
  • If God Created War, Does That Mean That War is Good?
  • Never Let Your Enemies Define You
  • Facebook, Science & Religion
  • Bullshit by the Numbers
  • Bullshit by the Numbers - part II
  • The Heated Quest for the "No Information Voter"
  • I Love The Dead
  • Those Who Lurk
  • Battered, Bruised and Beaten
  • Trump and Hitler
  • America in Black and White
  • Trans-Athletics
  • Playing a Rigged Game
  • Who was that Mass Murderer?
  • The Kidnappers
  • The Game
  • Terror in Nice: A Variation on a Theme
  • The Idiots Guide on How to Destory the World
  • Terror in France
  • A Fictional Conversation Between a Pastor and a Historian About the Bible
  • The Immoral Necessity for Scapegoats
  • Who Really Shot Those Eleven Cops? Was It Donald Trump?
  • Killer Cops and Cop Killers
  • Happy 4th of July
  • How Do You Cast Your Vote When You've Only Got a Few Bullets Left?
  • "Yes, She's a Lying Sack of Shit....but She's our Lying Sack of Shit."
  • All Apologies
  • Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up
  • Goodbye Scotty Moore
  • If a Bluebird Plays the Blues Why Can't it Play Free Jazz
  • Terror in Turkey
  • When David Slew Goliath
  • The Life & Death of a Global Fat Cat
  • Intentionally Censoring the News
  • The Brits Leave the EU
  • Chick, Christian, Roy & Kenny G
  • Who Really Committed Mass Murder in Orlando
  • The Tale of the Prince and the Shrew
  • A Dying Father's Last Father's Day
  • Mass Murdering, Terrorist's Father is Obama and Hillary's Best Friend
  • Why Cream still Matters 50 Years Later
  • Misguided Anger and Partisan Politics
  • The Deep Guilt of the Religious Left
  • Radical Islam! What Radical Islam?
  • Denial is a River in Egypt
  • A Response to all the Haters
  • Why Muhammad Ali was my Hero (in spite of being a Racist)
  • Why Trump Matters
  • The New Progressive Racism
  • A Tragedy in Cincinnati
  • The Evil that Men do (Women too.)
  • Differences? What Differences?
  • Racism Revisited
  • Battling Immigration Straw Men
  • Blood Quantum
  • Fighting Transgender Straw Men
  • Logical Fallacies about God and Money
  • Progressive Straw Men
  • Everybody is Robbing You Blind
  • On The Road To El Donaldo
  • Dear Mark: About Donald Trump
  • Identifying the Enemy
  • Why I Will Vote For Trump
  • I Totally Agree With Myself
  • Teaching Americans Where to Pee
  • Goodbye Lonnie Mack
  • Bernie Wants You To Pay His Fair Share
  • Bruce Springsteen vs. North Carolina
  • Mr. Smiley Is an Idiot
  • Why Does College Cost So Much?
  • Black Power and Bad Vibes At Whiteness History Month
  • How Facebook Showed Me That We're Doomed
  • Muslims kill Muslims by means of White People
  • The Slap
  • America Wants a 3rd Party Candidate
  • Jesus Loved Everybody
  • Call it what it is.
  • Belgium vs. Turkey. Which One is Worse?
  • Barack, Fidel and Che
  • How He Gonna Get His Money pt. 2
  • How He Gonna Get His Money
  • The Turn of The Screw
  • Dear America: Now, about Trump....
  • The Attack of the Anti Trumpers
  • Did You Know that America is Socialism....and boy, ain't it Swell
  • Trump - Prophet or Blowhard?
  • Black Lies Matter, All Lies Matter
  • The Donald and the Debate
  • Leonardo and The Bear
  • The Thunder Rolled and the "Trump" Blows em all to Hell
  • Fragmented Fairytails
  • Cars That Never Were but Should've Been, Part 6
  • Building The Perfect Beast
  • America: A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1
  • Uncle Bernie in New Hampshire
  • The Big L
  • The Diary of a Former Leftist
  • Free Speech not Hate Speech?
  • State of the Union
  • Losing My Religion
  • Don't Take Our Guns Away Until We Kill Those Honky Bastards
  • Bye Bye Europe
  • "Trump is a Racist!"
  • "Hell Yeah! I've Got Obama Care!
  • Trumponomics
  • Woman of the Year
  • Malicious Intent and the Art of the Microaggression
  • Muslim No-Go Zones - Myth or Reality?
  • Donald J. Trump and the Muslim Migration to America
  • There Is No God But Allah?
  • Roadhouse - The Reboot
  • Sometimes You Just Can't Win
  • A Few Thoughts Regarding Trump
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been, Part 5
  • You Can Have My Steering Wheel When You Pry It From Cold, Daed Hands
  • The Great Debate
  • Al, Thomas and Paul - Malthusians Then and Now
  • A Prophet Debates Global Warming and other retated Dogma
  • Memes, Scapegoats, Propaganda
  • Little Hillary and Her Monsters
  • A Prophecy for America
  • The Basketball Metaphor
  • Vladimir Putin: An American Hero
  • Little Things
  • The Democrats Debate
  • It's All Ablout da Benjamins
  • Remember When?
  • Mass Shooter
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been: Part 4
  • Should A Muslim Be President in America?
  • The Strange Case of Ahmed Mohamed
  • Debt and Other Devious Angels
  • Bernie Sanders is Caesar not Jesus
  • An inconvenient Truth
  • Who's really a Native American?
  • The Rebirth of the Silent Majority
  • Money That's What I Want!
  • The Syrian Crisis and the Memeing of America
  • Why Societies Have Generally Valued Men More than Women
  • The Problem of Evil
  • A few Thoughts on a Few Things
  • The Authentic pose of a Black White Man
  • Sweden: Socialist Utopia or Progressive Madhouse?
  • Why Dogs Matter
  • Guilty Until Proven Innocent
  • Was Jesus a Socialist?
  • "The Donald" A Man for the Ages
  • Harvesting the Wheat - or - Karma's a Real Bitch
  • Cecil The Lion
  • Cars That Never Were but Should’ve Been, Part 3
  • Secrets and Lies
  • Can Minorities Be Racist?
  • I Was Just Thinking....Hmm?
  • Iran Deal - Good or Bad?
  • Jihad or Not Jihad? That is the Question.
  • "Let's Do Lunch" with Planned Parenthood
  • America The Contemptible
  • Marriage, Bigotry and Cooties
  • The Things We Care About
  • The Simplicity of it All
  • A Dissenting Opinion
  • Cars That Should've Been, But Never Were: part II
  • Live Now, Pay Later
  • I Am, Whatever I Say I Am!
  • Bernie Sanders is the Dumbest Bastard on Earth
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been
  • Bruce Jenner
  • The Good Society
  • A Personal Jesus For My Own
  • Take a Ride on a Hell Bound Train
  • Requiem For a Car Show
  • Obama Channels Neville Chamberlain in Dealing with Iran
  • The Short Life of a Political Lemming
  • The Strongman
  • The Broken Window
  • The Selective Outrage of The Anti Israel Left
  • When the Blind Lead the Blind
  • Top Brass With Class
  • Living In A world On Fire
  • Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell
  • What The Hell Is Esotericism?
  • Unicorns, Free Healthcare and other Mythological Creatures
  • Heroes and Dunces
  • A Few Thoughts On a Few Things
  • The Return Of Super Fly
  • Should You Ever Bet On A dead Horse?
  • Money For Nothing
  • Across The Great Divide
  • Tom, Jerry, Eddie & Sydney
  • The Folly of Foibles
  • Who really killed Eric Garner?
  • The Art of The Sale
  • Political Bullshit and All That Jazz
  • Oh, The Horror of It All
  • To Torture or Not To Torture, That is The Question
  • Selective Justice
  • Executive Action
  • Give Us Your Tired, Poor and Ambitious
  • Johnny Winter, Ahhh-Yeahh!
  • Homeless and Transgender "Let My People Pee!"
  • Are We Insane? You Betcha!
  • Ebola and Racism
  • You're a Racist, Just Admit It!
  • To Discriminate or Not to Discriminate, That is the Question
  • The Life of an Imaginary Historian
  • Why Most Debates About The Minimum Wage are Bullshit
  • The Return of the Infinite Monkeys
  • Politically Correct Genocide
  • Language and the illusion of Meaning
  • Obama vs. Reagan
  • Is Barack Obama our Most Successful President Ever?
  • White Racism Black Racism
  • The Race
  • Should People Be Free to Discriminate?
  • Science, Religion and Brother Neil
  • Welcome To America
  • The Reincarnation of Jimmy Carter and the Return of Scarface
  • SCOTUS, Condoms and Collateral Damage
  • The American Dream
  • Attack of the Bloated Leeches or "Why Does the Economy Suck pt. II"
  • Why Does the Economy Suck?
  • Jaco Pastorius - A Passage in Time
  • How can we save the world, from people who want to save the world?
  • A Short Political rant: pt I
  • Jerry Reed, Tom Jones and the Original Guitar Heroes
  • Part Two: The Politics of the Eloi and the Morlock
  • Angel: part 7
  • Wayne Cochran "Going Back to Miami"
  • Matt Damon & the Teachers Union vs. the Capitalist Pigs
  • The Last Damned Healthcare Article You'll Ever Need
  • The Gospel According to Mark
  • Angel: part VI
  • Ted Bundy & The Hunt For The Devil
  • Charlie & Clint: Dead & Deader
  • Trayvon & George : An American Hate Story
  • Jury Duty
  • Little Tommy & The Blues Kings
  • Kayaking "The Big Cypress" with Crocodlies
  • The Birth of The Jazz Guitarist
  • Gay Marriage
  • Garage Band - The 1960's
  • King Arthur, Pelagius and Original Sin
  • The Story of Ricky
  • In the News and on the Web
  • When is a Horse not a Horse
  • Hidden Miami
  • I Hate the 60's: A Personal Rock Odyssey
  • Crocodiles and Alligators in Florida: Monsters in our Backyard
  • The Legend of Robert Pete Williams
  • Saturday Night At Big Tinys
  • The Mad Hatter and the Tea Party
  • The Case Of The Infinite Monkeys
  • The American Heritage Series
  • Here Comes the Sun
  • The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
  • Blue And Green
  • Mundi's, a Love Story

          Guns, Faith, and Murder

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Faith, Guns and Murder: An attempt at a reasonably civil debate about gun control
 
I've never owned a gun. Maybe I've fired a gun once, it was so long ago that I'm not sure my memory is reliable. I can say emphatically that I have no desire to own a gun. I don't hunt and I'm deeply suspicious of people who shoot animals for sport.  If I could, I'd ban every gun, every deadly weapon, from human hands.  And, while I was at it, I'd make world peace mandatory, eliminate war, hunger, poverty etc., etc., etc. 

But, I'm not an idiot, at least I don't think I am.  So, I'm well aware that there's a difference between wishful thinking and fact.  We may desire to do good, but human nature being what it is; finite and obviously fallible, the outcome of our altruism can easily produce the opposite result.  In fact, more often than not, it's when we fully intend to do good—based primarily on some theoretical notion of goodness—that we are most likely to do evil.  Only in the aftermath do we change, even then, seldom do we acknowledge it.

That's because the world is filled with religious people. Their religion may not involve God, but it certainly involves faith. Faith, that if you just spend enough money, every problem can be solved. Faith, that if you eliminate weapons, you'll eliminate war and crime.  Faith, that if you just eliminate “faith” you'll be left with reason instead of religion. What does the evidence suggest?  That depends on who's interpreting the data.  In the absence of perfect knowledge, faith is what we're left with, prompting us to interpret the cold, hard facts in vastly different ways.  Faith, then, is a lens that colors everything.

Recently, I started thinking more about gun control.  There's a lot of gun death in the U.S., too much by any reasonable measure.  Exactly how much gun death would be thought of as reasonable might depend on who's getting killed, although no one actually says that.   


In reality, about 98% of all gun-related crimes are committed by people using a gun that was obtained illegally.  Statistically speaking, this means that a very small number of crimes are committed by an individual using a legally purchased weapon. This includes those horrific instances where a child accesses a parent's gun and unintentionally kills a family member or friend. It also includes mass shootings of the kind that seem to increasingly plague our culture. As tragic as those occurrences are, they are a drop of water in an ocean of homicidal impulses loosed on our city streets and urban neighborhoods on a daily basis.

How many guns are there in the U.S.?  According to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, about three hundred million.  How do criminals obtain guns?  Theft, is one way.  According to the same ATF, a fair number are purchased by “straw buyers.” Meaning; someone who illegally buys or gives a gun to a person with a criminal background. Contrary to populist mythology, only 2% are bought at gun shows or flea markets.

About 30,000 people per year are actually killed by guns. Of those, about one third are the result of homicide.  The rest are primarily suicides.  Another approx. 70,000 are wounded by guns, bringing the total to about 100,000 people per year that are victimized by guns.  If this last number is alarming, it's also very misleading, 57% of those gun assaults were people being physically struck by a gun, not shot by one.  The remaining 43% come largely from people cleaning a gun and are purely accidental, as are those caused by the unintended flash recoil from a weapon.  That makes the 70,000 figure very misleading indeed.  


The number of people assaulted physically using fists, feet or other methods, for instance, is much, much higher, ranging well into the millions.  The actual number of unreported assaults is probably a good deal higher, yet again.   
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Gun crimes, overall, have been in decline over the past twenty years. And mass shooting were more common in the 1920s. As unlikely as that seems, when you wade through disinformation (and there's a lot of it) the numbers are incontrovertible.  

The 1920s and early 1930s were particularly violent because of Prohibition, which gave rise to organzied crime.  It was believed that by banning alcohol you could remedy the crimes being committed by people under the influence of John Barleycorn.   Not only did this turn out to be wrong and prohibition fail miserably, it gave rise to, and funded, "Murder Incorporated."  People, likewise, continued to drink, they simply bought booze in speakeasies and from moonshiners, instead of legal retailers.  There was also a substantial loss of tax revenue that would have been generated by keeping liquor safe and legal.  The need to substantially beef up law enforcement to deal with all the new mass killings and other illicit activity created heavy costs as well.  Eventually, after all the crime and bloodshed, and after much political grandstanding, prohibition was repealed.  What was honestly intended for good, proved to be a horrific misreading of human nature, as well as the power of law to restrain fundamental human impulses.  Even today, gang-related murder is, statistically, the biggest part of America's gun/murder problem, and it is the prohibition of drugs that funds and drives it, in much the same way as the prohibition of alcohol did nearly a century ago.  

Preventing law-abiding citizens from legally buying a gun, then, would have little negative impact on the murder rate. It might have an effect on suicide rates, but, even that would be negligible. Using a gun is 7th on the list of methods most commonly used by people committing suicide; wrist cutting, drowning, suffocation, hypothermia, electrocution and jumping from high places are all ahead of suicide by gun.

“Wouldn't the supply of weapons eventuality dry up as all those gun manufacturers went out of business?”

That's hard to know, since there are a number of variables affecting the outcome. Certainly, the proliferation of guns makes it easier to obtain a gun, legal or otherwise. And the sheer numbers increase the probability that you'll be victimized by someone using a gun.

What should we conclude from this? That if all legal gun ownership was suddenly illegal that it would save tens of thousands of lives?  Maybe, if we banned all guns, confiscated every weapon, shut down all the gun makers that would make us safe.  This would only be meaningful if you could confiscate the tens of millions of guns that are in the hands of criminals. If we can't stop drugs or illegal aliens from flooding into our country, what makes anyone reasonably think that we could stop a black market for guns, including gun-running from south of the border. We are, after all, within driving distance of our neighbors to the South. Make no mistake, if there's a strong enough demand, that demand will be met.

Let me state that again. If you confiscated every legally-owned firearm, including all those alleged Uzis, machine guns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers and magnum .45s loaded with cop-killer bullets, you would have minimal impact on America's murder rate in a positive way.

“How is that possible?” Here's how!

Somewhere between 65,000 and 2.5 million criminals are stopped annually by citizens using legally purchased firearms. Even if you accept the lowest possible number as accurate, you have many tens of thousands of law abiding citizens who stop crime every year using a legally purchased weapon. This includes murder. In other words, the crime rate, as well as the murder rate would probably increase substantially if legal gun ownership was banned. Yes, there would be fewer guns, overall. But, how many fewer is difficult to know, there are simply too many variables to account for. Regardless of the number, the crime rate and the murder rate would more likely go up than down. Those are the facts, as best they can be determined, and deeply held dissenting beliefs based on altruistic notions won't change a thing.

That doesn't mean that reasonable gun laws should simply be dismissed as an assault on the 2nd Amendment. There are, however, already more than twenty thousand gun laws on the books. It should be obvious that if laws could make men righteous, they would be more righteous than ever. When factoring the sheer growth of new laws created by Congress, and with the simultaneous rise in criminal behavior, the evidence suggests the contrary.

This leads me to conclude that America definitely has a problem. A gun problem, yes, but more specifically, a criminal problem. Until we recognize that and deal with it, banning guns would solve some problems—and more than likely create a whole set of different ones. When England banned gun ownership, for example, their violent crime rate increased. The opposite happened when Washington D.C. recently overturned it's conceal and carry laws. The violent crime rate fell. Other things may need to be factored into the equation to determine just how much the liberalization of Washington's gun laws is responsible for that decline. But, what didn't happen, is the prediction that D.C. would rapidly become Dodge City before Wyatt Earp. Demonstrating once again that it isn't legal gun ownership that's at issue.


In many ways, America's problems are unique, other variables beyond the question of guns need to be considered. Race, ethnicity, poverty, education, cultural patterns, parental illegitimacy (which substantially increases poverty) are contributing factors. The sheer size of the country, it's diverse population and varied landscape pose problems, yet again, as does it's history. 

What is it about America that makes it different than it's European neighbors?  Why is there so much violence?  The real problem may be inherent in the question.  There are, after all, many ways to be violent.  Comparing Rwanda to Maine is more than a problem of apples and oranges. 

Why not ask this question, “Why was Europe the site of the two deadliest wars in human history, barely twenty years apart?” Or, “Why was Europe the birthplace of the two most murderous ideologies in human history—communism and fascism—those twins sons of different mothers that killed hundreds of millions of innocent people in less than a century?” Or, 
“Why were Africa and the Middle East the places where slavery was actually born?”  There are answers, but not without massive learning and effort. Asking the questions is easy, answering them can be as complex and mysterious as human nature. But attempting to answer them without understanding the evolution of those cultures, their distinct geographies and histories, as well as their vast differences, will never allow us to see the full scope of the problem. Simple comparisons using statistics isn't enough. Neither is a one-size-fits-all solution. What works in the Netherlands, an oil-rich society that has a population about one quarter the size of the state of Florida, with a relatively wealthy, educated, homogeneous population, is a world away from East St. Louis and Detroit.

Therein is the real problem, genuine solutions are hard to codify into easily digested political slogans. In that way, politics more closely resembles religious faith, wherein the various acolytes quote dogmatically from carefully memorized scripts, based primarily on talking points. Liberals and conservatives, both, are guilty of offering polarizing half-truths in an effort to separate the holy wheat from the risible chaff. Politicians are beholden to their prime constituents; big political donors and other zealots, and happily divide the nation into partisan cults in order to gain an advantage, all in the name of the great and nebulous cause that is always at hand.  But, as long as the sheep are so willingly led to the slaughter, no solution will likely be forthcoming. The stalwart sympathizers will continue to mine the data to serve their interests—and Americans will be held hostage in their own country—as the carnage continues, unabated.


Mark Magula

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