OK, let’s count the murders … again
As we grow older, hearing an old familiar tune can make us wax nostalgic.
The other day, I heard this one again:
“Gun control does work in reducing the amount of violent crime. Any look at the statistics comparing our rates of violent crime to those of Western Europe is enough to demonstrate that clearly.”
Ah, the joy of repeating ourselves. One more time:
What’s the murder rate in America, per capita?
Right now it’s 0.042 per 1,000, ranking us 24th in the world, behind Colombia (0.617 per thousand — note the missing zero after the decimal point, meaning Colombia’s rate is FIFTEEN TIMES ours) South Africa at 0.496, Jamaica at 0.324, Venezuela at 0.316, Russia at 0.201, Mexico at 0.130, etc.
(In most cases, the sign by the roadside should read “Your American Drug War money proudly at work.”)
Now take four or five European countries, where “sensible gun control laws” have made it nearly impossible for the typical working-class citizen to own a personal self-defense or military-style firearm for the past century. (The wealthy on their private hunting preserves always seem to be excepted.) I don’t know why we should be limited to “Western” Europe: let’s choose Germany, France, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine.
What’s the murder rate per capita for those countries for the past century?
Let’s see, because they were disarmed by their own governments and thus unable to resist Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen, Stalin’s NKVD and starvation brigades (yes, the famines were created on purpose — any murder constitutes a “violent crime”) and the gentle ways of the rest of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, at least 30 million civilians were murdered in those four countries from 1925 to 1945. (It was really more than 40 million, perhaps 15 to 20 percent of them Jews, but let’s be conservative.)
We’re excluding the “normal” deaths caused by soldiers killing each other in times of war, and pretending there were NO other murders in those countries from 1911-2011 (in fact, there were a thousand murders reported in France last year alone — do they batter each other with baguettes? — and 4,400 in Ukraine, for a Ukrainian per capita rate of 0.094, more than twice America’s rate.) But even though we’ve left aside people killed when they were in uniform, that averages out to 300,000 murders of civilians per year for the past century in Germany, France, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, combined.
Last year there were 16,204 murders in America, which has a current population of about 312 million, compared to a population of 373 million for Germany, France, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine combined.
An average of 300,000 murders per year with “admirably strict gun control,” versus 16,000 murders in a year in a “cowboy nation” with “ridiculously little gun control.” Hm.
What’s that? “Oh, we don’t want to count those?” Well, tough. If we’re debating the costs and benefits of having an unarmed populace versus a populace able to defend itself with “all the terrible instruments of the soldier” (Tench Coxe), you don’t get to “not count” those murdered by their own governments, or by the invading armies of neighboring states, which are precisely the inevitable and deadly forces that an armed populace is designed to guard AGAINST.
I know perfectly well these twits “don’t want to count those murders because they were committed by governments,” usually the victims’ own governments. But how does it matter to the murder victim or his wailing widow how he got murdered? Besides, the main reason the founders insisted we retain a populace armed with “every terrible instrument of the solder” — which today means machine guns and mortars, flame-throwers and tanks and F-18s, unless you want to argue “freedom of the press” still applies only to 18th century hand-cranked presses — is because a well-armed force of “plainclothes” citizens, able to act as a militia, able to take on any standing “regular army” in the streets and in the fields, is “necessary to the security of a free state” … an explanation the Constitution-hating gun-grabbers routinely accuse OUR SIDE of ignoring!
What’s that? “It’s all ancient history, nothing like that has happened anywhere for the past 65 years?
How many unarmed Chinamen did Mao Tse-Tung murder in the 1950s? How many millions of unarmed Cambodians did Pol Pot murder in the 1970s — including every schoolteacher, every Cambodian who wore eyeglasses?
See the chart at http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm. Please.
Cherry-picking a few peaceful decades in Denmark or Luxembourg because said nations are currently between genocides is not very convincing proof that you’re safer, in the long run, if you encourage your own government to bar you from owning any useful military or self-defense weaponry, “for your own safety,” urging you instead to “trust in government” … while the guvgoons arm to the teeth, practicing their Kevlar-swaddled “dynamic entry techniques” by day and by night.
Remember, when the BATF attacked the church at Waco — as the helicopters closed in to hose down the second story bedroom windows from the rear with fully-automatic fire, killing nursing mom Jaydean Wendel as her baby watched from the floor, long before the FBI and the Delta team pumped in flammable gas and incinerated a bunker full of cowering women and children with their incendiary grenades while holding the fire engines miles away — the first thing the black-clad storm troopers did was to shoot and kill the bitch with her puppies in the front-yard pen.
Then they started shooting in through the windows at the women and children. In some cases, while cowering behind parked cars and holding their rifles over their heads — thus violating their orders to immediately withdraw should they meet return fire. One government sniper testified he shot whenever he “saw a curtain move.” For this they got medals.
Time and again, by a factor of hundreds of thousands, your most likely murderer IS the government you trusted to keep you safe.
Besides, has anyone ever repealed the power of Congress to grant a “letter of marque”? Doesn’t that mean private citizens must be “allowed” to own fully-armed aircraft carriers, missile frigates, and fast-attack submarines? So why are we quibbling over some pathetic little Thompson guns and Browning Automatic Rifles, let alone a Glock with a 19-round magazine?
“The great object is that every man be armed; everyone who is able may have a gun.”
February 13th, 2011 at 7:53 am
Hi Vin,
Spot on as usual. I’ve sent everyone I know the link to this website, and as I expected, when I asked several weeks later who had actually taken the time to read a few of your article, found they would have missed a “dancing with the stars” episode and “hadn’t gotten around to it” yet. I honestly see little to no hope for this nation, so few still believe we have any rights not specifically granted by the gov’t, truly amazing how several generations might as well be centuries apart in their mode of thinking. Glad you’re still around, I re-read some of your posts when I’m p.o.’d just to know there’s a few of us still around. I’ll actually be visiting vegas(wifes christmas present)soon, dread the flying part. life! Keep us the good work.
February 13th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Vin-
Excellent. Thank you for writing this.
February 13th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
Guns reduce crime. When is the last time a uniformed police officer was mugged, robbed or car jacked? Do you think it is because he is carrying a gun?
February 14th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
If you’re going to count the civilians killed in Europe by their government,
then you have to count the American civilians killed by their government (or foreign armies); the war on drugs, the war of terrorism, war on crime.
War in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Persian Gulf.
I’m one who “doesn’t want to count those murders” because you didn’t count those murders in America for comparison. You wanted to compare it to America’s “murder” rate, which is the government’s official rate of unofficial murders. You’re comparing ‘everybody’ in Europe to ‘everybody else’ in America.
Another thing that bugs me is your use of Red China and Chinaman.
February 15th, 2011 at 3:05 am
You missed the point Lava, the civilians killed by their own government were first disarmed by their own government, having no way to resist the tyrants in charge, were slaughtered at will. Thats why our constitution has a second amendment, not for duck/deer hunting as the pols and gun grabbers would have you believe.
Thomas Jefferson said “the beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed till they try to take it away”
February 15th, 2011 at 11:39 am
Let me raise a point: we are told we need guns to resist tyranny. Yet we see the pornscanners at the airport. And surveillance cameras everywhere. And asset forfeiture. And roving wiretaps. And SWAT teams up the wazoo kicking in the doors of innocent people. And de facto national i.d. And Waco. Yes Waco. And a ton of other stuff too dreary to mention.
Why then are gun owners not protesting any of this?
February 15th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Why then are gun owners not protesting any of this?
The reasons, I would guess, why most citizen gun owners don’t resist the encroaching tyranny are due to one or more of the following:
1) They don’t realize how numerous they are in relation to the gun-grabbing musclemen under the Establishment’s employ
2) They are too cowardly and lazy to do anything other than bloviate about the 2nd Amendment rather than act on its enforcement
3) Directly related to reason #2, they are still too brainwashed into thinking that the Establishment’s musclemen really are “the law” rather than predatory tyrants
February 16th, 2011 at 2:10 am
Hey! I know, why don’t you two brave ‘gentle’men fire it up and get the party started? Maybe Vin will put both of you in a sequel to the ballad of Carl Drega. When its steam engine time it will be obvious to all, even us bloviating cowards
February 17th, 2011 at 10:01 am
I know, why don’t you two brave ‘gentle’men fire it up and get the party started?
Stay tuned. You’ll very likely get your wish sooner than you imagined.
February 17th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Burke101 calls for more “protests.” Who precisely does he believe it would be useful for gun owners to run out and shoot? Or does he still believe in the efficacy of “writing your congresscritter”? (See Claire Wolfe.)
Successful resistance is possible only when the populace at large is willing to risk official reprisals rather than turn in the neighborhood resister. Before even passive resistance and a move toward more local and regional autonomy can develop, the populace must come to view the “shut up and pay your fine” government courts, the police and their SWAT teams as a hostile, occupying army, rather than as Kindly Officer Brown who’s always available to rescue Fluffy from the tree.
Instead, the great mass of Americans still turn over their children to the Government Youth Propaganda Camps, where they’re indoctrinated in a weird statist cult that believes any crooked and dimwitted politician, once elevated to the “Presidency,” is due a level of groveling respect approaching that bestowed on Caesar or Pharaoh, the Infallible Living God.
When was the last time a schoolchild was assigned to write an essay on “Which president violated his oath and most deserves to go to hell for committing the worst offenses against our Constitution of limited government”?
Ask your neighbors if we shouldn’t be teaching our children to be “bad citizens” — to resist authority in even the smallest ways, refusing to pull to the side of the road when a cop races by on his way to shoot some befuddled, stressed out, suicidal soul who could easily be taken into custody instead by throwing a cargo net over him; refusing to tell the census worker anything but the number of persons living in the house; joking about the TSA goons while waiting in line to be cattle-prodded; flipping the bird when the national anthem is played by members of the army that shelled Vicksburg and burned Atlanta and took out the Christians at Waco with their sniper rifles. Watch the looks of horror on their faces.
The Cult of Reverent Obedience is Strong. The Republicans claim they’re going to cut spending … “but not Defense!” Defense of what? Some firebase in Afghanistan?
The courts (small miracle — though maybe a few of the justices can sense when the cloistered Beltway Gang are pushing things too far for their own good) rule the “gun-free safe school zone” nonsense to be unconstitutional, and Bill Clinton gives Janet Reno 90 days to “come up with some way around the ruling.” Does the public rise up and demand his impeachment? No. Silence.
You want to arouse this populace to righteous indignation? Free free to give it a try. Just don’t try it during Super Bowl week, March Madness, the final week of “Dancing With The Stars” …
Read Alexander Cockburn’s recent essay on what a dangerous dimwit Ronald Reagan really was. (OK, it’s not “balanced.”) Now check to see how many daily papers — even leftist rags which you’d think would revel in such an analysis — ran that piece in anything near its entirety, with an appropriately provocative headline.
Generating thoughtful, fact-based controversy and more readership loses out to the safer course: Musn’t offend the believers in the Cult of the Wise, Benign, and Righteous White House. A few might call in to complain. Better to leave them bored and yawning.
This mass course of propaganda is described as “education” — just as buying tanks and bulletproof vests and helicopters for the cops is described as “public safety” — and even a populace struggling to pay its bills, where any entrepreneurial instinct has to be hidden from the greedy regulators and tax men, a populace that regularly wails for tax and spending cuts, dutifully troops down to the polls and OKs any “bond issue” which can be sold as enhancing “education” or “public safety”!
The actions of Andrew Joseph Stack III, 53, in Austin, Texas, in February of 2010 (almost exactly a year ago) are worth more attention than they’ve received.
(Curious that they didn’t bring about a massive braying for more “Small Aircraft Control.”)
The government sues Stack’s penniless widow to teach her a lesson (OK; they’re funding a suit by the widow of the IRS guy he killed, what’s the difference), but otherwise it just sit quiet and don’t say nothin’ …
— V.S.
February 18th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Vin:
Worthy of a column all by itself, that last post!
Generating thoughtful, fact-based controversy and more readership loses out to the safer course: Musn’t offend the believers in the Cult of the Wise, Benign, and Righteous White House. A few might call in to complain. Better to leave them bored and yawning.
And don’t leave out the fact that it is advertising revenue from the mega-corporations that are the real power behind the Omnipotent State that keep these dinosaur media organs afloat.
February 24th, 2011 at 6:46 am
Another masterpiece, Vin! I’m glad Lava and Burke101 contributed; it reminds me of how misguided, ignorant, and weak the counter-arguments typically are. May I direct them, with all respect, to another article to which they need to pay more attention:
http://www.rkba.org/comment/cowards.html
Patience gentlemen; when the time does come, we’ll be there for you, even though you do not deserve it.