As we grow older, hearing an old familiar tune can make us wax nostalgic.<\/p>\n
The other day, I heard this one again:<\/p>\n
\u201cGun 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ah, the joy of repeating ourselves. One more time:<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the murder rate in America, per capita?<\/p>\n
Right now it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
(In most cases, the sign by the roadside should read \u201cYour American Drug War money proudly at work.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Now take four or five European countries, where \u201csensible gun control laws\u201d 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\u2019t know why we should be limited to \u201cWestern\u201d Europe: let\u2019s choose Germany, France, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the murder rate per capita for those countries for the past century?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see, because they were disarmed by their own governments and thus unable to resist Hitler\u2019s Einsatzgruppen, Stalin\u2019s NKVD and starvation brigades (yes, the famines were created on purpose — any murder constitutes a \u201cviolent crime\u201d) 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\u2019s be conservative.)<\/p>\n
We\u2019re excluding the \u201cnormal\u201d 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\u2019s rate.) But even though we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
An average of 300,000 murders per year with \u201cadmirably strict gun control,\u201d versus 16,000 murders in a year in a \u201ccowboy nation\u201d with \u201cridiculously little gun control.\u201d Hm.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s that? \u201cOh, we don\u2019t want to count those?\u201d Well, tough. If we\u2019re debating the costs and benefits of having an unarmed populace versus a populace able to defend itself with \u201call the terrible instruments of the soldier\u201d (Tench Coxe), you don\u2019t get to \u201cnot count\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
I know perfectly well these twits \u201cdon\u2019t want to count those murders because they were committed by governments,\u201d usually the victims\u2019 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 \u201cevery terrible instrument of the solder\u201d — which today means machine guns and mortars, flame-throwers and tanks and F-18s, unless you want to argue \u201cfreedom of the press\u201d still applies only to 18th century hand-cranked presses — is because a well-armed force of \u201cplainclothes\u201d citizens, able to act as a militia, able to take on any standing \u201cregular army\u201d in the streets and in the fields, is \u201cnecessary to the security of a free state\u201d … an explanation the Constitution-hating gun-grabbers routinely accuse OUR SIDE of ignoring!<\/p>\n
What\u2019s that? \u201cIt\u2019s all ancient history, nothing like that has happened anywhere for the past 65 years?<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n