Liberal Style Reporting

I’ll use these two recently reported facts to make statement of fact the way the liberal press does.

The new FBI crime statistics are out, and after several years of crime rates holding relatively steady, the FBI is reporting that violent crimes, including gun crimes, dropped dramatically in the first six months of 2009, with murder down 10 percent across the US as a whole.

At the same time, the FBI reports that gun sales, especially of assault-style rifles and handguns, two main targets of gun-control groups, are up at least 12 percent since the election of Obama. This dramatic run on guns prompted in part by fears that Democrats in Congress and the White House will do has they have consistently said they would do and curtail gun rights and carve apart the Second Amendment.

The FBI has reported clear proof that the more we arm private citizens the more violent crime decreases.

The liberal press often quotes and takes as fact what the Brady Campaign against Gun Violence says “We make it too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on guns. The consequence is that too many people are killed and injured with guns in the United States.”

Both of these arguments, mine saying that FBI statistics prove that guns in citizens hands results in less violent crime, and the Brady Campaign’s saying because guns are easy to get too many people are killed/injured with guns, are the same logical fallacy (Affirming the Consequent). Neither of these statistical based arguments (hypotheses) are valid.

Part of the Brady Bunch’s hypothesis is the acceptance that “that too many people are killed and injured with guns”, whom should decide what that means. This is another logical fallacy (the Fallacy of Presumption). It forces acceptance of a standard/definition/fact that may or may not be true.

What should be done is an unbiased cost/benefit analysis of private ownership of guns. In fact that data is available, noted anti-gun criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, had a change in heart after doing this research. Dr. Kleck, is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause. He is not and has never been a member of or contributor to any advocacy group on either side of the gun control debate. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, has become a widely cited source in the gun control debate. In fact, this book earned Dr. Kleck the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for 1993.

Kleck and Gertz wrote in "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," published in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, in the Fall 1995, "Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year—or about 6,850 times a day.” This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.

But before you start shouting that the research is bad, or disproven, consider that even those who don't like the conclusions Dr. Kleck reached. In "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," from The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Marvin E. Wolfgang writes that, "What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. . . . I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence." There are more than a dozen national polls—one of which was conducted by The Los Angeles Times—that have found figures comparable to the Kleck-Gertz study. The Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," Research in Brief (May 1997).

The Brady bunch, include in their analysis all the uses of guns that stop crime by both police and private citizens, and never consider any of the benefits of guns in the hands of private citizens. They make the presumption that every killing or injury caused by a gun is bad, and that there are no benefits to firearms, specifically hand guns. What would we have to conclude if we use their logic concerning guns and apply it to other technologies? We should dramatically reduce or end the private ownership of vehicles, as vastly more people are killed or injured with vehicles than guns. Since more people are killed in small light “cheap” vehicles than large expensive vehicles, ownership of small vehicles should be restricted to government agencies. People who own a cars are more likely to die in an auto accident; therefore cars cause auto accidents; therefore we should restrict private car ownership. People who have electricity in their homes are more likely to die of electrocution; therefore we should restrict the electrification of private homes (how many people die of electrocution in third world countries that don’t have electricity). People who own knives are more likely to be cut or injured; therefore we should restrict private knife ownership. People who live in homes with pools are more likely to drown; therefore we should restrict private pool ownership. People who fly in airplanes are more likely to be killed or injured in a plane crash; therefore aircraft use should be restricted to government agencies.

Consider what might be mans oldest technology, fire. Using anti-gun zealot logic, this technology should also be eliminated, it is the basis for all our non nuclear energy, be it internal combustion engines, electrical generation burning coal, oil, biomass, or natural gas, or even home oil/gas heating. If we exclude all the benefits of the use of fire and only look at the people killed or injured by fire, then we would have to severely restrict it. No private vehicles, no private home heating, no private home cooking, no private home lighting, etc. Imagine if anything that was based on the use of fire was limited to only government agents (sounds exactly like what environmentalist extremists want). All of those above arguments are silly and based on the same kind of faulty logic. You could go on forever but the arguments against private gun ownership are based on fear of the technology, excluding any benefits. After all firearms are just a more technologically advanced method of throwing stones, as an electric stove is a more technologically advanced method of using fire.

Any technology can be used for good or evil, but technology, including firearms, has made life vastly better for man. From fire to microchips, the benefits of technology has always outweighed the costs. Ignoring the benefits of any given technology only limits its availability to some people, and leaves it open for others to use the technology they posses to oppress those without that technology. This could be said for oil, as restricting the availability to acquire domestic sources of oil (Anwar, Gulf of Mexico, etc.), has put others, like OPEC, in a position to be able to oppress those who can’t or won’t produce their own oil. It could also be said for electricity, restrictions on third world countries making cheap hydro/coal/oil based electricity to “protect the environment” oppress them and keeps them from advancing, by making electricity generation too expensive for them acquire.

The FBI statistics which over the same time period show a nationwide decrease in violent crime roughly equivalent to the nationwide increase in gun sales does not prove that more guns = less crime, but it does clearly falsify the Brady Bunch’s hypothesis that The consequence of it being too easy to get guns is that too many people are killed and injured with guns in the United States. Their hypothesis is proven false, and based upon multiple logical fallacies, so why do so many people (mostly liberals) still believe it, and continues to try to use such an easily falsifiable idea to promote gun control? I believe it is because of their irrational fear of technology, not any rational reasoning. The only other alternative would be a conspiracy to disarm the American public and eliminate the second amendment, to make it easier to pacify and control the masses by removing their ability to defend themselves from a tyrannical government, but that couldn’t be true, as liberals are trustworthy and loyal Americans and none would ever want to curtail fundamental rights.