America's Gun Problem

[Doublehelix]

Reading this made me want to puke... typical liberal rubbish. This is what our non gun-toting Americans are reading and believing. Add this to a Hitlery win in November, and we have some serious work to do to keep our liberties. Is everyone supporting the NRA??? If not, get on it man!!!

As my dad used to say, "You can make statistics say anything you want them to."

America's gun problem, explained - Vox

 

[jgressley2003]

A lot of garbage in that article.

 

[KG1]

Typical Vox. Nuff' said.

 

[chipbennett]

The propaganda is strong with this one.

No other developed country in the world has anywhere near the same rate of gun violence as America.

...only because suicide is included in the tally of "gun violence".

To understand why that is, there's another important statistic: The US has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world.

Logical fallacy. Correlation does not prove causation. To wit:

Estimated in 2007, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 88.8 guns per 100 people, meaning there was almost one privately owned gun per American and more than one per American adult. The world's second-ranked country was Yemen, a quasi-failed state torn by civil war, where there were 54.8 guns per 100 people.

And in the time since 2007, firearm ownership has increased, while violent crime, including "gun crime" has decreased.

There is a very strong correlation between gun ownership and gun violence — a relationship that researchers argue is at least partly causal. And American gun ownership is beyond anything else in the world. At the same time, these guns are concentrated among a passionate minority, who are typically the loudest critics against any form of gun control and who scare legislators into voting against such measures.

Here, the author conflates lawful firearm owners, who commit "gun crime" at a rate an order of magnitude than even law-enforcement officers, with the "gun crime" rate of violent criminals, who are felons and by-definition not lawful firearm owners.

[h=3]2) More guns mean more gun deaths. Period.[/h]The research on this is overwhelmingly clear. No matter how you look at the data, more guns mean more gun deaths.

Uh: duh?

More cars mean more car deaths. More knives mean more knife deaths. More pools mean more pool deaths. More drugs mean more drug deaths.

So what? Once again, the author falls into the correlation-causation fallacy. There are still two primary contributors to "gun deaths":

1) Suicides, which account for 2/3 of all "gun deaths"
2) Gang/drug-related violence among felons, which account for as much as 90% of the remaining 1/3 of "gun deaths"

And it's clear when you look at the data across developed nations, as this other chart by Tewksbury Lab shows

That seems like an incomplete list of developed nations. Even so, the numbers include suicide, which must be conflated with "gun violence" in order for the propagandists to have any hope of making their point.

I could go on...

 

[Tim Enyeart]

Old and twisted data. Good people with a gun is a good thing because a gun may be necessary in opposing evil.

 

[CraigAPS]

What a load of !

 

[Hookeye]

America's gun problem is directly tied to the floundering economy.
If we all had better jobs, we could buy more guns............thus solving the problem.

But it'd cause another ..........the manufacturers of safes would have to ramp up production.

 

[Spikedog]

Pretty Graphs!

 

[Leadeye]

When I see things like this where people want to talk about America's "gun problem" it's never interesting. The only positive is that you have to have a "freedom problem" to have a "gun problem", and that sums up why I don't read those articles.

 

[russc2542]

Saw that on my yahoo feed. The usual uninformed shallow glance at adjusted statistics making gross generalizations to reinforce pre-existing opinions. Lots of issues there.

Reminds me of a time in HS, my mom was talking to a friend's mom about violent video games causing violent people till I pointed out that neither of them had ever played a video game, violent or otherwise, while I and my friends had, in fact, played more than a few violent video games and hadn't murdered anyone yet and as such they had nothing substantial to base any opinion on while I had evidence against.

 

[femurphy77]

America doesn't have a gun problem. It has a morals problem, an ******* problem, a leadership problem, a misguided youth problem, a __________ problem, ad nauseam.

Please feel free to fill in the blank!

 

[cobber]

Don't read Vox. Don't drink wood alcohol. Don't skate in a buffalo herd.

 

[jbombelli]

In before certain anti-gun INGO members agree with the article.

 

[printcraft]

America doesn't have a gun problem. It has a morals problem, an ******* problem, a leadership problem, a misguided youth problem, a __________ problem, ad nauseam.

Please feel free to fill in the blank!

1000x this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[CraigAPS]

America's gun problem is directly tied to the floundering economy.
If we all had better jobs, we could buy more guns............thus solving the problem.

But it'd cause another ..........the manufacturers of safes would have to ramp up production.

Thereby creating more jobs!

 

[RMC]

Boko Haram isn't mentioned because they use machetes.

 

[Dirtebiker]

America doesn't have a gun problem. It has a morals problem, an ******* problem, a leadership problem, a misguided youth problem, a __________ problem, ad nauseam.

Please feel free to fill in the blank!

"Family"
"absent father"
"respect"
"self respect"

 

[DoggyDaddy]

I stopped reading when they cited Mother Jones.

 

[9mmfan]

I'm pretty sure Pakistan has more 'guns' in civilian hands than we do.

 

[Bennettjh]

Can't bear to read it. We don't have a gun problem, we have a people problem.