While I don't want to write yet another long screed attempting to debate the undebatable issue of gun control, I find myself unable to ignore a couple of quotes from today's Philadelphia Inquirer, because they touch on something so often left out of the debate that I think it's become a journalistic taboo.
Criminals cause crime.
And the overwhelming majority of shooters are career criminals.
Time after time these budding killers are arrested with guns, only to be returned to the streets with a slap on the wrist. Is it any wonder we have trouble getting witnesses to speak up? Instead of holding vigils at murder scenes, groups like Men United for a Better Philadelphia and Mothers in Charge should throw a ring around the Criminal In-Justice Center and demand that our judges hold the criminals accountable.
More than 80 percent of Philadelphia's cold-blooded killers have criminal records. Most of those records are lengthy, many for violent crimes. Every one of those arrests represents an opportunity to send a clear message, before they take another life.
Joseph Fox
Chief of Detectives
Philadelphia Police Department
(Emphasis added.)
Frankly, I'm amazed that Detective Fox would be allowed to say such a thing, going as it does against the prevailing meme that guns somehow turn innocent people into criminals. The fact is, it takes courage today for a senior police official to acknowledge the simple reality that criminals are the cause of crime and that criminals shoot each other. While he may have been remarking the obvious, people in public positions are not supposed to remark the obvious, and he should be congratulated. (I certainly hope he is not disciplined.)
While the 80 to 85 percent statistic shouldn't come as news to anyone, it probably will, because it's not something people normally read.
Why is this downplayed? Is it just because the goal is to make the criminals look like victims of guns because the Inquirer (and other news media) are in favor of gun control?
I think it's more complicated than that, and it has to do with preventing law-abiding citizens from realizing that the overall statistics used by countless anti-gun groups are hopelessly warped and contaminated for the following reason:
They deliberately lump criminals in with law abiding citizens, first in order to first frighten and scold the law abiding, and second to promote "egalitarian" gun control policies based on the assumption that criminal statistics apply to non-criminals.
That's a mouthful, so let me offer a typical example. In the oft-touted (but discredited) Kellerman study, the authors maintained that "a gun" in "the home" is much more likely to be used to kill in an illegal and offensive manner than in legal self defense. What is a gun in the home? Didn't the Philadelphia shooters all have guns in their homes? Yes, but 80 to 85 percent of them were not allowed to have those guns in their homes because of their criminal convictions.
The point is, these people are already gun criminals, regardless of the shootings. To lump them in with law-abiding households is extremely misleading -- especially in studies promoting gun control. Gun control is a completely moot issue to criminals already committing a gun crime by having an illegal gun.
Rather than correct the studies and statistics to reflect the reality of law-abiding households with legal guns, it is in the interest of gun control advocates to statistically attribute criminal conduct to non-criminals.
That, I think, is the main reason for downplaying the 80 to 85 percent figure.
Of course, if the longterm goal is to transform all law-abiding citizens into criminals by passing draconian gun control laws, the anti-gun statisticians who lump everybody together probably don't see any moral contradiction in what they're doing.
After all, if you believe all guns are immoral, there is no moral distinction between criminal gun owners and law-abiding gun owners, and the legal distinction should be eradicated.
Statistics are being used to manipulate law-abiding gun owners (and everyone else) into thinking that they are immoral too. I think it's a communitarian form of guilt by association, as well as manufactured morality. (All gun owners are guilty, because criminals misuse guns! And law-abiding gun owners promote "the gun culture" and set a bad example -- for innocent criminals who don't know any better! Legal gun ownership is thus a loophole which allows gun-owning hypocrites to enable their immoral behavior.)
I still can't figure why so many people fall for it.
UPDATE (04/12/07): My thanks to Clayton Cramer for the link!
(Interesting point about civil service protection....)
posted by Eric on 04.10.07 at 08:10 AM
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Comments
Here we see the Left yet again trying to insist that a broad category of individuals known as 'shooters' have certain traits and problems. They don't want discriminate and look at felons who take up arms again. By broadening the category to the most generalized group, and then painting all inside that group as just the same two purposes are served: one is to ascribe felonious weapons activity to the wider group and not to felons, and, second, to then impart that this right to gun ownership since it is used in criminal activity should be curbed for the entire population.
These are the same sorts of reporters that call 'terrorists' as 'militants' or that try to ascribe the goings on of sectarian violence as that of 'civil war' although it fits none of the previous civil wars nor hard definitions used to accurately describe a civil war. In this case, as those seeking to limit the ability of the Citizenry to exercise their rights, the right itself must be degraded and delegitimized and then put forth that as it is only causing harm that the right should be suppressed amongst the general Citizenry. Such has also happened with freedom of speech, in which money is seen as speech... while I always had this impression that money was money and that speech was speech! Just because someone can buy a soapbox doesn't mean that I will listen to them. Passed quite some few of those in Boston Commons back when I visited there... and elsewhere, come to think of it.
I am all for the States giving directivity to its Armed Citizens to properly set up organization for when the Federal Government falls down on the job during times of invasion or Danger... or by generally not upholding the Laws of the Land. That is how the Federal is held accountable by the State and the People: use your rights to uphold the Laws and protect your society and then put the Federal feet to the fire and ask 'what gives?' But that would mean that we would actually need to recognize and respect that the Right to Bear Arms (not just one class of Arms mind you, but *all* Arms) is one that is a social good that must be upheld during more than just hunting season and sport shooting. Those trying to infringe on the right are doing so to say that there is no social good to it... while those of the 'cold dead hands' variety are not lobbying to put their rights TO a social good. Neither of these are good as they both tend to limit the outlook on rights and their promulgation for the betterment of the Nation and our society. 'to make a more perfect Union' means *you* if you are one of 'We the People'.
Sometimes people make me sick. To pin the blame on a single group of people for gun violence is wrong. Guns kill people, there's no getting around this. Protecting yourself is important but are you really willing to take the risk of killing someone you love? It's naive to think that something that was made to kill people wont kill people you love.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
Here we see the Left yet again trying to insist that a broad category of individuals known as 'shooters' have certain traits and problems. They don't want discriminate and look at felons who take up arms again. By broadening the category to the most generalized group, and then painting all inside that group as just the same two purposes are served: one is to ascribe felonious weapons activity to the wider group and not to felons, and, second, to then impart that this right to gun ownership since it is used in criminal activity should be curbed for the entire population.
These are the same sorts of reporters that call 'terrorists' as 'militants' or that try to ascribe the goings on of sectarian violence as that of 'civil war' although it fits none of the previous civil wars nor hard definitions used to accurately describe a civil war. In this case, as those seeking to limit the ability of the Citizenry to exercise their rights, the right itself must be degraded and delegitimized and then put forth that as it is only causing harm that the right should be suppressed amongst the general Citizenry. Such has also happened with freedom of speech, in which money is seen as speech... while I always had this impression that money was money and that speech was speech! Just because someone can buy a soapbox doesn't mean that I will listen to them. Passed quite some few of those in Boston Commons back when I visited there... and elsewhere, come to think of it.
I am all for the States giving directivity to its Armed Citizens to properly set up organization for when the Federal Government falls down on the job during times of invasion or Danger... or by generally not upholding the Laws of the Land. That is how the Federal is held accountable by the State and the People: use your rights to uphold the Laws and protect your society and then put the Federal feet to the fire and ask 'what gives?' But that would mean that we would actually need to recognize and respect that the Right to Bear Arms (not just one class of Arms mind you, but *all* Arms) is one that is a social good that must be upheld during more than just hunting season and sport shooting. Those trying to infringe on the right are doing so to say that there is no social good to it... while those of the 'cold dead hands' variety are not lobbying to put their rights TO a social good. Neither of these are good as they both tend to limit the outlook on rights and their promulgation for the betterment of the Nation and our society. 'to make a more perfect Union' means *you* if you are one of 'We the People'.
Seems the two 'sides' have forgotten that.