Anti-Gun Laws Will Never Solve Gun Violence in America

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/09/antigun_laws_will_never_solve_gun_violence_in_america.html

By Trevor Thomas

Despite of what the left-wing media wants you to believe, there is not an epidemic of mass shootings, or an epidemic of gun violence in general, in the United States. The data make this clear.

In fact -- and again, in spite of what many in the media would have us believe -- by many accounts, mass shootings are not even on the rise. Definitions of what constitutes a “mass shooting” vary, but using “standard definitions,” a recent piece in The Conversation -- an academic and research journal -- declares that “Mass shootings aren’t growing more common.” 

In support of this conclusion, The Conversation article references data presented in USA Today:

Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, a leading expert with decades of experience on such matters, has long held that “There is no evidence that we are in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings.” This was true five years ago, as the graphic below, using Professor Fox’s data, reveals:

And it’s true today, as Fox recently revealed in a lengthy interview with Reason’s Nick Gillespie: “There is no evidence that we are in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings.” Even the liberals at Politico agree. There, Grant Duwe, a research director for the Minnesota Department of Corrections and author of Mass Murder in the United States: A History, concludes that mass shootings are “roughly as common now as they were in the 1980s and ’90s.”

Not only are mass shootings still very rare, but they represent an extremely small portion of overall gun murders in the U.S. Even a leftist publication like Vox makes note of this. While using a variety of data, including Professor Fox’s, Vox’s Dylan Matthews rightly reveals that “while tragic,” deaths as a result of mass shooting “are a tiny sliver of America’s gun homicide problem.”

What’s more, though we comprise about four-and-a-half percent of the world’s population, and though we own about half of the world’s privately owned guns, America accounts for less than half of one percent of the world’s murders. Likewise, across the U.S., this trend is similar: the presence of guns does not correlate to more gun murders. As this piece points out, many of the safest areas in America have the highest rates of gun-ownership.

Of course, in spite of these facts, after the most recent mass shooting -- after any mass shooting -- liberals in the media and the Democrat Party do what they always do. The media hypes the event, blames Republicans and conservatives, paints America as awash in gun violence -- especially mass shootings -- and demands that politicians “Do something.” Of course, Democrats couldn’t be happier to continue the script and pretend to have the answers for our so-called mass shooting “epidemic.”

Just days ago, Nancy Pelosi thundered, “Enough is enough!” She added, “The Republican Senate must end its obstruction and finally pass the common-sense, bipartisan, House-passed gun violence prevention legislation that the country is demanding.” As if gun violence -- or any violence -- can be prevented by mere legislation. This is what happens when one puts his or her hope and faith in the things of this world. We should expect no less from those who lustily applauded Obama’s egocentric exclamation “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!”

Of course, the Screwball Score -- otherwise known as the 20 Democrats hoping to replace Donald Trump -- eagerly joined in the “Do Something!” chorus on “gun control.” Desperate to get the media’s attention, Beto O’Rourke devolved into vulgarity -- and even tried to profit from it. Sleepy-Creepy Uncle Joe stuck to the fake “end the epidemic” narrative. Fauxcahontas said that “Congress must act” to end gun violence. After all, she does know a bit about “acting.”

Julian Castro, formerly of the Obama administration, wondered “What is the number?” He then asked, “How many Americans are you willing to sacrifice to the NRA?” Castro and his ilk are the ones who should have to defend politics that results in death and violence because, guess what’s not a “tiny sliver of America’s gun homicide problem”? Urban violence.

In his new book, Bleeding Out, criminal justice scholar Thomas Abt reveals that, “Since October 2001, 410 people have died in domestic terrorist attacks & 520 have died in mass shootings. During that same period, at least 100,000 lost their lives to urban violence.” This should come as little surprise to those who are aware of the weekly events in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, St. Louis, and the like.

In other words, the real problem with gun violence in the U.S. is the murder and mayhem that often plague Democratic enclaves in urban America. Where are the cries of “Do something!” when it comes to the weekly gun violence in America’s cities? The silence is deafening.

Of course, we have virtual silence on the violence in urban America because the poverty, crime, violence, trash, rats, bad schools, etc. that infest urban America are the result of the rotten fruit of liberalism. After decades of almost complete Democratic control, thousands of government “programs,” and trillions of taxpayer dollars, liberal politics and policies have solved none of the problems that plague America’s cities.

Yet we’re supposed to believe that Democrats have the solution to mass shootings in America? Along with having no real solutions to mass shootings, more often than not, mass shooters in America are a direct product of liberalism.

Again, how ironic and backward is it that those who tell us that children in the womb aren’t really human, that humans with a penis and the Y-chromosome aren’t really men, that men who are criminals are the good guys and the police the bad guys, that marriage is not the union of one man and one woman, that student loans don’t have to be repaid, that blizzards are evidence of global warming, that blasphemous art should be taxpayer funded, that school prayer should not be allowed, and so on, now tell us it’s the right’s fault when young men bent on evil go on a killing spree?

Everything that might truly keep young men from such evil -- fathers, family, faith, and the like -- the modern left despises and has targeted. Because they have made a god of government, instead of looking to what is really required to solve the problems of urban America, the left would much rather make an enemy of firearms and seek legislation to restrict them. 

Additionally, liberals in the United States have been directly complicit in the breakdown of the family. Whether divorce, fornication, marriage, prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, and so on, for decades now, in the name of “sexual freedom,” liberals have called what is evil good and what is good evil. They have preached, promoted, and even passed legislation in defense of these perverse “values.” Thus, it is little wonder that where Democratic rule is absolute, America is ugliest and most dangerous.

Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com