JAN POLLER: GUN CONTROL: PRESIDENT OBAMA DID NOT GO FAR ENOUGH…..SEE NOTE PLEASE
The President’s hoped for laws and regulations are supposed to end massacres by mentally deranged people. Can they? Do all the proposed legislation and executive orders make any sense or are they just for show?
What makes one gun dangerous and another gun not dangerous? Does the shape of a grip make one gun really dangerous and another one, exactly the same except for the grip, really not dangerous? I may be simplistic in my thinking, but if a gun fires a bullet, it is dangerous. If it can’t fire a bullet, then it isn’t a gun.
Why is a ten round magazine safe but an 11 round magazine dangerous? If you shoot two rounds a second and it takes two seconds to change a magazine, how long does it take to fire 20 rounds? Even a treasury secretary who can’t figure out his own taxes can figure this out without a computer:
10 round magazines 12 seconds
20 round magazine 10 seconds
What will happen to lessen the death toll with those additional 2 seconds? Nothing, absolutely nothing! The death toll will be the same. A fully automatic rifle is different because it can effectively fire 40 – 150 rounds per minute although a burst at 900+ rounds per minute is possible but only until the magazine is emptied – 2 seconds for a 30 round magazine.. Aren’t fully automatic weapons already illegal?
The magazine limitation sounds really good but is essentially meaningless.
At the bottom are the 2007-2011 murder statistics by type of weapon per the FBI. Note that in 2011, more people were killed by Hands and feet (728), and knives (1594) than by rifles and shotguns combined (679). The vast majority were killed by hand guns (6220). More people were killed by fire and narcotics than were killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre. Should we outlaw narcotics and fires?
If rifles (323 dead) warrant such attention, why don’t blunt instruments, sharp instruments and hands and feet? Should there be a limit to the length of a blade to reduce the lethality? Should blunt objects (baseball bats, shovels and tree limbs) be outlawed or their size restricted?
How will laws change things? If fear of getting killed doesn’t stop a gang-banger from engaging in a shooting, how will a law? Will they go register a gun? Will they give up automatic weapons? Will they give up large-capacity magazines? Of course they won’t. Will laws stop mass murder like Columbine and Sandy Hook? These people knew that they would also die. Does that stop them? It sure didn’t, did it?
We already have laws that make murder illegal. It didn’t stop the murder of 12,664 people in 2011.
I added the column showing the percent change from 2007 to 2011. Except for murder by explosives, all categories decreased with a total decrease of 15%.
The experience of New York under Mayor Giuliani is a lesson we should all be looking at. He instituted a policy of arresting petty law breakers and what happened? The murderers were also petty law breakers. They were taken off the streets and the murder rate fell drastically. Chicago, on the other hand, makes it almost impossible for anyone to legally get a gun so the low-lifes get them illegally and kill.
Empty gestures, empty laws protect no one. They shouldn’t even make us feel good that someone is trying to solve the problem. The problem isn’t the weapon. The problem is that a lot of people want to kill other people and no law is going to change that desire nor will it stop some people from killing others.
| Murder Victims | ||||||
| by Weapon, 2007–2011 | ||||||
| Weapons |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
% Change 2007-2011 |
| Total |
14,916 |
14,224 |
13,752 |
13,164 |
12,664 |
-15% |
| Total firearms: |
10,129 |
9,528 |
9,199 |
8,874 |
8,583 |
-15% |
| Handguns |
7,398 |
6,800 |
6,501 |
6,115 |
6,220 |
-16% |
| Rifles |
453 |
380 |
351 |
367 |
323 |
-29% |
| Shotguns |
457 |
442 |
423 |
366 |
356 |
-22% |
| Other guns |
116 |
81 |
96 |
93 |
97 |
-16% |
| Firearms, type not stated |
1,705 |
1,825 |
1,828 |
1,933 |
1,587 |
-7% |
| Knives or cutting instruments |
1,817 |
1,888 |
1,836 |
1,732 |
1,694 |
-7% |
| Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.) |
647 |
603 |
623 |
549 |
496 |
-23% |
| Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)1 |
869 |
875 |
817 |
769 |
728 |
-16% |
| Poison |
10 |
9 |
7 |
11 |
5 |
-50% |
| Explosives |
1 |
11 |
2 |
4 |
12 |
1100% |
| Fire |
131 |
85 |
98 |
78 |
75 |
-43% |
| Narcotics |
52 |
34 |
52 |
45 |
29 |
-44% |
| Drowning |
12 |
16 |
8 |
10 |
15 |
25% |
| Strangulation |
134 |
89 |
122 |
122 |
85 |
-37% |
| Asphyxiation |
109 |
87 |
84 |
98 |
89 |
-18% |
| Other weapons or weapons not stated |
1,005 |
999 |
904 |
872 |
853 |
-15% |
| 1 Pushed is included in personal weapons. | ||||||
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