Guns, Violence, and the National Discussion

So SNSF has a post about the 2013 violent crime data.

It has become almost an article of faith in the firearms industry that even reports from our federal government that show a continuing decline in crime will get little media attention. And so it was again with the release this month of the FBI’s preliminary Uniform Crime Statistics
for the first half of 2013 that showed that murders fell by nearly 7 percent compared with the same period in 2012 while violent crime overall fell by 5.4 percent.

These crime reductions continue a 30-year trend

as the Department of Justice reported last year, even while the public is largely unaware
of this remarkable shift toward a safer society.

And again, gun ownership is at an all-time high. This is really settled. We can argue if lawful gun ownership DECREASES crimes, I would argue that it does, but that is still in the realm of theory, but we CANNOT argue that allowing people the keep and bear arms in the most liberal sense of the terms does NOT increase crime or cause a decrease in public safety.

The anti-freedom people HATE this, because it points that erring on the side of individual liberty and trusting total strangers to own deadly weapons is actually a GOOD thing. They aren’t concerned with safety, they are concerned with FREEDOM, and their concern is more of a puritanical sense, like that religion’s laughable ban on dancing and card playing because it will EVENTUALLY lead to sex, drugs, and debauchery. Of course Puritans banning cards and dance is laughable, as the idea that gun bans and carry bans will result in “Blood in the Streets”.

It doesn’t.

Still I’d like to step into dangerous waters for a second. The antis keep crowing that we need a “National Discussion on Guns”. Well we had that over a decade ago, and people decided that guns were something we should embrace, not shun. The public safety numbers show this was 100% the correct move, even if you don’t believe in a natural right to defensive arms.

Still there is something we need to have a national discussion on:

I don’t mean this in any coy or agenda-based way, I also have no idea about solutions to this. I do believe this shouldn’t be a “Dirty racist discussion”.

Why are blacks such a massively disproportionate representation of violent crime numbers, despite their minority status? Why is it the most dangerous states the ones with the greatest black populations?

I would say there is a cultural problem with violence, but I see no easy way to tackle this problem. But I don’t think it should be the do-not-touch topic it is.

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13 Responses to Guns, Violence, and the National Discussion

  1. Cargosquid says:

    The problem I’ve had and seen, at least on internet forums, is that the black community will NOT discuss this except in terms of white vs black. When its pointed out that the VAST majority of murders in their community are committed by black men, we’re told to butt out and let them worry about their communities. Then we’re told that its all our fault because we haven’t pass certain progressive laws or we’ve passed Stand Your Ground, or some other canard.

  2. Linoge says:

    As you said, we can definitely have a discussion over causality, as that has not yet been proven. However, correlation definitely has been shown, and if X increasing correlates to Y decreasing, X increasing cannot cause Y to increase.

    And, yeah, I know you said that too, but it is an important point to drive home, especially with the mathematically innumerate.

    Unfortunately, admitting that firearms are not the cause of crime will then require people to consider what could be the cause of crime, and that requires a bit more introspection than most folks are capable of.

    • The Jack says:

      As I like to say: Correlation need not imply causation, but it is *required* for causation to exist.

      Or alternatively: Correlation is nessicary but not sufficient for causation.

      • TS says:

        Technically you can have causation without correlation. An example would be an X-Y scatter plot where it looks like an “X” or a ring. There is visible relationship between the two but a correlation calculation may come out zero. In other words, X causes Y, but also causes negative Y. You can make an argument that this maybe the case with guns. In one case, a gun took a life, and in another it saved a life.

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