So the reason I do the “Gun Death” Files is to show how insane the anti-gun obsession with the metric of “Gun Death”. Of course without guns there would be no “Gun Death” (and their goal is banning guns, not making us safer) but if there are still dangerous people around, the “Gun Death” files show just how easy it would be for murderers to murder in a world without guns.
One of the arguments the anti-gunners give for using the “Gun Death” Metric, is because guns make murder “too easy”, and there is the implication that lawful gun owners like us are just one bad day away from going on a killing spree.
This mornings new headlines got me thinking of this. First in Cambridge Mass:
About 3:58 a.m. Wednesday two people allegedly stole a bottle of water at the Richie’s Shell station on Cambridge Street.
The clerk went outside and confronted the men about it. When he did, one of the men got a bag from his car and pulled out a gun and shot at the clerk.
I’m curious on the “Confrontation”, was he trying recover the bottle of water. That would be a stupid move. Or was he going to take a picture of the car, license plate, and thieves so assist the police? I probably would have done that….but maybe not given that this is a self-service gas station (one I’ve used personally BTW) so the property likely has a dozen cameras.
I will take a moment to point out that these low-rent criminals who would steal a fucking bottle of water (seriously if you’re going to steal something, at least make it a soda….I’d say grab a beer or a bottle of wine, but this is Massachusetts, you can’t buy alcohol in convenience stores here) had a gun. You can’t get a carry permit in Cambridge or neighboring Boston unless you’re politically connected. This is the most anti-gun state in the union, and yet somebody was shot over a bottle of water.
Still good news:
The clerk was taken to Cambridge Hospital with non-life threatening injuries (police say the bullet grazed his foot or leg) and has since been released and is working with police to piece together the events.
Glad he’s OK, he could have been killed. But meanwhile in Boston:
A man was stabbed to death Tuesday evening at a barber shop in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, according to police.
The Boston Police Department says the man was stabbed in the upper torso following an argument that took place shortly before 5:45 p.m. at the La Familia Barber Shop.
The victim was taken to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The victim’s name has not been released.
If the gun was so much more deadly, why is the man shot ok, and the man stabbed, dead. Turns out both weapons are about as deadly, and honestly I don’t have the time to deep-dive on that study to see if they’re actually comparing apples to apples. I believe it was Mas Ayoob who said “I’ve rarely encountered somebody shot 20 times”, pointing out that once somebody gets to stabbing, they often do it a ton, and in contact ranges they aren’t missing much, and you can stab a LOT faster than you can shoot as a general rule.
Of course we all know if we let the anti-gunners win, they won’t leave us alone, they’ll just get even stupider when going after knives.
They are equally deadly per transported victim… But if you are too believe the NCVS survey results, you’re six times more likely to be seriously injured by an attacker armed with a knife than one armed with a gun.
Many factors likely contribute to this–lower believed lethality might make both victim and attacker more likely to come to blows, lessor attention is drawn to a silent weapon, lesser legal penalties, easier concealment… And somewhere around half of recovered firearms aren’t in shootable condition
I wonder if anyone has compared the number of armed crimes committed with knives/blades vs. the number of armed crimes committed with guns, and cross-referenced those numbers with the death rate for both, to get relative lethality numbers. I’d be interested in an apples-to-apples comparison of “deaths per crime”, by weapon.
My suspicion is that there are fewer “knife deaths” not because knives are “less lethal”, but because there is less “knife crime” than “gun crime”*. If this is the case, then knives/blades could prove relatively more lethal, likely for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to):
– fewer “misses” / more damage to vital areas (it’s hard to miss with a knife at bad-breath distance);
– increased number of wounds per victim (no ammunition limit, anything worth stabbing once is worth stabbing 20 times);
– slower police/EMS response (no loud report to alert bystanders, response is solely dependent on 911 calls);
– knives are smaller and/or more concealable than firearms (easy to carry multiple knives);
– availability of inexpensive replacements (cheap knives can be legally obtained at corner stores for a few dollars, or even improvised with anything reasonably sharp/pointy, e.g. screwdriver, ice pick, scrap metal, broken glass, etc.).
I may troll the FBI’s UCR numbers later to see what I can find.
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* – No, I’m not advocating that more “gun crime” means we need more gun laws, or that if knives prove more lethal that we need more knife laws. I’m intending to show that weapon choice is less important than criminal intent; if we’re serious about saving lives, any serious effort should be put toward arresting and incarcerating criminals, not restricting access to tools for people with no criminal intent.