From kpollitt at thenation.com Tue Nov 16 18:58:17 1999
According to the Wall Street Journal (last few weeks), gun
sales ARE down in US.
It's tough (for me at least; for you, it's apparently easy) to read that article (or any of the statistics about gun sales in the US) and come away with the idea that guns are getting scarce. Guns don't typically wear out like sneekers, so "sales growth" is a difficult thing to find -- you don't buy a new gun to replace one that became worn out. Gun makers have never made a lot of money, unlikle tobacco companies. Regardless: millions of guns are sold in the US each year, and the number of gun owners is still pretty high. Yet gun crimes continue to go down.
So: does ownership encourage crime? I don't see it.
People are more safety conscious -- don't want their kids
playing at houses with guns, and being involved with guns
is becoming more socially stigmatized, rather as smoking
is.
It's certainly true that they are becoming more stigmatized. Is this stigmatization part of the "gradual disarming" that Yoshie asked about earlier? I think it probably is. It's unfortunately, because the children who grow up learing about guns aren't the ones who get hurt; it's the ones who aren't taught about them.
The WSJ says half the guns in US -- 100 million -- are
owned by ten million enthusiasts. So actually, there are
many more gunless Americans than you might think.
Way more Americans own guns than smoke. But what's your point with all these factoids? The WSJ article you quote is more forthcoming with the other 50%: their survey comes up with 38% of the adult men. And in Switzerland it's closer to 85% of the adult men. Blah blah blah.
But anyway, are you saying that if there's fewer gun-ful Americans "than I might think" that you can marginalize them more easily? That's cool. Say, how many women "do you think" get abortions in this country; or more to the point, how many helpless journalists "do you think" get censored?
Hey, I bet it's a whole lot fewer than you think.
There's been a lot in print recently about the connections
between gun ownership and suicide.
The connection has historically been that in places where guns are easy to get, the gun is the tool of choice for suicide; in places where they are hard to get, they aren't. So? The real question is: in the places where it suddenly gets hard to get guns, what happens to the suicide rate? The answer is that that it's doesn't affect it. There's a substitution effect; if you can't get a gun in Canada, you use a knife or pills. That is: access to gun is not a determining factor in suicide.
What's with all this innuendo?
and, not that Jordan necessarily cares the VAST majority
of Americans want stricter gun control laws.
Since gun control isn't correlated with violent crime control, I'm sure you can see what's wrong with buying into this kind of poll. I'm unimpressed with people who are for a solution that hasn't been shown to be effective against the problem at hand. Ask the same people if they'd like to see a reduction in violent crime and you'll get similar answers.
But since no one asks "Would you like to see a reduction in violent crime?" you'll have to make do with whatever numbers you get when you ask "Do you think we need stricter gun control laws?" -- I wish for once they would ask a question like "Do you have any idea what kinds of laws there are on the books as regards gun control, and their effectiveness in reducing violent crime?"
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
For the record, I'd settle for stricter implementation of the existing gun laws. A little less emphasis on drugs and a little more emphasis on prosecution for gun crime would be a-ok with me.
But when you consider who impulsive suicide is, especially
with kids, I think there's a lot to worry about.
Yes please, for God's sake, take the guns away FOR THE CHILDREN.
And don't forget, when you're doing all this worrying, to spend a little time worrying about those "cop killer" bullets (which have never killed a cop) and those daemon .50 caliber rifles (which have never been used in a violent crime) and "assault rifles" (which no one has been able to define clearly). And then maybe consider what the hell a "partial birth" abortion is.
I'll tell you: they are the same. They are made-up terms used to confuse people who don't have a clue. And they are part of a concerted effort to systematically change opinion based not on facts but on fear and uncertainty.
Bleah.
/jordan