Message to America: DON'T GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!

I beg you, America, do not, under any circumstances, fall for the blandishments, the pleadings, the tearful implorings, the constant repetition of SHLOCK-HORROR stories, the stern rebukes from your 'Mr. Pompous President', and allow those lying-liar government reptiles to take away your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.  The Statists want you to be helpless and totally in their thrall.  They know that if they can disarm the American population a huge barrier to their ambitions will be removed.  Of course, it goes without saying that were you to give up the right to bear arms the state will not protect you, anymore than the Norwegian state protected its citizens this year, or Her Majesty's government protected her subjects at Dunblane and Hungerford.  Governments are always and forever useless and untrustworthy.  They will not 'ban guns' they will simply stop you from owning them whilst the evil and the mad will continue to buy and sell them at their leisure.  If you doubt me, move to Chicago!

If some lunatic takes it into his or her head to kill as many people as possible they will find a way even if they cannot lay hands on a gun - a vehicle driven into a crowd will do the job nicely but I doubt that there will then be calls to ban vehicles by 'President Humbug' particularly as he and his government are now the principal shareholders in General Motors!  The best defence against killers attempting mass murder with a fire-arm or anything else is to have plenty of armed people.  One man with a concealed weapon would have saved several of the people killed around that Congresswoman who was shot and wounded recently.  If you want some concrete examples of how mass shootings were thwarted by legally armed citizens then take a look at the GunWatch site.

Above all, America, just remember that if you are armed you have a very slight chance of defending yourself, not just against a malefactor, but against a rabid state determined to control every aspect of your lives!

(This ends my weekly broadcast to the American people who I know really appreciate my advice!)

 ADDITIONAL:  This is hot off the presses - er, well, actually, it was a few days ago but what with my  social life serious studies I missed the reference at IHTM to a story in the Internation Herald Tribune in which China urges America to quickly adopt strong gun control measures.  Well, they would, wouldn't they?!  Needless to say, in law-abiding, peaceful China no-one but the government has the right to bear arms.  Consequently, and with bitter irony, the story also reports that on the same Friday as the American massacre, a madman in Henan Province stabbed 22 children with a knife and wounded an 85-year old lady.  Apparently, he failed to kill any of them but several had fingers and ears cut off.  Odd, isn't it, when you really need a policeman with a big gun you can never find one!

 AN ADDITIONAL ADD-ON!  In the comments below, my e-pal, 'DM', links to an excellent, must read article in The Telegraph by Brendan O'Neill who has very pertinent comments to make concerning the East-West coast and mainly metropolitan-based animus against middle, and mostly Southern, America when it comes to gun laws. 

Comments

[dearieme]

Americans didn't use to do mass murder of innocents: assassinations of individuals were the thing. There are, I guess, two explanations for why, since the late sixties, this nasty habit has flourished. One is given here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100194585/it-isnt-redneck-gun-culture-that-causes-mass-school-shootings-its-the-culture-of-narcissism/

The other is that since the late sixties people have stopped locking up the dangerously insane. The main victims of this have been the insane, now left to be "homeless" and die of neglect. But the sane pay a penalty too. Clayton Cramer's blog contains a lot of intelligent, and often moving, writing about the problem.

[Jimmy Glesga]

DAVID. You are right on this. All governments supply weapons to what they consider friendly nations. They do not concern themselves about who will be killed. The PIRA could have been supplied with weapon via some onerous! USA Politicians names withheld due to proof. The Yanks will move on as they do after the burial of the dead.

[Dom]

Does England have anything similar to our ridiculous "gun free zones"? They're like putting out signs saying, "completely defenseless people inside".

[JK]

Don't know about England much Dom - I did watch something telling on C-Span early yesterday morning. Guy from National Review was answering caller's questions. I found out something I didn't know.

Whether by clear-headed planning (which our media seems to be in consensus - as he was plainly a nut) or by sheer dumb "luck" - the shooter at the Aurora Movie Theater did his deed at the only theater within a 140 mile radius which had placed a sign on their entrance doors:

As is our right as private property owners - all concealed weapons are prohibited on this property.

Of the six theaters in Aurora, the shooter "just happened" (I guess) to choose the one which featured one of those as you say, "ridiculous" gun free zones.

http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2012/12/todays-massacre-in-connecticut-will.html

[rogerh]

For good or ill the Yanks are stuck with guns with no credible way out. The Second Amendment looked like a freedom - but has created a prison with no escape. The UK has about 180 gun deaths/year, France about 2000, Germany about 1000 and the USA about 12,000 homicides plus another 20,000 'others'.

Freedom - phooey - the American predeliction for Germanic bureaucratic efficiency plus the TSA and Homeland Security has corralled any freedom they ever had. The idea of citizens against an over-mighty state is laughable. A little propaganda here, some framing of arguments there and the shooters will be shooting each other in the name of Freedom. Power lies with the Money and the Media not the Armalite.

Keep your guns but don't ever imagine you now have a choice. Don't give up your guns? You can't!

[David Duff]

DM, I have added the link you provided to my main post above - thanks.

Jimmy, you are right but, alas, hypocrisy is not limited to the American government.

Dom, we're all living in a 'gun free zone' here in 'this septic Isle'! Except the areas where the low-lifes breed, of course, they have access to more weaponry than I ever had in the army!

JK, thanks for the link.

Roger, I disagree. It is precisely those bureaucratic behemoths who are such a threat to American liberties. There may come a time when the threat is perceived as existential and that's when the citizenry might feel the need to arm - for good or ill. In the meantime, it will be sufficient for there to be enough ordinary citizens carrying weapons who can then deal on the spot with lunatics like the one who massacred the children.

[Backofanenvelope]

The whole of the UK is a gun free zone, except for the police and criminals. I quite liked a story from the US that the Dept of Education had SWAT teams!!! I wonder if Mr Gove knows?

[JK]

Rogerh - if you'll delve a little deeper into the 12,000 homicides/year (looking specifically into "cause") - you'll find the number inflicted by firearms to be ... 26%!

[rogerh]

Why let facts disturb a good story.

I got my numbers from www.cdc.gov/nchs/faststats/homicide.htm, they hail from some place called Hyattsville.

They reckon on 11,493 Firearm Homicides (not Suicides - they are extra) in 2009. US population grown a bit since, so 12,000 seems fair to me. Now JK, Firearm Homicide sounds a lot like a gun type cause of death to me, so I would appreciate the source of your 26%.

[JK]

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-offense-data

[David Duff]

Er, no shooting, Gentlemen, at least, not until I have taken cover!

[JK]

Not to make it too too obvious David - but let's just take Rogerh's earlier stated number:

"and the USA about 12,000 homicides plus another 20,000 'others'."

(Allow me some "stretching down") 10K firearms - 20K others. Let's say, of the others, 10K were intentional - 10K were not.

10K + 10K +10K = 30K. So tick that 26% up to 33 1/3% - what's tricky is when CDC's stats get mixed in with the FBI's - CDC balliwick is "disease" - the FBI's is crime.

[JK]

More fun with numbers (and from a single very short article - this time, explicitly mixing CDC's and FBIs).

CDC: "...Deaths from firearms, which include suicides and accidents... Every day, 85 Americans are shot dead, about 53 of them in suicides." (No figure for accidents for some reason).

FBI: "FBI figures, reports that 774 people were killed between 2006 and 2010 by a mass killer ... A third of the 156 mass killings did not involve firearms, but rather fire, knife or other weapon. ... The dozens of deaths caused by mass killers represented about 1 percent of all homicides between 2006 and 2010."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/gun-deaths-set-outstrip-car-fatalities-first-time-152632492.html

Makes a feller apt to wonder about all these stats wouldn't you say David?

[Andra]

In Australia at the moment everybody seems to be carrying a knife and stabbing all and sundry.
I still haven't got a gun (JK are you there?.. remember I don't wear silver, it's gold or nothing for this sheila) and I certainly don't want a knife. Where would I hide it?
Ah, JK, don't answer that one.
Happy Hannukah, Ramadam, Christmas, Easter, St. Freda's Day, Remembrance Day etc.

[Malcolm Pollack]

From a piece at NRO today:

"According to the Mail, Britons suffer 1,158,957 violent crimes per year, which works out at 2,034 per 100,000 residents. By contrast the number in notoriously violent South Africa is 1,609 per 100,000.

The U.S., meanwhile, has a rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, which is lower than France’s, at 504; Finland’s, at 738; Sweden’s, at 1123; and Canada’s at 935."

By the way, David, I and about three-quarters of my countrymen have a favor to ask you: would you Brits please take back that self-righteous, narcissistic, bullying loudmouth Piers Morgan? For some reason he seems to think we give a rat's ass what he thinks about us, and he just won't leave.

We are already amply supplied domestically with his sort, and have no need for imports.

[rogerh]

Thanks for the link JK which leads to 12,664 murder victims in 2011 of whom 67.7% were gunshot = 8573 according to the feds. But that depends on what you call 'murder' on a police report and the feds admit that their numbers do not reflect the entirety.

As later comments point out CDC does disease - it counts corpses as well and it is pretty easy to count corpses with holes in them - 11,493 in 2009 where ANO added the hole. So I put my money on CDC.

The numbers don't matter, what matters is whether guns make the USA a better freer place or not. I have worked there and admire the Yanks a lot. I reckon the hunting/log cabin/backwoods mentality is admirable but civilians blasting off assault weapons seems a bad idea to my mind. Better, freer? - the US seems pretty much the same as UK/France/Germany to me. Merry Christmas to you all.

[David Duff]

Sorry, Malcolm, he's all yours and I have it on good authority that he is the final interest payment on all that money you loaned us during the war! But I have a confession to make, back in October I actually wrote a post praising him!
http://duffandnonsense.typepad.com/duff_nonsense/2012/10/oh-dear-perhaps-piers-morgan-isnt-too-bad-after-all.html

Gentlemen, another interesting discussion - thanks, I may have to keep you on! America tends never to do things by halves and as will be seen over the next four years their home-grown Marxist-socialists are determined to drive the economy into a catastrophe because it is from emergencies that extraordinary powers may be seized. One can debate crimes stats forever but in my opinion it is essential that the American people remain a well-armed citizenry.

[JK]

If you'll dig into the methodology rogerh, you'll find suicides are in the homicides number - suicide being a crime according to the FBI.

But wtf anyway - the world's ending sometime tomorrow - dunno if it's to be on GMT which, if it is, I reckon I'll be asleep.

[rogerh]

Thank you JK for pointing out these serious discrepancies.

If you are right the feds are abusing the word 'Homicide' - ordinarily defined as the the killing of one human by another. Then those wicked feds have failed in their Expanded Homicide Data Table 10 to add the data column 'Self' to the list of perpetrators. You might also like to enlist the help of civil liberties folks because suicide is not a crime in the USA and it seems an abuse of process to record it as such. Such serious matters you should take up with your Congressman I think.

I am sorry to have quoted CDC's data, as is well known they are in league with the UN - and we all know where they are coming from.

As you know DD's blog is the last bastion of intellectual rigour, so I am sure we are all grateful to you for clearing this up for us.

[David Duff]

More like 'the last bastion of rigor mortis', Roger!

[JK]

Well rogerh, I really care not a whit how the FBI chooses to file stuff (but check the numbers - then cross-check the numbers of the "actual victims" to see if the shooter is included in the total).

CDC itself I don't care either - except to mention the habit of mixing numbers from multiple sources (I didn't know CDC was including "stuff" from the UN - thanks) to pad their books.

I did drop a note into my Congressman's mail though - apparently he got it:

http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=743642

I guess you aren't much up to snuff on the manner in which "civil liberties" are addressed in Arkansas. My representative holds ten rounds - eleven if a round in chambered.