Some loosely connected facts.
Item One: A look at mass shootings, courtesy of John Fund over at National Review.
Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.
In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.
The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.
Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.
But why let the truth interrupt a Democrat/Media Party narrative?
We must do-----something. What? Who knows? But something has to be changed, even if the change is pointless and counter-productive.
Item Two: What is the worst school massacre in US history?
On May 18, 1927, a part-time caretaker at a school in Bath, Michigan, killed 45 people, including 38 children, when he blew up a school and then killed himself, along with two first responders at the scene. Another 58 people were wounded.
The 38 children were in grades three through six.
Forty five people dead by the hand of a mad bomber. An evil person motivated to commit murder will often find a way without firearms.
Item Three: Gun crime in the United States has gotten worse over the last ten years, right?
Nope.
Note--just as gun crime rates started going down, the national assault weapons ban had been lifted the year before.
I mean, if all the statists can do is emote and demagogue the Newtown atrocity, I can engage in a shameless 'correlation equals causation' argument.
Item Four: Chicago, run by former Obama Administration chief-of-staff Rahm Emmanuel, has some of the toughest gun laws in America. How is life in a gun-free paradise working out?
The City of Chicago just saw its 436th murder of 2012, surpassing 435 murders from 2011.
That figure was as of October of this year. Sadly, the Windy City's murder statistics are probably much higher than 436 by now.
Item Five: What is the violent crime rate per 100,000 people in the United States?
USA 2011: 386.3
Item Six: What is the violent crime rate per 100,000 in the very gun-unfriendly United Kingdom?
Gun crime in America is becoming less frequent.
The United States doesn't have a violent crime problem, at least when compared to other countries.
America is safer than almost every other Western industrialized nation on the planet.
The facts are on the side of self-defense. The facts are on the side of empowering law-abiding citizens to protect themselves. The facts are on the side of judicious reasoning and measured responses. The facts are on the side of the Second Amendment and its integral place in the US Constitution.
The trouble is, we are being asked by our enlightened betters to disregard these truths. We are being told, in ways ranging from slightly vulgar to mostly idiotic to completely ham-handed, that the country must throw away the hard-won civil rights gains made in the last several decades. We must relinquish the tools that have made both ourselves and our property more secure then they've been in half a century.
Why? Because a vile deranged man cannot be trusted with firearms.
Never has the Left's sneering contempt for ordinary citizens been more blatant: 'A psychologically-troubled lunatic cannot be trusted with guns, therefore neither can the rest of you slack-jawed bitter clingers. Now hand over your weapons. It's for your own good.'
Make no mistake. The Left is not calling on gun control because it's proven to be effective. There simply isn't an overwhelming amount scientific data to suggest that an assault weapons ban would've prevented a shooting like the Newtown tragedy. They are simply reflexively reacting to a gut-wrenching crime.
Many liberals assign a malevolent nature to an inanimate object. Some find guns to be too rural to ever align with the self-congratulatory cosmopolitanism so many on the Left identify with. Some just fear firearms because they look scary and dangerous. For these basically anti-intellectual instinctive reasons, libs dislike guns.
Alas, the progressive caucus' collective instincts are terribly wrong.
Conservatives are going to try to reason Obama and the Democrats out of their anti-gun position. Under normal circumstances, that might work. The problem here is that, even more than usual, liberals never actually reasoned themselves into their current pro-gun control stance. The stupid ugly retrograde Second Amendment needs some serious progressive remodeling and that's good enough for them.
