Reader comments

Reader martin c. cox thoughtfully pointed out in the comments section to this post concerning the VT shootings...

Murders with firearms by country:

Germany: 384
Canada: 165
Spain: 97
Portugal: 84
United Kingdom: 62
Australia: 59
United States: 8,259

(Source: Nationmaster.com)

We could say: See, these numbers show why we Americans need guns to protect us!

Or we could ask: If guns are the best protection, how come there's so few murders with firearrms in the other civilized countries - where the population almost have no guns to protect them with at all?

My argument begins with these sobering statistics from an article in ReasonOnline magazine...

Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.

Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

Point 1: Even if you stupidly passed gun-conrol legislation, the guns are already here. How can you disarm the criminals without making the ordinary citizens vulnerable? If you disarm the general population, only the criminals will have guns and the murder rate will increase dramatically because we would be defenseless. You don't seriously think the bad guys would turn in their guns to the government do you?

Point 2: Those other countries do not have a second amendment to what passes for constitutions.

Point 3: Is it right for the State to prevent an individual from defending himself, his family, his property, or other citizens from harm? Really that is the only question that need be answered. Just think, if only one student or teacher at VT had the means of defending himself and others, think of the lives that could have been saved that morning. Can you look into the eyes of the parents and friends of those 32 dead people and honestly say you are still glad that VT was a gun-free-zone? I couldn't.