Dec 162012
 
There's a reason you never hear of terrorist attacks on Israeli schools.

There’s a reason you never hear of terrorist attacks on Israeli schools.

As I write this, the country is going through a histrionic act of soul-searching after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown Connecticut last week.  Gun grabbers can barely hide their glee behind a veil of crocodile tears, and the rush to enact more gun control legislation is terrifying in its irrational intensity.

The biggest problem with gun control?  There’s too much of it.  There’s a reason that people choose to shoot up schools – because they are ‘soft targets’.  Where else can a crazed gunman be sure to find a lot of helpless defenseless people, with no danger of anyone having a gun and shooting back?

Rather than take more guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens who use their guns exclusively for good and never for bad, why not change the prohibition on guns in schools and instead mandate that teachers take small arms defensive training and be issued with firearms.  We require teachers to spend many years of their lives training in how to teach – why not have them spend another week learning not just how to educate our children, but also how to protect them while they are responsible for the safety of our children.

And let’s now look at an interesting statistic that puts our so-called violent culture into a truer perspective.  As we’ve written about before – see here and here, for example – our rates of violent crime are massively decreasing and now are at about half the levels of when they were at their worst.  During these last twenty years or so, we’ve not seen any abatement in unemployment, gangs, drug related activity, and so on.  But we have seen massive increases in gun ownership and massive improvements in the laws that formerly sought to restrict our ability to own, carry and use firearms in self defense.

The conclusion is inescapable.  More guns and a more realistic approach to their use, equates to less violent crime.

Now, for the really telling comparison.  Please read this article which compares rates of violent crime in various European countries.  Near the bottom, it also shows the rate of violent crime in the US and Canada.  Here in the US, we have a rate of about 466 violent crimes per 100,000 of population.  Up in gun-hating ‘peaceful’ Canada, the rate is more than twice as high!  935 violent crimes per 100,000 of population in Canada.

Now go to Europe, and while a few countries have lower rates, look at the countries with hugely higher rates, including, worst of all, the ultra-gun grabbing country of Britain, with a rate of 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 citizens – almost five times the rate in the US.

These are the real numbers that count.  Sure, 20 dead children is an emotional event that upsets anyone with children (including me).  But that is a rare occurrence, and it happened in a state that is already very restrictive in its gun laws, and in an area where people weren’t allowed guns.  How many laws did that gunman already break?  Enacting new laws won’t be any more effective at preventing him than all the laws already in place.

These children died because of too much gun control, not because of insufficient.

We need to empower and equip schools and teachers with the tools and skills they need to make schools ‘hard targets’ rather than soft ones.  And, most of all, we need to preserve our invaluable Second Amendment rights, so we as citizens can protect ourselves wherever we are (including in school grounds) and so we as citizens can do our bit to keep the violent crime rates falling still lower and lower.

  3 Responses to “The Most and Least Violent Countries in the Western World”

  1. Below is the rate of omicides per year per 100,000 hinabitants published by the UN:
    U.S: 4.2
    Canada: 1.6
    UK: 1.2
    UK and Canada have way less omicides than the US. Please see the link below for more information:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

    • Hi

      Thanks for offering up the rates on homicides. But what is your point?

      So 4.2 of the 466 violent crimes per 100,000 in the US each year are homicides, whereas 1.6 of the 935 are in Canada, or 1.2 of the 2034 violent crimes in the US. Is that supposed to be good or bad?

      I still feel very much safer in the US than I do in Canada or the UK.

      And note also that the US homicide rate is steadily decreasing each year, more or less in line with the steady increase in gun sales and the steady liberalization of gun laws.

      I ask again – so what exactly is your point?

      • …stumbled upon this in my search for facts and cant resist replying.

        I think he’s saying that you are confusing the issue by referencing “Acts of Violence” when “Homicide” is a much more definable term when comparing nations. In which case, taking the UN’s rate of homicide per capita as a reference for violent gun usage, leaves the US much much higher in the rankings than any other western democracy. The obvious implication being that the restricted access to guns in those countries leads to reduced homicides.

        You may be correct that there are higher incidences of violence but that’s not what is being debated. What constitutes violence is fairly subjective. I would guess violence is reported far more readily in a socialized country like Great Britain or Canada than it is here in the US where the poor are fairly ostracized thus skewing the data. But this deviates from the point.

        I’m not opposed to gun ownership, I just think it should be regulated so they don’t fall into the wrong hands which is clearly what is happening.

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