We've been told by those people whose paychecks mostly depending on getting more and more guns sold by gun manufacturers, that "The Only Thing that Stops a Bad Guy with a Gun - Is a Good Guy With a Gun".
Really?
Ok, so why exactly does the map of national gun deaths from 2006 look like this..
Firearm Deaths Per State 2006 via The Atlantic
While the map of states with the toughest gun laws look like this?
Strength of Gun Laws per State
Hmmm.... Is there a pattern forming?
(As pointed out in comments, those first two charts are based on the same data - so let's move on)
If it was true that stronger gun laws only make law aibiding people more vulnerable - then shouldn't we have a higher rate of gun deaths in those states? So what the heck is up with Louisiana where Gun Laws are Weak? And what's going on in California and what's happening in New York where Gun Laws are strong?
Here's another chart showing the graphing the Gun Deaths by rate of Firearm Ownership.
Chart Comparing Gun Deaths per Firearm Ownership
And here's another graphing the number of deaths compared to the strength of gun laws.
Rate of Gun Deaths by Strength of Gun Laws
That doesn't seem to be very unclear to me. It's pretty simple - the more people who have guns, the more people who tend to be
Killed by Guns. The Self-Protection, "Good Guys always Win" scenario seems to be nothing more than wishful thinking, not fact.
As I've noted before based on Brady Campaign data - 31,000 Americans die each year as a result of guns, while about 60,000 are wounded yet survive. Of those that die 18,000 are suicides, so exactly who or what would be holding the Other "Good Guy Gun" that would stop this death?
Most gun deaths are not mass murders, but of the ones that are many of them end in the shooters - killing themselves. In some ways these are elaborate murder/suicides, and when you think of domestic cases this tendency - I suspect - increases.
A few more facts from Brady.
A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide (11x), criminal assault or homicide (7x), or unintentional shooting death or injury (4x) than to be used in a self-defense shooting. (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263).
Guns are used to intimidate and threaten 4 to 6 times more often than they are used to thwart crime (Hemenway, p. 269).
Every year there are only about 200 legally justified self-defense homicides by private citizens (FBI, Expanded Homicide Data, Table 15) compared with over 30,000 gun deaths (NCIPC).
A 2009 study found that people in possession of a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault (Branas).
Those who have espoused these claims have also said that our love of guns must come from the media, and it's
Film and Television Violence that is to blame for our fetish in this area.
Many of these people are Republicans, but not all. Interestingly Hollywood is not necessarily known as a hotbed of Republicans, either in front of or behind the camera.
Except when you look at one particular genre. The Good Guys Shoot Bad Guys Genre.
I seem to remember someone in that clip being a former Republican Governor - just can't remember who...
And what message do you get from the trailer exactly? Go on, be honest.
How about this one?
Guess whose a Republican? Yeah, that's right - Bruce Willis.
And then of course there's.. you know who...
Yeah, um, nuff said - moving on. Yes, the depth of Hollywood poisoning our minds with Violence is quite severe, and yet it gets worse when you look at the cast of the new movie "The Expendables".