Anti-rights cultists have a long-standing history of focusing their efforts exclusively on firearm-related crimes, often to the detriment of the societies they are working in – one need only consider the history of once-Great Britain, and its current status as “most violent nation in Europe” to see how that particular train of thought ends. However, I have had the suspicion, especially of late, that those same “gun control” advocates would consider a decrease in firearm-related crime, but an overall increase in total violent crime, to be a “success”, even if the increase in violent crime was sufficiently large to overwhelm any corresponding decrease.
Well, the Gift That Just Keeps on Giving, Joan Peterson, went and confirmed that belief for me:
I give you the argument of the guys with the “man pants” on ladies and gentlemen-” We’re saying that we’d rather have more gun deaths and lower overall violent crime, than zero gun deaths and higher rates of violent crime if given the choice” And there you have it. Nothing more to say here except “Wow” and “unbelievable”.
“Wow” indeed.
In 2007, America had a violent crime rate of 472 incidents per 100,000 people, and a firearm-related murder rate of 4.19 per 100,000. Comparatively speaking, in 2009, once-Great Britain had a violent crime rate of 2,034 incidents per 100,000 people, but a firearm-related murder rate of 0.102 per 100,000. What Joan is saying is that she would be willing to trade 4 murders for 1500 violent crime incidents, and she would consider that kind of trade to be a Very Good Thing (TM).
I guess it would be, so long as she planned on not being one of those 1500.
This is the value anti-rights cultists place on your life – if yours is not another “gun death” that they can use as a statistical feather in their cap, you simply do not matter. Talk about “unbelievable”…
And lest you have forgotten, Joan Peterson is the face of modern “gun control”, and a duly-appointed representative of the Brady Campaign itself, and she is publicly admitting that she would prefer a higher violent crime rate if the firearm-related crime rate decreased. Remind me again why anyone should listen to impassioned pleas for “gun control”, especially when she has the nerve to couch them in terms of “public safety”? In addition to “common sense”, it would appear as though Joan Peterson’s aphasia and other mental afflictions appear to have destroyed her ability to judge cost-benefit analyses accurately, in addition to making her come off sounding like the blood dancer we already knew her to be.
I have said it more times than I care to count, but Joan Peterson may be the single greatest gift to the pro-rights weblogging community in recent history, and we should all be thankful for her seemingly incessant stream of positively ludicrous soundbytes.
Perhaps Joan is channeling her inner Miracle Max, and believes that people killed by means other than gunfire are only “mostly dead.”
One other thing to consider: those 1500+ additional deaths will include about two murders, since their murder right is significantly higher than their firearm murder rate.
In other words, Joan wants to live in a world where we get stabbed to death like civilized folks, rather than shot to death like barbarians.
Er.
Something.
Lol, I still can’t believe I duped her into saying that, and now she’s arguing that knives aren’t as deadly as firearms (they’re often more so)
I guess I now know (like I didn’t already) where she stands on a few of my twenty-five questions.
You mean, you’ll put down your rock and I’ll put down my sword, and we’ll try and kill each other like civilized people?
Sorry, couldn’t resist. It’s all AuricTech’s fault!
Unfortunately, I think that lately she’s gone so far around the bend that she’s losing her usefulness. Her disconnect from reality has become so prevalent that anyone who’s a “fence-sitter” probably wouldn’t believe she really represents the views of anyone who’s not insane.
@ Jake:
You might be right. Her arguments and ‘logic’ are so ridiculous that I thought she was just trolling us initially. It’s almost like she’s a parody of gun control.
[...] Linoge jumps on the grenade that is Joan Peterson’s blog (brought to you by the Joyce Foundation!) and gives us this gem of a quote from japete: I give you the argument of the guys with the “man pants” on ladies and gentlemen-” We’re saying that we’d rather have more gun deaths and lower overall violent crime, than zero gun deaths and higher rates of violent crime if given the choice” And there you have it. Nothing more to say here except “Wow” and “unbelievable”. [...]
@ AuricTech: Well, she certainly believes that they are more-importantly dead than if they had been killed by anything else… Again with the living-up-to-being-a-cultist problem…
@ AMB: Just for clarification, the 1500+ additional violent crimes are just that – crimes, not necessarily murders. The category can include rape, assault, robbery, etc. Additionally, I made a point of not comparing the non-firearm-related murders in once-Great Britain and America, precisely because they are surprisingly (at least to the anti-rights nuts) comparable, and, in fact, once-Great Britain comes out ahead.
And, don’t'cha’ know? “Gun deaths” are more morally significant than just normal deaths!
@ Pyrotek85: Well done! And you are exactly right – the survival rate of gunshot wounds is significantly higher than that from knives…
@ gator: I somehow think there was never any doubt…
@ Jake: Complete whackjob or not, she still bears the Scarlet B of being a Brady Campaign Board Member, and so long as that remains in effect, her words carry the same brand… That the Brady Bunch would keep such an individual on that board speaks volumes about the organization… or the lack of volunteers, I suppose.
Another thing to consider is how the statistics are figured. In the US, as soon as the coroner rules that the death was a homicide by firearm, it counts in the statistics.
In the UK, it is not considered to be a firearm related murder until the killer is convicted.
In fact, England only recognizes certain causes of death at all.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/dth1010.pdf
In the above report, the only recognized causes of death are:
Ischemic heart disease, respiratory cancer, stroke, respiratory infection, flu, prostate cancer, GI cancer, dementia, blood and lymph cancer, and liver disease. If you look at the report and total up the top ten causes of death, you will see that they equal the total number of reported deaths, leaving no room for any trauma caused death, not even auto accidents or knife wounds.
I am going to have problems believing any of the stats coming out of the UK after this.
Ok, I have to wonder about that report you linked to… The complete and utter lack of any kind of deaths due to violent causes (even auto accidents, for example) has me wondering if that was meant to be a documentation of “natural” deaths, rather than all deaths – granted, that clarification does not occur anywhere that I saw in my brief skimming, but the omission is huge…
That said, you are absolutely correct about the requirement of a conviction for the once-Great British system to consider it a murder, which puts all of their numbers under significant suspicion. Basically, I would not trust any of the statistics coming out of that country regarding any of their crime information if my life depended on it!
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The US has 4 additional firearm related murders and the UK has 1500 additional violent crime incidents. Don’t we also need to know the homicide rate? If we have 4 people killed and the trade off is none killed but 1500 incidents of violent crime, then Joan and others may honestly think that’s ok. There’s life after violent crime. Dead is forever.
Like I briefly alluded previously, once you subtract out the firearm-related murders, America’s and once-Great Britain’s murder rates suddenly become a lot more comparable – 0.09 per 100,000 for us, and 0.14 per 100,000 for them. Also note that their adjusted murder rate is higher.
As for there being “life” after violent crime, remember that we are talking about rape, disfiguring assaults, and Lord alone knows what else – a lot of those people will take their own lives in the future (and a lot of them choose to do so by means of firearms, which just gives the anti-rights cultists another datapoint to club us over the head with), and a lot of them simply will never recover, physically or mentally. Yeah, they are alive, but are you really willing to condemn 1500 people to that kind of fate to save the lives of four?
[...] firearms when there is no apparent need to do so? Of course, some of those hoplophobes are now confirming what we have always suspected and admitting that their cause has absolutely nothing to do…, but you really have to wonder about the type of person who would forcibly disarm someone (and thus [...]
[...] Of course, you and I both know that Joan Peterson has lied in the past, and thus calling her out as a liar before she spoke at the Committee would not only be wholly appropriate, it would also be 100% accurate, thus relegating her “resentment” to the “Who cares?” category in very short order. Unfortunately, just like every last one of her arguments, Joan Peterson is not well-grounded in this thing we like to call ‘reality’, and is thus prone to such irrational outbursts as we see above and have observed in the past. [...]