Gun rhymes with fun. Coincidence?

Inspiration: Gun Rights Blog
Category: Social Critique

And I thought I would have nothing to say today, but surf the web long enough and your bound to become inspired. I just stumbled onto a blog that at first glance seems to be against guns, but upon further inspection is a compendium of pro gun rants. The best one went something like this; "You still can't carry a concealed weapon in Illinois. You still can't carry a concealed weapon in Chicago. The murder rate is still among the highest in Chicago." This seems to imply that the murder rate would actually go down if the number of guns went up. WHAT!? I'm no statistician, but this seems like some pretty insane logic.

My understanding is that most murders take place in inner city, poor neighborhoods, between people who know each other. How does putting hand guns in the pockets of every middle-class citizen going to prevent this. Where do these gun-rights activists thank the hand guns that poor people use to kill each other originate from? These people certainly are not buying them new from the local gun shop. No, middle and upper class people buy them, they get robbed, and then another gun is on the street. The US is by far the most violent developed nation in the word, with the highest per capita murder rate.*

*murders per capita

Residents of the United States commit murder 2.5x more than in France, 3x more than in the UK, and 4x more than in Germany on a per capita basis. This makes since because on this spectrum the US has by far the most lax gun laws while the UK and Germany have the strictest. Meanwhile our congress people argue about the negative effects that violent movies and video games have on society. I love violent movies and video games and I'm one of the most pacifistic individuals you will ever meet.

For an article arguing that video games cause aggressive behavior, see:

www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/04A.pdf

For a counterargument questioning the validity of the research mentioned, see:

culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/goldstein.html

Here is an excerpt:

"Correlational studies can tell us nothing about whether violent video games cause aggression. Even if we accept that there is a correlation between amount of time spent playing (violent) video games and aggressive behavior, there is no reason to think that games are the cause of aggression (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Colwell & Payne, 2000; Roe & Muijs, 1998). Furthermore, some correlational studies find no significant relationship with aggression (e.g., Sacher, 1993; van Schie & Wiegman, 1997)."

Sorry to go on a tangent, but it vexes me when people ignore the real cause of a problem by putting up a red herring instead of making the hard decisions. To blame virtual guns for real violence while ignoring real guns is stupid and wrong. Hand guns are only used to kill people (ok and targets that look like people), and serve no other purpose but violence against fellow human beings. When will we all learn that violence (real violence, not virtual, including weapons of violence) begets violence. Here's a simple formula that even the barbarians should be able to understand. More Guns + More Bullets = More Murders.