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\nOur deep dive into the numbers continues to expose the anti-gun crowd’s lack of evidence sufficient to warrant erosion of the 2nd Amendment.<\/p>\n
Guess How Many Violent Crimes in the USA Involve a Gun<\/a><\/p>\n Harvard health policy expert Dr. David Hemenway routinely uses statistics like “250<\/a>\u00a0people were shot each day in the US” and “Children<\/a>\u00a0aged 5\u201314 … are more than 13x more likely than children in other high-income populous countries to be murdered with a gun” to support a\u00a0myth<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0That myth is that America is one of the most violent nations on the planet because its citizens possess firearms.\u00a0\u00a0Domestically, this myth survives by focusing on U.S. homicide rates where guns are used\u00a074%<\/a>\u00a0(FBI 2019) of the time, and it thrives internationally because the\u00a0U.S. outranks<\/a>\u00a0most all other nations for the same reason.\u00a0\u00a0But is the rationale rational?<\/p>\n Domestically speaking, citing firearm homicides to prove that America is a violent nation fails for two primary reasons: 1) homicides are\u00a01%<\/a>\u00a0of U.S. violent crime (FBI 2019) invalidating it as a metric for national violence; and 2)\u00a078%<\/a>\u00a0(FBI 2019) of total violent crime is committed\u00a0without<\/em>\u00a0a gun.\u00a0\u00a0This bears repeating:\u00a0nearly 8 in 10 violent crimes in America don’t involve a gun<\/em>.<\/p>\n Internationally speaking, as one of the few nations that permits citizens to possess firearms, it’s unsurprising the U.S. has more\u00a0firearm<\/em>\u00a0deaths.\u00a0\u00a0After all, who would be surprised to learn that Egypt has the highest international ranking for people falling to their deaths from atop a large pyramid?\u00a0\u00a0(Yes, it does\u00a0happen<\/a>.)\u00a0\u00a0However, in this debate, the lethality of the weapon is not at issue, but rather its relation to violence.\u00a0\u00a0Moreover, because proposed solutions to gun violence focus on changes to\u00a0national<\/em>\u00a0public policy,\u00a0national\u00a0<\/em>violence is most relevant.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To accurately gauge\u00a0national<\/em>\u00a0violence, aggravated assaults (66%<\/a>\u00a0of violent crime) must be incorporated into any metric used.\u00a0\u00a0But the anti-gun crowd isn’t drawn to aggravated assaults because guns\u00a0aren’t<\/em>\u00a0used\u00a072%<\/a>\u00a0of the time.\u00a0\u00a0Yet the practical difference between a murder\/homicide and aggravated assault is whether the\u00a0victim lives<\/em>.<\/p>\n A legal definition for aggravated assault is “physically attacking another person,\u00a0without regard for his\/her life<\/em>, leading to\u00a0serious bodily harm<\/em>\u00a0with some form of weapon: hands, feet, knives, guns, etc.”\u00a0\u00a0Granting that legal punishment is generally a function of whether the victim lives, “disregard for human life,”\u00a0as a measure of violence<\/em>, is the same.\u00a0\u00a0That’s why it’s unlikely you’d be relieved to discover that the criminal stalking you in a dark alley will only maim and not kill you.\u00a0\u00a0Hence, when gauging violence in a neighborhood, city, state, nation, etc.,\u00a0murder and aggravated assault must be combined<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Summing 2019 FBI aggravated assaults and homicides, guns go from\u00a0use in<\/em>\u00a074%<\/a>\u00a0of homicides<\/em>\u00a0to “no gun used<\/em>” in\u00a077%<\/em><\/a>\u00a0of aggravated assaults and homicides<\/em>\u00a0combined \u2014 literally flipping the anti-gun position on its head.\u00a0\u00a0By the way, this assessment isn’t novel; it’s merely\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0consistent with the FBI’s definition for\u00a0violent crime<\/a>: homicides + aggravated assaults + rape + robbery.<\/p>\n Some assert that the principal reason there are\u00a050x<\/a>\u00a0more aggravated assaults than homicides in the U.S. today is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0because criminals are less violent, but because improved emergency response times and medical technology keep more victims alive.\u00a0\u00a0If so, the reverse is also true: if emergency response times and medical technology had\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0improved,\u00a0homicides by<\/em>\u00a0other means<\/em>\u00a0would likely rival\u00a0gun homicides<\/em>\u00a0today.\u00a0\u00a0Thus, another reason anti-gun activists focus almost exclusively on\u00a0homicides<\/em>\u00a0and not, e.g., accidental gun deaths affecting\u00a00.0002%<\/a>\u00a0of Americans, is because it silos the lethality of guns on a weapon-by-weapon basis.\u00a0\u00a0But who’s debating the obvious?\u00a0\u00a0What’s being debated is whether\u00a0guns increase violence<\/em>, and the truth is, guns aren’t used often enough to make a difference.\u00a0\u00a0At\u00a00.8%<\/a>\u00a0of all violent crime,\u00a0gun homicides<\/em>\u00a0are not, and never can be, an accurate (or honest) measure for national violence.\u00a0\u00a0Even summing\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0gun-related violent crime,\u00a00.09%<\/a>\u00a0of the American population, or\u00a0852 in 1M<\/a>, are affected.\u00a0\u00a0How does any of this scream “national crisis”?<\/p>\n Internationally, the “America’s a violent nation” myth<\/em>\u00a0is advanced by sites like stastisa.com, which rank St. Louis, MO the\u00a014th<\/a>\u00a0most murderous city in the world \u2014 worse than Culiac\u00e1n (city), Sinaloa (state) in Mexico.\u00a0\u00a0An October 2018\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0offers perspective: “Sinaloa is notorious for its gang presence[.] … [Its] illicit-dependent economy extends as far back as the 19th century when, the Pacific port cities would import … [opium] from China.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0Sinaloa cartel is said to be the most dangerous and powerful in the world<\/em>[.]”<\/p>\n Others like Worldpopulationreview.com\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0that the\u00a0U.S.’s crime index<\/em>\u00a0exceeds China’s, Pakistan’s, and Sudan’s.\u00a0\u00a0What’s curious about\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0ranking is its source:\u00a0numbeo<\/a>.com \u2014 cited by the Who’s Who of media: the BBC, the N.Y. Times, Forbes, The Economist, The Washington Post, Fox News, etc.\u00a0\u00a0Its founder is a Serbian mathematician and former Google software engineer.\u00a0\u00a0Difficulties with its rankings are 1) they’re derived from\u00a0qualitative\/subjective<\/em>\u00a0citizen surveys, not\u00a0quantitative\/objective<\/em>\u00a0crime data; 2) there’s no indication that surveys are proportionate to national population; and 3) no adjustment is mentioned for differences in societal norms and\/or citizen perception complicating, if not invalidating, global comparisons.\u00a0\u00a0For example, a citizen in a P.A. (Palestinian Authority) region of Israel may consider firing an assault rifle into the air a form of celebration whereas a person in Silicon Valley would consider it worthy of a 9-1-1 call.<\/p>\n Finally, Nationmaster.com ranks America the\u00a014th<\/a>\u00a0most homicidal nation, a tad better than Venezuela and China but worse than Uganda.\u00a0\u00a0What’s remarkable about\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0ranking is that the infamous dictator Idi Amin killed 500K in Uganda, and\u00a0the beat goes on<\/em>\u00a0in a May 2021\u00a0article<\/a>, which reports, “Ugandan security forces fired live ammunition indiscriminately … killing and injuring ordinary citizens including women and children.”<\/p>\n The difficulty with the above international rankings is that foreign governments 1) define crimes differently, invalidating\u00a0un-<\/em>adjusted comparisons, and 2) typically aren’t eager to admit corruption, which prevents accurate crime reporting and discourages citizens from reporting crime in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0After all, why report crime to corrupt police and risk retaliation from the perpetrator?\u00a0\u00a0So, while it’s said “crime doesn’t pay,” because\u00a069%<\/a> of Americans trust police, more crime is reported, and more reported crime likely contributes to a lower comparative rank internationally than the U.S. deserves.<\/p>\n By the way, when\u00a0total crimes<\/em>\u00a0per 1K<\/em><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0as opposed to\u00a0homicides alone<\/em>, is considered as a measure of\u00a0national<\/em>\u00a0violence, Nationmaster.com ranks Iceland, Sweden, the U.K., New Zealand, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Austria, France, S. Africa, and Switzerland\u00a0worse than<\/em>\u00a0the U.S.\u00a0\u00a0Ask yourself this: if America is less violent\u00a0with guns<\/em>\u00a0than most of the civilized world\u00a0without guns<\/em>, then what are we debating?<\/p>\n If you know a student, make him aware that indiscriminate Googling for school reports, college essays, etc. often leads to false conclusions \u2014 and not just regarding crime and guns.<\/p>\n Our deep dive into the numbers continues to expose the anti-gun crowd’s lack of evidence sufficient to warrant erosion of the 2nd Amendment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BLUF Our deep dive into the numbers continues to expose the anti-gun crowd’s lack of evidence sufficient to warrant erosion of the 2nd Amendment. Guess How Many Violent Crimes in the USA Involve a Gun Harvard health policy expert Dr. David Hemenway routinely uses statistics like “250\u00a0people were shot each day in the US” and … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-schools","category-mendacity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86689,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86688\/revisions\/86689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}