Guns, Violence, and Culture

by G. Murphy Donovan (March 2011)

                                                                     – Sheriff Ben Johnson

Peacemaker.”

remedies,” such warnings were common, although rare today, up to and after the Civil War. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote of the periodic need to “water the tree of liberty” with the blood of patriots. His philosophical heirs exercised that license with a suicidal Civil War. Guns in the hands of recidivist Democrat Party vigilantes played a large role in enforcing Jim Crow laws for a hundred years after emancipation. Yet, even in the wake of armed insurrection, the nascent Republican Party did not seek to disarm cranky American individualists.

The primary objection to guns is political. Gun owners and their opponents have radically different world views. Gun owners do not trust their personal security to the city or state for pragmatic and philosophical reasons.

At the curb level, no municipal or state agency can guarantee the security of individuals or specific property. Crime statistics, especially in urban areas, support this belief. Police provide general community security, but specific lapses are too many and too troubling. Book keeping, like Compstat, monitors the ebb and flow of municipal mayhem, but such statistics, like public school audits, are too sensitive to careerism and political winds. Indeed, judicial process is calibrated also to accommodate the wants of criminals and political interests, not needs of victims or taxpayers. In short, gun advocates do not trust the state with personal safety. Overwhelming statistical evidence supports citizen skepticism.

The controversy following the recent Tucson shootings illustrates the chasm. Gun control advocates, like Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, quickly tried to assign guilt to Republican and conservative rhetoric. Second Amendment advocates like Governor Sarah Palin took to the airways to dispute charges of collective guilt, insisting instead on personal accountability.

  

homicide rate (year 2006) of 5.70 deaths per 100,000 of population, only 3.72 were gun related. If the worst kill rates for cities (such as Baltimore 42.0, St. Louis 38.0, and Washington, DC 35.4) were extracted, the US homicide rate, given the high rate of legal owners, is comparable to any country in the world with draconian control laws.

reported. Approximately 40% of auto fatalities are alcohol related. Few states track, non-alcohol, drug related auto fatalities. Worldwide, nearly 40 million serious injuries and deaths are attributed to automobiles. This figure is projected to reach 50 million by 2020.

decommission edged tools and weapons as a solution to violent crime.

ignoring illegal gun violence among their guilty constituents.

blood” on their hands.

A great civil war and all the rural violence of reconstruction was a Democrat Party legacy. Indeed, Jim Crow law and the associated 100 year reign of terror against black Americans was sponsored or ignored by Democrat politicians.

ignoring the history and culture of criminal mayhem among their constituents.

shot two police officers with an assault rifle. As one of the officers lay wounded, Brown executed him with three shots from a handgun.  Both officers were Black. Mr. Brown is now serving a life sentence for murder.

Epilogue

homicides a year could be compared to over a million legal abortions per year on average. Indeed, since 1973, there have been over 52 million abortions (300 abortions for every 1,000 live births). In New York City today, 40% of pregnancies are aborted. Homicide and infanticide are morally equivalent to the extent that they are acts of free will – or choices. For too many, abortion is just a more callous variety of birth control.

Loughner of Tuscon and Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia. The Loughner tragedy was a “one off” incident where nineteen people were shot, six fatally.  Good Samaritans intervened immediately to halt the mayhem.

 

large cities and their politically correct constituencies. Unfortunately, speculations about violence seldom confront these troubling sources. And if numbers matter, big city crime and abortion, not guns, are the principal symptoms of any climate of hate or any cultures of violence in America today.

Donovan and Agnotology in Journalism

 

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