Virginia violent crime rate down by about 10%

I wonder how the Brady Campaign is taking this news?? After all, Over the past several years gun control, and those that support it, has been, and is being decimated in this state.


http://www.whsv.com/virginiaap/headlines/93081954.html

that gun ownership in Virginia was climbing during that period, as it was nationwide.

Since humans in general don't relish being struck with hot chunks of metal flying at them at extremely high velocities, is it possible that criminals -- as a subset of humans -- may not relish that experience either? Hmmm.

Of course any day now decades of history will flip..........and THERE WILL BE BLOOD IN THE STREETS!!!

is cheesecake :P

Smothered in blackberries and blackberry syrup!!!! :bounce:

:loveya:

Where the gun-distortion field will finally put an end to the lives of so many poor bastards who didn't think there was any danger in buying just one more gun.

By closing their eyes, clapping their hands over their ears and humming as loud as they can.

It appears that you don't actually care about cutting violent crime or even saving lives. Your only concern seems to be banning guns.

I see no other reason someone faced with the good news of falling violent crime would focus on the number of people shot in select, small periods of time rather than on the number of people shot.

Whatever it takes to make it appear that ordinary people being empowered to stop felons is a bad idea, I guess. Bonus points for ignoring the fact that "gun free zones" actually embolden mass shooters and that that fact (along with the rest of reality) tends to destroy your point.

I guess it takes guts to repeatedly spout such nonsense here. Like it would to go on a math forum and repetedly claim that 1/4 is greater than 1/2 because 4 is greater than 2. After a while, they would stop refuting you. So would we, but for innocent readers who might think you were actually making sense if we let your "points" slide.

sharesunited has learned from the "best". I've quoted from the Kates essay "Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda" before. (perhaps even this segment) Emphasis added.

C. Fraudulent Suppression of the Steep Decline in Fatal Gun Accidents

The health advocate shibboleth posits a simple, simplistic, patterned relationship between guns and social harms: More guns equal more homicide, suicide and fatal gun accidents--and stricter gun control equal fewer such tragedies. But this shibboleth is diametrically contradicted by the decline in accidental gun fatalities since the late 1960s. An unparalleled increase in handgun ownership coincided not just with no increase in fatal firearms accidents, but with a steep decline. The thirteen years from 1967 to 1980 saw the addition of more new handguns to the American gunstock than had been bought in the preceding sixty-seven years of the twentieth century; and the seven years from 1980 to 1986 saw the addition of half as many more new handguns as were bought in the century's first sixty-seven years.<176> Yet those same twenty years saw fatal gun (p.557)accidents steadily decline from 2,896 in 1967 to 1,452 in 1967, even as population substantially increased.<177>

In sum, over those twenty years the per capita fatal gun accident rate decreased by two thirds, though the handgunstock grew 173%, from 27.8 million to 63.9 million. In the years since 1986 fatal gun accidents have remained stable at approximately 1400-60, despite continued large increases in both the handgunstock and the population.<178> Later in this article we note the correlation of this steady twenty-year decline with the steady displacement over that period of the long gun by the much safer handgun as the weapon kept loaded for defense in American homes and businesses. But for now we focus not on the cause of the decline, but on health advocacy's lack of interest in that cause or in the decline itself. For now we treat the cause as unknown (though not unknowable) so as to explore what the health advocates' uninterest reveals about their claim of studying gun issues out of a single-minded concern to preserve human life.

Were health advocates rationally concerned about preserving human life, a two-thirds decline in fatal gun accidents should have been of great interest to them. Even in the absence of such concern, any honest scholarly proponent of the health advocacy shibboleth would be deeply interested in a phenomenon that diametrically contradicts that shibboleth. The interest should have been particularly intense and urgent for scholars motivated not by academic curiosity alone, but also by concern to preserve human life. After all, there must be some explanation for a two-thirds reduction in accidental gun deaths, and particularly for it's coinciding with a 173% increase in handguns. If that mysterious explanation could be determined, it might suggest strategies to reduce gun suicide or gun murders as well.<179> This potential should especially have attracted health (p.558)advocates; for, as we shall see, they have a penchant for combining statistics of gun fatality by suicide, homicide and accident into one homogeneous group, as if the three were related or homogeneous phenomena.

Of course, upon investigation it might turn out that no ready explanation can be found for the decline in gun accidents. Or, if an explanation is determinable, it might not be helpful in curbing gun murders and/or suicides. But the possibility that investigation could be fruitless does not explain, much less justify, the health advocates' total lack of interest in pursuing such an investigation--the fact that the decline itself has gone virtually unmentioned and that there has been no focus at all on its implications in the health advocacy literature against guns.<180>(p.559)

This total disinterest has an interesting implication of its own. Without denying that health advocates do care about reducing gun death, their disinterest in the twenty-year decline in accidental death implies that their concern is severely compromised by their hatred of guns. Though avowing a deep and single-minded concern to save lives, they seem interested only in ways of doing so which involve reducing access to guns. At least we can think of no other reason for their total lack of interest in finding out how and why accidental gun death could decline by two thirds over a period when the handgunstock was increasing by 173%.

One must be willing to accept the premise that per capita numbers are worth occasional mass slaughter.

I'm sure you understand how difficult a selling job that is.

The actions of the abuser should not impinge on the non-abuser.

A fact all should welcome. You should be happy along with the rest of us.

Why the anhedonia on your part?

But it's like trying to find joy in unemployed people encouraged to look for work.

Once you see that an article of faith is untrue, uncomfortable questions tend to come to mind.

I bet, was, "Does anyone have a gun?"

Answer: "No, we're a gun free zone" (Except for the guy doing the killing)

Support expansion of them into one seamless one from sea to shining sea.

where a concealed carry permit issued in any state is valid in all others.

We will always disagree, but I believe that statistics support my view far more than yours.

We're hip, shares. What you're in fact asking is that we shouldn't attempt to discredit your dishonest, unstudied "points" with honest rebuttal based on empirical evidence.

Loud and clear, as it has been for some time.

Guns are used to murder quickly, conveniently, and efficiently.

You are encouraging their widespread possession and even walking around with them.

That's inconsistent with the common good.

...as the circumstances in your second sentence:



are quite legal, yet the state is progressive and very peaceful.

Until then, your pronouncements are declarations of faith, not fact.

What position do you retreat to when the people of Vermont finally suffer their overdue spree killing?

Undeterred, you will put forward per capita crime stats, no doubt. For whatever comfort they afford.

Switzerland has had widespead civilian gun ownership for even longer. Yet the most notable mass killings there in recent times were poisonings, performed by the Solar Temple nutcases.

And as long as you're using that metric: Ban Boeing airplanes.

After all, they have been employed to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in World War II, illegally bomb
Cambodia, demolish the World Trade Center, and attack Iraq. The harm outweighs any good they may do.

http://www.keenesentinel.com/articles/2010/05/05/news/state/free/id_399611.txt

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14502154/

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=12436674

Did you know that in Vermont...
it is unlawful to carry a firearm within any state or educational institution, including school buses and property? So they are cool with guns but still uptight about letting people bring them certain places?

The reason its not allowed in Vermont, is because within that same federal law, their is an exception for "those that are licensed to carry a gun"

Vermont has NO license, avalible...AT ALL...

It actually causes problems for Vermont citizens when they leave the state, and wish to CCW. Since Vermont has NO CCW license, their is no way to have reciprocity with it.

Certainly, it's not complicated for those whos blind biases don't allow them to see complex issues for what they are.

to prevent murder or severe bodily injury from an attacker.

Widespread possession and legal concealed carry helps prevent many crimes.

Since professional criminals realize fear armed civilians far more than police, they smartly avoid home invasions or muggings in areas where gun ownership and concealed carry is legal. The nature of crime changes to robbing unoccupied homes and fewer attacks on the street.

Unfortunately, amateurs still continue unsafe crime and sometimes this results in their injury or death.

Like John Wayne said ...

“Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid.”

You don't see mass shootings at gun shows or firing ranges.

When that madman came through the door and there was nothing they could do, except die.

And you want them to continue to be vulnerable.

No one deserves that. That madman should have been met with a hail of bullets.

What a closed mind...