Please disable your Ad Blocker to better interact with this website.

News Clash

HEY, ANTI-GUN GOOBERS: If You Have The BALLS, Check Out What’s Happened To U.S. CRIME Rates

The anti-gun idiots are not going to like these facts — because they completely destroy the narrative that they are pushing in order to take away your Second Amendment rights. Make sure that you forward this on to them.

By Andrew Kline, The Federalist

Most Americans believe America is submerged beneath a tidal wave of gun violence. A Pew Research poll in 2013 found that 56 percent of Americans thought gun violence had risen in the last 20 years, 26 percent thought it had remained the same, and only 12 percent thought it had fallen. You might be surprised to learn the 12 percent were right.

The gulf between the facts about guns and the public’s perception is immense, and was created deliberately. Anti-gun advocates invent new terms (“assault weapon”) and politicians lie to win over a skeptical public. Too often these myths are swallowed by journalists and celebrities who don’t bother to check the data and don’t know how modern firearms actually work.

The myth that rising sales of semi-automatic rifles have led to rising levels of gun homicides is pervasive. “The United States has been pummeled by gun violence since the assault weapons ban expired in 2004,” read. The Boston Globe’s June 16 editorial in a typically misleading statement of alarm. Although a Globe reader would reasonably conclude that the country is suffering a spike in homicides, the opposite is true. All violence, including gun violence, in America has declined dramatically for more than two decades.

In 2014, the homicide rate was 4.5 per 100,000 people, less than half the rate in 1995. The last time it was that low was 1963, when the rate was 4.6. The median age in the United States is 37, so for the average American alive today the odds of being murdered have never been lower — even though Americans possess millions more firearms than they did two decades ago when homicide rates were higher.

What about so-called “assault weapons?” The FBI divides firearms into handguns and rifles, with the rifles category covering everything from the little .22-caliber rifles kids shoot at summer camps to the dreaded AR-15. In last year’s “Uniform Crime Report,” the FBI listed the number of homicides committed with rifles since 2010. (A few thousand homicides each year are committed with firearms of undetermined type — most likely handguns. These are numbers for confirmed rifle deaths.) The numbers are: 367 in 2010; 332 in 2011; 298 in 2012; 285 in 2013; and 248 in 2014.

This decline in confirmed homicides by rifle coincided with a massive increase in the number of “assault rifles” Americans own. From 2010-2014, sales of semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 rose 28 percent per year, the Los Angeles Times reported on June 13. So while the number of rifles in circulation was increasing dramatically, the number of confirmed murders committed by someone using a rifle fell by almost one-third. During the same time, the number of homicides committed with handguns fell by 9 percent.

Read more: The Federalist

Share if you think every American should know these facts

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *