Refuting the leftist myth of a gun homicide epidemic in the United States

Anyone who pays attention to polity, indeed anyone not a vegetable, has heard (from a leftist) gun crime is much worse in the United states than "other developed countries" like the UK.

It's true. There are many more gun homicides in the U.S. compared to the UK. But there are a slew of other factors gun control proponents either unintentionally or intentionally ignore to advance the narrative one is "worse" than the other. According to the CDC there were 2,712,630 deaths, of which 12,979 were gun homicides, in the U.S. in 2015. According to the ONS (Office for National Statistics) there were 529,655 deaths, of which 26 were gun homicides, in England and Wales in 2015. And guess what folks? 26 out of 529,655 in the UK, and 12,979 out of 2,712,630 in the U.S., are both less than half of 1% of all deaths respectively. Sure, there's less gun crime in the UK, but we're talking a fraction of a fraction of a percent; merely the relocation of a decimal point within two diminutive sums (0.004% versus 0.4%). It's simply not the profound disparity they make it out to be.  

There's another inconvenient truth gun control proponents commonly omit when peddling their hyperbolic claims and fear mongering. "As I've said forever, even could you achieve a complete ban of firearms (you can't), all that would do is result in a drastic rise in the number of knife murders, or something else as murderers simply found some alternative means to go about killing others." And that's exactly what you see in the UK.

What do you see on that table? To put it colloquially, "Those ain't guns." And the reason for that is knives accounted for over 37% of homicides in the UK, taking the lives of 213 victims (719% more than gun homicide), in the year ending March 2016. 

So far from achieving a violence/murder free society, the product of onerous gun control has been a "knife or other sharp instrument" becoming "the most common method of killing" in the UK, and "kicking or hitting" someone becoming "the second most common method of killing" comprising 17% of all homicides. Rather than "progressing" under onerous gun control the UK is regressing as people, in the absence of more modern/sophisticated tools, have reverted (like cavemen) to killing others by poking them with pointy objects, or beating them to death with their hands and feet (which killed 292% more people than guns). Rather than abolishing violent crime 55% of homicides in the UK during this period were a result of penetrating or blunt force trauma.

What does this tell us? It tells us that if guns are available to an aspiring criminal or murderer they will use a gun, but if not, they'll simply use something else instead, and that the UK, contrary to being a barometer of modernity, is a paragon of a resurging antiquity sweeping across occidental society. (You're probably more likely to be stabbed in the UK than the U.S. too.)

Clearly gun bans didn't abolish violence or murder in the UK, it just reduced violence and murder in which a gun was used, and resulted in the preferred method of committing violence and murder shifting from guns to something else more readily available. Onerous permitting requirements didn't even stop gun homicide. According to the ONS, of the 26 homicides perpetrated with firearms, in "only 1 of these cases was the firearm known to be licensed." "In 18 homicides (69%) the firearm was not licensed, and in the remaining 7 homicides it was not known if the firearm was licensed or not."

Permitting and stronger background checks accomplish nothing regarding those who don't apply for and submit to such; which no criminal with a record barring firearm ownership, knowing the outcome, would do. These measures serve purely as impediments to law abiding citizens acquiring firearms.

Ultimately, it's to be expected that a nation with a 393% larger population than the UK would have more gun crime, even were private firearm ownership not allowed. (As illustrated above, someone wanting to commit a crime will use whatever tool is most readily available and/or conducive to that end, and in the absence of one merely substitutes another.) USA today made the calculated decision to use sensationalist language, i.e., there are "160 times as many gun homicides" in the U.S. compared to the UK, because they knew full well saying gun homicide comprised 0.41% of all deaths in 2014 simply doesn't have the same shock value. It would be decidedly harder to convince people that less than half of 1% is a big deal whereas "160 times" suggests rampancy.

Leftists also love to post such figures by themselves, without figures for other causes of death, and therefore without context. 55,227 people died of "influenza and pneumonia" in the U.S. in 2014 for example, or 325% more than were killed by gun homicide, but you'll never see that juxtaposed against or even in the same article with gun homicide figures from USA Today (or any other leftist rag). Alcohol induced deaths caused 1.2% (as opposed to .65%) of all fatalities in the U.S. in 2015, or 155% more than gun homicide, but when have you seen any multi-day/week long media coverage of the alcohol induced death "epidemic?" You could probably recount the names and/or details of multiple shootings if asked, due to their extensive media coverage, but can you recall the last time you heard about any of the 33,171 alcohol induced deaths that occurred in 2015 from any prominent leftist or major media outlet? Clearly, if the goal is "saving lives" and bans affect that outcome, then we have just as much grounds to ban alcohol as guns.

I could just as easily claim one is over 4 times as likely to die of influenza and pneumonia, and over 2.5 times as likely to suffer an alcohol induced death, than die to gun homicide. But again, you'll never see that headline, because no one's ever deposed a tyrannical state with dyspnea and a bottle of rum. Examples of such being done with guns are plentiful.

What we see in the UK vindicates the philosophy that inspired the Framers of America's limited government.

"The voice of experience and the voice of reason speak but one language. [....] Both united in teaching us, that men may as well build their houses upon the sand and expect to see them stand, when the rains fall, and the winds blow, and the floods come, as to found free institutions upon any other basis than that of morality and virtue, of which the word of God is the only authoritative rule, and the only adequate sanction. All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them; or a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet." - Robert Winthrop, legislator, author and orator, and descendant of Governor John Winthrop (founder of the Massachusetts Bay colony), May 28, 1849. 

"Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere." If men cannot restrain themselves, then the state must necessarily do it for them. It's only solution to people harming one another is to remove their means of harming one another. It's only recourse to a populace with no "controlling power" within themselves, is the imposition of ever more onerous regulation, resulting in tyranny. Hence the reason religion was so integral to the Founders' design. It was religion which would inculcate and sustain virtue in the populace preventing the moral decay that causes accretion of power in the state.

It should be understood, as clearly evinced by the data, we are not that populace incapable of self-restraint. Not yet anyway. Though the left is constantly undermining society's traditional moral fabric in order to reduce us to such a society. The tyrannical left merely wants us to believe we are, so we'll accept and facilitate the state becoming that external "controlling power," protecting us from ourselves. That's the purpose of the assiduous and hyperbolic media coverage of shootings and gun homicide. If we're led to believe we're a society gone amuck, and can no longer control ourselves, then we'll accept the state doing it for us.

We must resist the left's manipulative demagoguery and remain objective and pragmatic. We must not be swayed by the paroxysmic appeals from the victims of shootings and their kith and kin. These people, as a result of their proximity to the event, are typically highly emotional and therefore those least objective and suited to dictate policy. There's a reason police officers are removed from a case, and judges are expected to recuse themselves, when they're close to a victim or party in an investigation or trial; their proximity to the victim/plaintiff is likely to compromise their objectivity. But we see the exact opposite after every shooting. The left and the complicit media parade out anyone and everyone close to the victim(s), in the hopes their doleful and visceral appeals will subvert the rationality of onlookers. They want you feeling as opposed to thinking. They want you focusing on the ostensibly huge disparity between 26 and 12,979, without cognizance or concern for the context surrounding those figures.

Remember why the Second Amendment exists, always, and let no one cause you to forget. Do not let crying or angry relatives cause you to forget it is armed governments, and not armed civilians, that have murdered more people than anyone else in human history.