On average, there are 30,000 gun-related deaths per year in the United States. Two-thirds of the total number are suicides. The remaining one-third (about 10,000 deaths) are due to deliberate homicide, violent crime, police action and (at the bottom of the list) accidental shooting. Considering that some 85 MILLION legal gun owners possess over 300 MILLION guns in the United States, this means that far less than one-tenth of one-tenth of one-percent of legal gun owners could even possibly be responsible for all the gun-related deaths in America.
I mean, if there is a scientific, demonstrable correlation between the proliferation of guns and the number of deaths in a country, then — with 85 MILLION legal gun owners and over 300 MILLION guns in the United States — why aren't there MILLIONS of gun deaths in this country? Even anti-gun, anti-constitution wackos have to admit that the number of gun-related deaths is miraculously low for such a heavily-armed population.
You can't credit law enforcement for these low numbers, because they are doing a lot of the killing, themselves. Rather, you can credit a remarkably restrained population of gun owners who do not immediately resort to lethal force.
In those nations that have banned guns, the killing goes on, unabated. The largest single-shooter killing spree in WORLD HISTORY occurred on July 22, 2011 in Norway (a "gun-free" nation) when Anders Breivik shot and killed 69 people and wounded 110 more (critically wounding 55 of them). Oh, an hour earlier, he also murdered 8 people and wounded over 200 with a homemade bomb, but we're not counting bombs, are we?
As an asides, Breivik was sentenced to only 21 years in prison. Gotta love the anti-gun, anti-death-penalty mentality, right?
In Britain, knife crime is a growing problem, although gangs still prefer to use firearms in that "gun free" nation. In Spain there is a knife problem. In France there is a growing knife problem. In Denmark there is also a knife problem; interestingly, the Danish police say that, when knives are available, they are used more frequently and with more devastating effect than guns.
Knife crimes started spiking in Japan after they banned private gun ownership, and knife attacks claim more and more lives in Japan every year; but that nation was rocked in 2001 when a knife-wielding man entered an Osaka elementary school and murdered 8 children and seriously wounded 13 more children and two teachers in what was the largest single-killer mass-murder in modern Japanese history. Another of the more outstanding knife frenzies was the Tokyo mass-murder of 2007, when a lone attacker murdered 7 people and wounded 7 more in a shopping district, which caused Japanese officials to seriously consider banning hunting knives. Rising knife crime is still a major concern in Japan.
Within the last month, there have been TWO mass-murders in China using knives only. The first occurred when 8 knife-wielding attackers killed 29 people and wounded 143 others at a Kunming train station. The second attack occurred a little over a week later when a guy killed 6 people in a Changsha marketplace, reportedly "hacking to death" one of his victims. The Chinese aren't so lenient with knife-wielding mass-murderers — their armed police shoot down offenders in the street.
Point is, banning weapons does not address the problem of mental instability and violent human nature. It doesn't actually matter about the availability of weapons — we'll kill each other with any weapon we can obtain. While weapons come and go, our homicidal nature has not changed throughout Human history.
However, today we sensationalize mass murder, particularly in the West, and we use it to drive our political agendas. Curiously, one of the first questions we ask in America following a sensational murder spree is "Was the killer a Left-winger or a Right-winger?" (In point of fact, FBI statistics show that liberal Left-wingers are twice as likely to go on homicidal sprees, including bombings, assassinations, mass-shootings, and other acts of domestic terrorism.)
Our state-owned news media would have you believe that mass-murders are on the increase across America, particularly on school campuses; but this is patently untrue. Law enforcement statistics show that the frequency of murder on American school campuses has remained unchanged for many decades. I mean, quickly, can you tell me the worst homicidal attack on an American school campus in the last century? Did you think of Columbine in 1999? Did you think of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007? Or maybe you immediately chose the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012?
Guess again.
The worst homicidal attack on an American school campus in the last hundred years occurred in Bath, Michigan, in 1927.
A guy named Andrew Kehoe killed 38 elementary school children and six adults and injured 58 others when he premeditatedly detonated hundreds of pounds of dynamite under the Bath Consolidated School. He even waited at the demolished school for rescuers to arrive so he could detonate more dynamite, killing himself and the school superintendent and seriously injuring many rescuers.
The sickness is in humanity, it's not in the choice of weapon.
In Britain, knife crime is a growing problem, although gangs still prefer to use firearms in that "gun free" nation. In Spain there is a knife problem. In France there is a growing knife problem. In Denmark there is also a knife problem; interestingly, the Danish police say that, when knives are available, they are used more frequently and with more devastating effect than guns.
Knife crimes started spiking in Japan after they banned private gun ownership, and knife attacks claim more and more lives in Japan every year; but that nation was rocked in 2001 when a knife-wielding man entered an Osaka elementary school and murdered 8 children and seriously wounded 13 more children and two teachers in what was the largest single-killer mass-murder in modern Japanese history. Another of the more outstanding knife frenzies was the Tokyo mass-murder of 2007, when a lone attacker murdered 7 people and wounded 7 more in a shopping district, which caused Japanese officials to seriously consider banning hunting knives. Rising knife crime is still a major concern in Japan.
Within the last month, there have been TWO mass-murders in China using knives only. The first occurred when 8 knife-wielding attackers killed 29 people and wounded 143 others at a Kunming train station. The second attack occurred a little over a week later when a guy killed 6 people in a Changsha marketplace, reportedly "hacking to death" one of his victims. The Chinese aren't so lenient with knife-wielding mass-murderers — their armed police shoot down offenders in the street.
Point is, banning weapons does not address the problem of mental instability and violent human nature. It doesn't actually matter about the availability of weapons — we'll kill each other with any weapon we can obtain. While weapons come and go, our homicidal nature has not changed throughout Human history.
However, today we sensationalize mass murder, particularly in the West, and we use it to drive our political agendas. Curiously, one of the first questions we ask in America following a sensational murder spree is "Was the killer a Left-winger or a Right-winger?" (In point of fact, FBI statistics show that liberal Left-wingers are twice as likely to go on homicidal sprees, including bombings, assassinations, mass-shootings, and other acts of domestic terrorism.)
Our state-owned news media would have you believe that mass-murders are on the increase across America, particularly on school campuses; but this is patently untrue. Law enforcement statistics show that the frequency of murder on American school campuses has remained unchanged for many decades. I mean, quickly, can you tell me the worst homicidal attack on an American school campus in the last century? Did you think of Columbine in 1999? Did you think of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007? Or maybe you immediately chose the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012?
Guess again.
The worst homicidal attack on an American school campus in the last hundred years occurred in Bath, Michigan, in 1927.
A guy named Andrew Kehoe killed 38 elementary school children and six adults and injured 58 others when he premeditatedly detonated hundreds of pounds of dynamite under the Bath Consolidated School. He even waited at the demolished school for rescuers to arrive so he could detonate more dynamite, killing himself and the school superintendent and seriously injuring many rescuers.
The sickness is in humanity, it's not in the choice of weapon.
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