More Anti-Gun Nonsense In JG Letter
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 7/11/08 @ 9:33 am - Filed Under National Politics
A letter in today’s JG made the following claims:
The vast majority of handgun homicides across this country are committed not by criminals breaking in people’s homes but by “non-criminals,” such as husbands, wives and other family members shooting each other in domestic disputes.
According to many reports by police commissioners across the country, about 75 percent to 80 percent of handgun homicides are committed by non-criminals.
Where’s the data to back this up? You can bet that when a writer uses weasel words like “according to many reports” instead of just citing a report, that they don’t have any real data to back their claim.
Now for some real data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
Between 1976 and 2002, about
11% of murder victims were determined to have been killed by an intimate. 11% is hardly a vast majority.
In a 1997 BJS study of inmates convicted in firearm-related offenses (let alone just murder) they reported that only 22% of state inmates and 10% of Federal inmates had no prior criminal history.
Another BJS study analyzed felony defendants in the nation’s 75 largest counties and found that 81% of those charged with murder has prior arrests. In fact 28% of them had 10 or more arrests. Of course that blows the author’s bogus claim of “about 75 percent to 80 percent of handgun homicides are committed by non-criminals” right out of the water.
I think you’ll find that the reason the author doesn’t cite any actual studies to support his claims is because there aren’t any…
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5 Responses to “More Anti-Gun Nonsense In JG Letter”
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A better way to combat crime, whether gun related or not, is to get away from the idea that jail or prison provides some type of “rehabilation”. Jail and prison provide housing, confinment, strength training, tatooing skills, para-legal education and tatics training for inmates that, as a famous actor once said “will be back”!
As my dear ‘ol Gran-pa said “don’t worry about the dog”. “Worry about the crazy man with a gun that lives here”!
Jeff:
The REAL stats can be had at the DOJ website.
The original author has NO leg to stand on…period.
Seems that ever since the judicial system dumped the PHILADELPHIA SYSTEM of incarceration (hard labor, no amenities, plenty of penitence and alone time to ponder what you did to get into jail), things became progressively worse.
Add to that the lack (but not the total exclusion) of capital punishment, and it’s small wonder we can’t find jail space fast enough.
And yes, the MAJORITY of “hard timers” ARE (for all intents and purposes) career criminals of some type or persuasion.
John:
I don’t have a dog, btw
(if you get my drift)
;)
B.G.
Bob,
The BJS data I linked to are the real stats you’re talking about. The BJS is part of the DOJ…
Unfortunately, “the vast majority” of people that read the letter in the JG are not going to do their own research and will just assume that what is stated is correct.
And anybody that thinks you can have a so-called “assault weapon”, or that they are handing out pistols on street corners, in D.C. is crazy. D.C. is already spouting refusal to allow serfs, I mean citizens, to have semi-automatic handguns.
A few days ago I heard an interview with the DC Councilman charged with rewriting their ordinance to comply with the SC ruling. This clown said that the Court only declared unconstitutional the clauses which prohibit handgun ownership and the provision that any firearm be stored dis-assembled or with a trigger lock since that would make a criminal of any citizen in the instant they tried to use the gun for self defense. He said those could be easily fixed without violating the Court ruling. In other words-they did not hear what the Court plainly upheld,”the right of the people to own and bear firearms shall not be abridged”. That means their use or storage in your home can’t be abridged even if you live in DC!!Where do we find these bureaucrats?