Category: Guns

The left is grasping at straws in this “national conversation” that we’re supposed to be having about guns. In the New York Times, Elizabeth Rosenthal thinks she has a teachable moment by comparing Central America to NRA’s vision of America;

I recently visited some Latin American countries that mesh with the N.R.A.’s vision of the promised land, where guards with guns grace every office lobby, storefront, A.T.M., restaurant and gas station. It has not made those countries safer or saner.

Despite the ubiquitous presence of “good guys” with guns, countries like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela have some of the highest homicide rates in the world.

“A society that is relying on guys with guns to stop violence is a sign of a society where institutions have broken down,” said Rebecca Peters, former director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. “It’s shocking to hear anyone in the United States considering a solution that would make it seem more like Colombia.”

First of all, we’re talking about a region of the world which has been at war with itself since before Columbus landed. Those countries are rife with communist guerrillas, drug cartels and corrupt government officials which are more of threat to their citizens than the guy next door who may or may not own a gun.

Ms. Rosenthal writes like she’s never been to Washington, DC where nearly every building in the city has at least one armed security person at the door to greet visitors. In fact, it was an armed security guard, Leo Johnson, at the Family Research Council in DC that stopped a mass shooting by a gay activist, Floyd Lee Corkins II, a scant few months ago.

I also noticed that Ms. Rosenthal doesn’t include Mexico in her little condemnation of guns. I guess that could be because it’s illegal to own a gun in Mexico, there’s only one place in the country where a Mexican can buy a gun – in the center of a massive military base. Still, 2011 still saw 11,000 gun deaths in Mexico. Mexico even tried destroying toy guns to bring down crime rates in one city.

She does, however mention Guatemala, which just this week announced a falling homocide rate according to Reuters.

The Central American nation of nearly 15 million people registered 5,174 murders in 2012, an 8.9 percent drop from 2011.

“We have improved coordination between the state prosecutor’s office and the police … and we have a new school with more advanced training for officers,” Vice-Minister of Security Arkel Benitez told Reuters.

Guatemala has been battling a wave of violent crime for over a decade, with homicides peaking at 6,498 in 2009, giving the country one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates, according to the United Nations.

Funny how Ms. Rosenthal didn’t feel the need to mention that homocides had declined in one of her scary gun-ridden country’s and they did it without gun control.

As the Left begins to lose the debate on guns, as the debate turns to mental health as the real problem, the Washington Post just happens to run two pieces today begging that we don’t pick on crazy people like the Post and the Left have been picking on gun owners. The first, “Predicting violence is a work in progress“, David Brown writes;

It’s now fairly clear, for example, that people with severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and some personality disorders, are more likely to commit violent acts than others. But the risk is small. The vast majority of mentally ill people won’t commit assault, rape, arson or homicide, although the risk rises sharply among those who abuse drugs and alcohol.

Yeah, well, neither will your average gun owner, but that’s not stopping the government and the media from making it appear as if we will and punishing us all for the actions of a statistically miniscule few.

In the other piece, Martin E.P. Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association writes a similar piece; “Evil vs. crazy: What’s in the minds of mass murderers?“;

Crazy people and evil people can commit mass murder, and they always do it with guns. Our society’s only real leverage, at least in the near term, lies in reducing access to guns. Our national experience with another lethal menace, cigarettes, shows that government regulation massively saves lives. High taxation on cigarettes and restricting access to them has markedly cut smoking rates and improved health. High taxes on guns and strong restrictions on their availability are the only realistic hope for avoiding many more Sandy Hooks.

Yep, it’s always the guns, not the people. The picture at the head of the first article shows Jared Loughner, Adam Lanza and James Holmes – all three were at least recognized as being unbalanced. In the case of Holmes and Loughner, the people who knew they weren’t “right” were silent which allowed the murderers to buy guns. Lanza’s mother was reportedly in the process of putting her son into a treatment facility. In Webster, NY, Spengler was forbidden by law to buy guns because he was a convicted murderer.

All four should have been warehoused, but we can’t say that out loud. Can you imagine the Washington Post running two stories warning readers not to blame gun owners for the actions of a few? But here we have two articles on the front page of the Post warning us to not blame nuts for the actions of a few nuts.

I guess it just makes the liberals at the Post feel better about themselves because they oppose guns and cleave to the mentally ill. Regardless of the fact that criminals and crazy people won’t divest themselves of their guns.