{"id":33519,"date":"2013-01-06T11:01:06","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T15:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=33519"},"modified":"2013-01-06T14:56:12","modified_gmt":"2013-01-06T18:56:12","slug":"new-york-times-more-guns-more-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=33519","title":{"rendered":"New York Times: More guns = more killing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I recently visited some Latin American countries that mesh with the N.R.A.\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Despite the ubiquitous presence of \u201cgood guys\u201d with guns, countries like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela have some of the highest homicide rates in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cA society that is relying on guys with guns to stop violence is a sign of a society where institutions have broken down,\u201d said Rebecca Peters, former director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. \u201cIt\u2019s shocking to hear anyone in the United States considering a solution that would make it seem more like Colombia.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> to bring down crime rates in one city.<\/p>\n

She does, however mention Guatemala, which just this week announced a falling homocide rate according to Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Central American nation of nearly 15 million people registered 5,174 murders in 2012, an 8.9 percent drop from 2011.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The left is grasping at straws in this “national conversation” that we’re supposed to be having … New York Times: More guns = more killing<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}