A Basis for Gun Control?

Hard as I try to just let her be, Common Gunsense is the blog that keeps on giving. There’s no end to the ridiculous things emanating from our favorite Brady Board Member’s keyboard, and here is the latest thing:

Educated people shoot people as often as those poor uneducated people. I wonder why the gun lobby prefers not to believe that? Does it get in the way of their trying to convince us that most homicides are committed by criminals? Most homicides occur among people who know each other and often the shooter was not a criminal until he/she pulled the trigger.

We prefer not to believe it, because it’s simple just not true. Let’s look at what this study has to say on education and recidivism:

Inside our prisons, 19% percent of adult inmates are illiterate, and up to 60% are functionally illiterate. In contrast to this, our national adult illiteracy rate stands at 4%, with up to 23% functionally illiterate.

Or this study, which also shows that crime among more highly educated people tends to drop sharply. In fact, there’s no shortage of studies done by education advocates that show an inverse relationship to education levels and violent crime. As for homicides, there were 14,180 homicides in 2008, and of those, 44% of them authorities were unable to determine a relationship. Homicide among intimates represents only about 17% of the total. The largest category in “people who know each other” are acquaintances. It’s worthwhile pointing out that this would include the drug dealer capping a rival drug dealer.

As for the assertion that most murderers being non-criminal, that is also bunk. See this DOJ study on the matter, and we find:

  • 54% have at least one felony conviction
  • 70% have at least one conviction
  • 56% have two or more felony arrests
  • 67% have at least one felony arrest
  • 81% of all homicide defendants have at least one arrest on their record

Now an arrest shouldn’t count for purposes of denying someone their rights, but it’s interesting data. This would suggest that no, the people who pull the trigger are largely already criminals.

Sorry Joan, but we don’t believe it because it’s not true. If you’re going to advocate for your ideas to be the basis of public policy, I think it’s imperative to argue from the right set of facts. Those facts just don’t support your conclusions.

24 thoughts on “A Basis for Gun Control?”

  1. I don’t see the benefit in continually referring to this woman’s blogging. It just gives her more play and implied legitimacy. You are never going to change her mind about anything, and even if you did, what possible good can become of it? We should simply ignore her and focus our efforts in areas where we can leverage results. The ANJRPC lawsuits are a perfect example of how we should be spending our time and money.

  2. Part of blogging necessity is entertaining readers, and her blog is very entertaining. I also think it does me too much credit to suggest I have much legitimacy to lend her, but I thank you for the compliment.

  3. Matt,

    I don’t see the benefit in continually referring to this woman’s blogging. It just gives her more play and implied legitimacy

    I agree, it does give her more legitimacy and that, in my opinion is a good thing.

    She’s one of the best things that has happened to the pro-right side in a very long time.

    Look at what a member of the Board of Director for what is probably the premier Anti-Gun group in the nation is saying.

    Look at how easily it is refuted and how little “common sense” there is in what she says.

    Look at her response as noted in the comments above.

    Look at her moderation of comments and how many people know how few comments get through (unless that comment in anti-gun like Mikeb302000, don’t see him complaining, do you?)

    Over and over again, this national representative is proving how little scholarship and factual information the antis have.

    I hope when people search for gun control information that her blog is one first on the page.

    How can that hurt the pro-rights side?

  4. I don’t see the benefit in continually referring to this woman’s blogging.

    Classic military strategy, applicable in all other avenues of life: when you see the enemy making a mistake, let them.

  5. Here’s the question, is Joan anti-gun because she swims in a sea of misinformation? Or does she cling to misinformation to rationalize her anti-gun feelings?

  6. Sebastian:

    Your legitimacy is more than well deserved as your blog is one of the best out there. It is required daily reading for me, along with the Wall Street Journal.

    OK, if seen as pure entertainment value, then I suppose that cockamamie lady fits the bill.

  7. Ridicule is a powerful weapon. And showing that her feeling and the facts don’t mesh, on a subject where the narrative is confused, is pretty good as well.

  8. I just started reading this Joan whats-her-name’s gun control blog for the first time today. I read through all the comments on this blog entry of hers here:

    http://www.commongunsense.com/2010/10/villains-bigots-and-machine-guns.html

    I took particular exception to the last comment on this blog entry, which she wrote herself, which I will quote here below:

    Yes- agreed. But to equate regulating a blog with regulating a gun is just plain nonsense. Also, maybe you can add Glenn Beck to that list since there have been a number of recent cases of people who have shot others or attempted to who said they had been watching Glenn Beck and got some of their anti-governmentdeas from him.

    Uh, did I somehow miss out on all the reportage of these “recent cases” of Glenn Beck related shootings? I mean, it’s not like I am a total newshound who checks many blogs online several times a day, every day, along with watching all the cable TV news networks.

    Oh, wait a minute, I’m sorry…I actually AM a total newshound who checks many blogs online several times a day, every day, along with watching all the cable TV news networks. So far, not a peep has emerged from anybody about all these supposed Glen Beck related shootings, and this Joan lady made her claims as such nearly two months ago – last October 18th!

    This Joan lady is such a total liar in my book. (This is so typical of libtards, actually.) She carries no credibility with me whatsoever now. Fortunately for me, I did not even have to waste more than 30 minutes of my time before I caught her in one major whopper of a lie/vicious smear against a major media pundit.

  9. Ronnie – That quote from Joan was in response to one of my comments, which she deleted.

    Sebastian – She’s so divorced from reality that i have a hard time wading through her crap. The level to which she continues to shoot herself and her cause in the foot is entertaining however.

  10. A correction to the above comment. the comment Joan responded to by “anonymous” was in fact written by me, since she effectively banned me a while back.

    Joan carries no credibility at all, but then I can’t say I’m unhappy to see her post her falsehoods. It can only help our cause when those like her have no credibility or intellectual honesty.

    She tells such easily disproven whoppers, as Sebastian’s post here bears out.

  11. Brad: I’d also guess the latter, though the former is probably also a factor.

    One has to wonder, these days, how someone can believe (e.g.) “most murders are not committed by criminals” is Obviously True… without even bothering to attempt to show the stats backing it up.

    When I make claims I expect others to disagree with, I show my sources, on the grounds that then there’s some small chance of actually getting someone to at least believe the factual claim part of my thesis.

    If her claim was true, it’d be groundbreaking and shocking and call for a serious reevaluation of many beliefs and policies around crime prevention… and you’d think that she’d thus want to actually show us that it was true.

    Problem is, she can’t, ’cause it’s not… but that doesn’t stop her from saying it.

  12. Thanx for the responses guys, (though my question was merely rhetorical). She lives down to my expectations.

  13. I stumbled across this at http://tonywoodlief.com/?p=3122

    “Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.”

    Lionel Trilling, “Art and Fortune,” in The Liberal Imagination

    I need to be reminded of this from time to time, if only to assure that I do not take leave of my senses in the process of trying to help others come to theirs. The plain fact is that some people don’t want to come to their senses, because to come to their senses is to come to themselves, and sometimes we will commit any crime of logic or memory in order to be spared a mirror in plain daylight.

    Of course the problem is that they’re probably thinking the same of me. And the danger is that they may be right.

    Perhaps the only safeguard any of us has, in the end, is the introspection made possible by silence and prayer. And by silent prayer. I’ve never trusted those talky praying types, even when I was one of them. Especially when I was one of them.

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