While advocates of gun control are seeking ways to ban assault weapons, high capacity gun magazines and accessories for such weapons, the facts, as pointed out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, indicate that violent crime in America is on a five year decline. (The FBI’s website is: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.)
However, gun control advocates do not want to let this most recent American tragedy go to waste in the incremental assault on banning guns in the U.S. Overall, violent crime was down in 2011, the most recent year of FBI reporting. The south, the most populous region of the nation, accounted for 41.3 percent of all violent crime. (The Midwest had the least violent crime with 349.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants reported.)
Aggravated assaults accounted for the greatest number of violent crimes, or 62.4 percent.
An interesting sidebar to the FBI report noted that: “Firearms were used in 67.8 percent of the nation’s murders, 41.3 percent of robberies and 21.2 percent of aggravated assaults.” However, it should be noted that 75 percent of gun-related homicides are gang related violence. Further, most gun-related violence occurs in small pockets of metropolitan areas of the nation with populations over 250,000, according to the FBI.
There were 4.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, a 1.5 percent decrease from the 2010 rate. Compared with the 2007 rate, the murder rate declined 17.4 percent, and compared with the 2002 rate, the murder rate decreased 16.8 percent. In 2011 murder accounted for 1.2 percent of violent crime in the U.S.
Bottom line: violent crime in America is down by 15.5 percent since 2002.
Murder and non negligent manslaughter in Brainerd was zero as it was in Baxter, according to the FBI. Minneapolis, a city over 250,000, recorded 32 murders in 2011 and our state capital had eight murders.
Compare that to the murders in California, a state with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation: Los Angeles 297, San Francisco 50, Sacramento 36, and San Diego had 38.
New York, the state with the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, had 515 murders in New York City alone.
Conclusion: Murder is widespread in metropolitan areas, not the rest of America. So why place all gun owners in the same box with gang bangers or criminals that roam the streets of our big cities?
Keith Hansen
Comments (14)
Add comment"In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence
The rest of the story, from Wall Street Journal, 12/08/12 ". . . the number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half. . . . more people in the U.S. are getting shot, but doctors have gotten better at patching them up. Improved medical care doesn't account for the entire decline in homicides but experts say it is a major factor." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732471250457813136068427781...
and, a from a headline closer to Brainerd,
"Morrison County Attorney's Office Dealing With Unprecedented Number of Murder Cases"
http://mcrecord.com/2012/12/14/morrison-county-attorneys-office-dealing-...
Gun violence affects every American (in economic "opportunity costs" alone, never mind human costs), regardless of the size/location of their community. While one may try to relieve themselves of responsibility to do their part by saying "it's their problem, not mine", that's a cop out. Let's not make excuses for why we shouldn't have shared responsibility to find national solutions -- let's be part of the solution.
Typical lib twist by bubba
Doing a better job of patching them up doesn't change the fact that most of them are gang related. I would also like to know why you don't mention that the majority of the cases in Morrison County don't even involve a gun, and the ones that do, involved a criminal act before a shot was ever fired!
there's more
You could add the policeman Decker in Cold Spring,
while he was responding to a mental ill case or drugged up case whichever it was.
Yesterday after the Atlanta vs. San Francisco game. there was an agrument and the Atlanta fan hit the San Francisco fan who pulled out a knife and stabbed the Atlanta guy.
What would we call that other than stupid. He either bought the knive in Atlanta or brought it with him.
People are stupid, mental ill, drunk, drugged, domestic problems and evil and that is what is frustrating.
Typical "con"-job, Dean, you and Keith Hansen
washing your hands of responsibility to come up with possible solutions, because it's not in my back yard. My point, Dean, was that we can't continue to shirk responsibility for the problem of gun violence, because, "choose your excuse" :("gangs are the problem", "guns don't kill people, people kill people", "violent crime is going down, therefore there is no problem", "my gov't. might come for my guns, therefore I need my arsenal", " ...) The rest of the world (rightly) shakes their head in disbelief at the U.S. and how violent our gun culture has made us. And they should. They laugh at nut-job sheriff's like Cowboy Robin Cole, Pine County, -- "do you silly Americans really elect these yahoos, who still think they're living in a set of "Gunsmoke"?" (http://m.startribune.com/local/?id=187607251&c=y)
So what's the answer, Dean? Any ideas for solutions? Maybe this guy has the answer:
"My proposal is this: We must, by the authority of the federal government -- acting perhaps through the agency of a trusted third party such as the National Rifle Association -- require the ownership and carriage of at least one (1) firearm by every United States citizen." http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/187524501.html Make it a crime not to be armed?
You'll have the refresh my memory, Dean. Which of the murders/deaths in Morrison County didn't involve guns? Obviously, the horrible Byron Smith case involved guns, and a self-proclaimed edict of the "castle doctrine". The Dominguez case was a murder-by-gun situation; a couple of supposed "suicide-by-cop" cases involved guns. I can't remember the rest of the cases.
Thanks for the map, Eye. Big-city mayors could sit back and say it's you rural, Red State yahoos who, per capita, have the gun problem. (They don't, because they're trying to find solutions, not sluff off responsibilty onto someone else.)
I do remember reading about
I do remember reading about the improved medical care and that is good, I guess,. How many of the shot people have their own insurance or pay their own medical bills?
Few. I think we can thank the military medical for some of the advanced medical care in the country.
In Chicago, if 500+ died from gun shots, wow, I wonder how many were saved in the emergency rooms. So, how many total people were shot. There is a good chance the saved people didn't take responsibility for their medical bills.
Me thinks gun control in Chicago doesn't work.
Gee, Sadie
Precisely why we need universal healthcare, so those in the emergency rooms are covered by insurance and not adding to the bills of the insured.
Bubba
1.) You posted the link to the MCRecord. Read it!
2.) You have not come up with any possible solutions. Instead of making new laws, enforce existing laws with real penalties. Stop punishing the victims that try to defend themselves.
3.) I have been all over the world and violence is everywhere. In many countries it is a lot worse than the US. You just don't pay attention to it because it is not "your backyard".
4.) Not that I care what the rest of the world thinks about us, but they shake their heads in disbelief on how we allow criminals to use our broken court system to run rough shod over the law abiding!
southie
It is the insured and the taxpayers that are and will be paying for the uninsured be it through Obamacare or universal care. Taxpayers and the insured will be paying and are paying. Covering everyone under universal doesn't change who pays for it.
If the taxpayers and insured aren't going to be paying than who is?
On another note, thanks for the link to the Judge's article.
I respect him -- he is a liberterian- and a smart man.
It is fun how some groups look at every word uttered or written by a Fox personality but, don't seem to mind when all the other network personalities make a mistake.
I don't read the Fox online site so thanks again.
Dean. Thanks for getting back to me. A few more thoughts:
1) Thanks, I did read it. Checking to see if you did, as well. 2) The solutions summarized in Obama's recent exec. actions go a long way toward putting a "bite" into existing laws. Good solutions to try, imo. What say you?
3) I've been "all over the world", too. (The three years I lived in Japan provided a poignant study in contrasts, especially about public safety.) The U.S. has a worst problem (compared to other countries) with gun violence. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/jul/22/gun-owne...)
4) Though it has obvious shortcomings, most of the world still admires our court/justice system. It's kind of like the famous Winston Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest." Our justice system is the worst . . . except for all the rest.
Bubba
I read that Mpls article yesterday, I should say that silly article. I actually read the whole thing and thought what a waste of paper. A so-called parody on a serious issue by some "educated" person, That is not the answer and any parody like that is not funny. Although, I find what liberals think is funny, I do not.
So a question is how do we control or eliminate the gangs, domestic cases usually from alcohol and/drugs, mental health problems and the problems resulting from the medications they take? How many commercials say "may result in suicide tendencies"?
What about people that are just plain evil?
Good post above. We should enforce the existing laws and that might help.
I'm disappointed.
It's interesting, Mr. Hansen, that on this holiday commemorating the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and this day that our president is inaugurated you ignore both and pull out this information regarding gun related homicides, never mind the feeble logic you use to make this an argument against better gun control measures. Some on these blogs have suggested that you're trolling for incendiary topics. i'm inclined to agree with them. I'm disappointed in the direction you're taking the paper.
Maybe your president
and a philandering man aren't all that important after all?
He's our president. And
He's our president. And Martin Luther King did help change discrimination for the better in America.