Clueless About Gun Control

It still astonishes me that anyone can argue against tighter gun control laws in the US.  I'm currently in the midst of an 'argument' with another writer regarding this issue, and the blindness is amazing.  I stated a well-known fact about firearm related fatalities, which is that Canada has a lower rate per capita than the US, and we have stricter gun control laws.  He actually asked me where I got my numbers from, so I tossed a bunch of URLs at him which clearly show a huge discrepancy between Canada and the US.  As I said, these are per capita numbers, not the numbers for everyone in the country.  That wouldn't be a fair comparison since our population is much smaller.  Intentional murder by firearm per 10,000 people is more than twice as high in the US.  When it comes to spree killings, the US is a clear winner as well.

What got me is that this guy obviously had some doubts about this.  Canada is known as a peacekeeping country.  Certainly enough Americans complained about that when we decided that following W. into Iraq was a bad idea - I don't even think we had much say in it, seeing as we're not a sovereign nation, we're a commonwealth of Britain.  The article written by this gentleman had a lot of historical facts in it, and it was rather edifying, so I appreciated that, but then him questioning where I got my numbers just blew me away.  Why did he not already know this, as someone who obviously studies history?  You'd think he would be aware of it already.

Personally, I don't think our laws are quite good enough.  I feel there should be a much more invasive process for someone applying for firearms acquisition.  No, I don't think all guns should be banned, but I also don't think psychotic people should be allowed access to an assault rifle.  There's no need for a civilian to have any weapon that fires hundreds of rounds per minute.

As for spree killing statistics, since 1968 the US has had 53 spree killers (Wikipedia has not yet listed Adam Lanza, so their number shows as 52), Canada has had 3.  The US has about 10 times as many people as Canada - 314,970,000 estimated in the US for 2012 and 35,015,000 estimated for Canada in 2012.  Technically that's less than ten times, but we'll round off for ease of use.  If we multiplied the Canadian number by 10, we'd have 30, which is somewhat less than that of the US.  In fact, it's more than 66% higher in the US.

There are some areas where Canadians 'outshine' the US.  We have far more drug-related crimes, and considering the fact that we grow a lot of hydroponic bud here I'm not particularly surprised by that.  Of course, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of Americans who buy our illegal exports.  BC Bud is seen quite a bit as a standard in movies, etc.  We do have more assaults that do not end in homicide.  Possibly because we don't have assault rifles handy, so we end up pounding the crap out of someone instead?

I certainly wouldn't say Canadians are less violent.  I truly believe gun control works.  Israel apparently has a really good system, which I have yet to do any research on, but I trust the source I heard it from.  They apparently require people to go through extensive training and psych. evals.  That makes a whole lot of sense to me.  I would like to know that the people in my country have been shown to be sane before they were given a firearm of any sort.  Still, even with extensive training, education and mental fitness testing, I'd sooner we did not have guns available that have high repeat-fire rates.

My attitude toward gun control has me in good company anyway.  Leonard Nimoy, Michael Moore, etc.  A lot of people consider Michael Moore to be an extremist, but if you've seen his documentaries you might understand why.  In Bowling for Columbine he highlighted the dangers of a gun-happy society.  The thing I remember most is him going into a bank where they were giving away rifles to people who opened a new account.  A bank...giving away a weapon.  Um, stupid much?  On Michael Moore's Twitter account one woman said the only people who were following him were Canadians with an inferiority complex.  Um, stupid much?

When it comes to how Canadians feel about Americans in general, I'll just say that it's kind of the opposite.  Now that the US has Obama in power, though, the attitude is changing, I think.  He's a smart guy.  Voting in W. was the most idiotic thing that could have happened.  Sorry, but it didn't look good for Americans when they voted in a "C" student.  All he had going for him was money, and he had a lot that was not going for him.  Even the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, has had a positive effect.  The tagline "Smart is the New Sexy" is fantastic.  If it weren't for the huge age difference, I'd go out with one of them in a second (the people they portray I mean, not the actors).

Intelligence is a beautiful thing.  I just wish more people displayed the trait, instead of hiding it for fear of being uncool.  Of course, the world is full of followers.