Perceptions of Obama's agenda reduce crime rate.

[Skeptik]

This one has some interesting twists and turns.

The perception that our new pres is against gun rights has increased sales of guns. Gotta get them before the socialist tries to take them away, you know.

Not only that, but states have loosened gun regulations in response to the perception that Obama, being a Marxist and anti second amendment and all, wants to restrict guns.

Meanwhile, the president has been silent on the issue.

The result? Violent crime is at its lowest point in 50 years, proving.. proving??

Perhaps that the gun advocates are correct about the benefits of law abiding citizens having weapons, but what else? Could it be that perception is far more important than actual actions and substance?


Fearing Obama Agenda, States Push to Loosen Gun Laws

When President Obama took office, gun rights advocates sounded the alarm, warning that he intended to strip them of their arms and ammunition.
And yet the opposite is happening. Mr. Obama has been largely silent on the issue while states are engaged in a new and largely successful push for expanded gun rights, even passing measures that have been rejected in the past.

Ben LaBolt, pointed out that the latest F.B.I. statistics showed that violent crime dropped in the first half of 2009 to its lowest levels since the 1960s.

Isn't all that a delicious irony?

 

[Missourian]

Isn't all that a delicious irony?

Uhhh....no.

This is a trend that began LONG before Obama...culminating in 2005 while Obama was a state senator attempting to outlaw handguns...nice try attempting to give Obama the credit though.


I posted this 7 months ago.



Fact 1:

Nearly every state issued Concealed Carry permits by 2005.

Borrowed this with permission from Wikipedia here.​

Fact 2:​

In 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, violent crime hit the lowest levels ever recorded in the United States:​

According to the DOJ violent crime is also at an all time low:​

Violent crime rates have declined, reaching the lowest level ever in 2005.​

Bureau of Justice Statistics Violent Crime Rate Trends​

Fact 3:​

In 2008, according to the FBI, police officers killed in the line of duty were reduced to a 50 year low:​

Fewer Police Officers Killed in Line of Duty in 2008

• Dec 31, 2008

This year is ending as one of the safest years for U.S. law enforcement in decades. The number of officers killed in the line of duty fell sharply this year when compared with 2007, and officers killed by gunfire reached a 50-year low. ​

Based on their analysis of preliminary data, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) and Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.) reported on Dec. 29 they found that 140 officers have died in the line of duty this year, a 23 percent reduction from the 2007 figure of 181. Other than 1996, when 139 officers were killed, 2008 represents the lowest year for officer fatalities since 1965, when 136 officers died in the line of duty.

This year's reduction includes a steep, 40 percent drop in the number of officers who were shot and killed, from 68 in 2007 to 41 in 2008. The last time firearms-related fatalities were this low was 1956, when there were 35 such deaths. The 2008 figure is 74 percent lower than the total for 1973, when a near-record high 156 law enforcement officers were shot and killed.


Fewer Police Officers Killed in Line of Duty in 2008 -- Occupational Health & Safety

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[beowolfe]

Looks like it started with Clinton's putting that extra 100,000 policemen on the streets. WTG Slick Willie!!

 

[beowolfe]

I think some states may live to regret some of the laws they passed, like allowin people to carry guns into bars. If the employment situation doesn't improve quickly (and I don't think it will), I can see that becoming a real problem.

 

[Missourian]

Meanwhile, the president has been silent on the issue.

Just for the record, President Obama HASN'T been "silent on the issue".

His administration through Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to permanently re-institute the ill-crafted Clinton Assault Weapons Ban...and was slapped back so hard by his own party that he has "been silent" ever since.

Pro-Gun Democrats Oppose New Assault Weapon Ban

​

Pro-gun Democrats warn administration not to revive ban on assault-style weapons

​

By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON March 18, 2009 (AP)

Sixty-five House Democrats said Wednesday that they would oppose any attempt by the Obama administration to revive a ban on military-style weapons that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994 and President George W. Bush let expire.


The pro-gun Democrats, led by Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., wrote Attorney General Eric Holder that they would "actively oppose any effort to reinstate the 1994 ban, or to pass any similar law."

Pro-Gun Democrats Oppose New Assault Weapon Ban - ABC News​

 

[Dr Gregg]

Yeah, the "they are going to take away our guns" type of people are just nutjobs. It's a constitutional right, so unless there is plans to wrute a new amendment, that's not gong to happen.

 

[The Rabbi]

I think some states may live to regret some of the laws they passed, like allowin people to carry guns into bars. If the employment situation doesn't improve quickly (and I don't think it will), I can see that becoming a real problem.

The states that allow it have done so for many years and they have never had a problem. Why would it be a problem? What are we afraid of?
We're afraid someone will carry a gun into a bar.
We're afraid that person will have a drink (which is probably illegal in every state that allows people to carry into establishemtns selling liquor)
We're afraid he will then have another and another until his judgment becomes impaired.
Then we're afraid he will become enraged or whatever.
Then we're afraid he will pull the gun and fire it and hit some innocent bystander.

I don't buy it.

 

[Skeptik]

Yeah, the "they are going to take away our guns" type of people are just nutjobs. It's a constitutional right, so unless there is plans to wrute a new amendment, that's not gong to happen.

Don't ever believe that a right that is in the Constitution can't be taken away. The government tramples on Constitutional rights all the time. Take asset forfeiture, for example. If the police suspect that a piece of property, say a car or an airplane, is being used for illegal purposes, such as drug running, they can take the property and pay nothing. They don't have to indict, let alone convict the owner.

Now, wasn't there something about a citizen not being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process?

Nevertheless, this article is about how gun rights have actually been expanded due to fear that the president is against gun rights. I thought that was a bit of interesting irony, didn't you?

 

[ihopehefails]

This one has some interesting twists and turns.

The perception that our new pres is against gun rights has increased sales of guns. Gotta get them before the socialist tries to take them away, you know.

Not only that, but states have loosened gun regulations in response to the perception that Obama, being a Marxist and anti second amendment and all, wants to restrict guns.

Meanwhile, the president has been silent on the issue.

The result? Violent crime is at its lowest point in 50 years, proving.. proving??

Perhaps that the gun advocates are correct about the benefits of law abiding citizens having weapons, but what else? Could it be that perception is far more important than actual actions and substance?


Fearing Obama Agenda, States Push to Loosen Gun Laws

When President Obama took office, gun rights advocates sounded the alarm, warning that he intended to strip them of their arms and ammunition.
And yet the opposite is happening. Mr. Obama has been largely silent on the issue while states are engaged in a new and largely successful push for expanded gun rights, even passing measures that have been rejected in the past.

Ben LaBolt, pointed out that the latest F.B.I. statistics showed that violent crime dropped in the first half of 2009 to its lowest levels since the 1960s.

Isn't all that a delicious irony?

Since everyone has been arming up I have noticed that violence has gone down.

 

[Avatar4321]

Yeah, the "they are going to take away our guns" type of people are just nutjobs. It's a constitutional right, so unless there is plans to wrute a new amendment, that's not gong to happen.

Which is exactly why 4 Justices of the Supreme Court nearly took away that right last year.

 

[dilligras]

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[FONT=&quot]Why You Should Take Your Gun to School[/FONT]​

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[FONT=&quot]By dilligras

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The question of how best to secure students and faculty from the predations of those inclined toward violence as a means to their own end is a sore puzzle, indeed; and one that places our nation's very foundations at risk. It puts the very basic principle of our forefathers--that individual freedoms should take precedence over the common good--at odds with the seemingly intuitive truth that less availability of guns will mean less bloodshed. When one hears of the kind of tragedies perpetrated by gun-toting mass murderers at Columbine, Virginia Tech, or at a school full of Quaker children, their first thought is quite naturally, "How could this have been prevented?" Certainly, one could make the case that if the killers had been unarmed their plans would have been much more difficult to realize, and so one tends to focus intuitively on the gun as both the problem (facilitator) and the means to the solution (banishment).

Were our forefathers wrong? Were they shortsighted when they constitutionally guaranteed the ability of the citizen to arm himself and thereby provide for his own defense? Were they merely the appeasing pawns of their less civilized society, pandering to the fears of those who might live on the wilderness fringe? Should Americans instead have been treated like they had been all along under King George III (as mere subjects who must be cared for) rather than as citizens with the rights and responsibilities of those who embrace self-determination?

I think not.

No adult class of Americans, such as most of the students or teachers at our school, should ever be stripped of those rights and responsibilities simply because they happen to occupy the same buildings as our most precious resource: our children. In fact, as each new atrocity seems to prove, to do so may actually increase the danger to the children by creating an environment where the madman may wield his weapon with impunity, without fear of immediate opposition to his dastardly plans.
It is logical to assume that if they were intending to cause the most damage possible, that such miscreants would target a place where they were least likely to encounter armed resistance, a place where being armed was not allowed to their victim, the law-abiding citizen. They have found such a place in our schools, thanks to our own misguided intuitions. I say misguided because it is the very intention of protection that has engendered our risk.

When Seung-Hui Cho undertook his grisly task of indiscriminate murder, he was able to walk calmly among his screaming victims, executing each in turn without fear of intervention, their spurting blood marking his slow, methodical passage. I sometimes wonder if any of the more than thirty victims that day in Blacksburg were one of the thousands of Virginians licensed to carry a concealed gun. Certainly, those people might have been able to intervene, had they not been in just such a gun free zone.

I recently discovered one famous case of such intervention from my youth, in which legally armed citizens returned fire from a crazed gunman with a brain tumor. They succeeded in pinning him down with rifle fire until the police could arrive and subdue him with several well placed shots, thereby limiting his massacre to fourteen dead and thirty-one wounded at the University of Texas. These same citizens were later credited by one of the two officers who shot the gunman, for having prevented Charles Whitman from taking careful aim at his intended victims. Of course, while there is no way to count how many were saved from his bullets by the armed citizenry (since only victims may be counted), there can also be no denying that some were in fact saved, since the killer's actions were obviously thwarted.

According to several studies, the most notable of which might be that of pioneering researchers Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, guns are used by Americans to defend themselves against criminal attack more than two million times each year. Their study was so thorough in its approach that Marvin E. Wolfgang, noted gun-control advocate of the Northwestern University School of Law, wrote his endorsement of their work, entitled "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed." In the article, Wolfgang summarizes his opinion:

"…the Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well."

Those who insist that the security of ourselves and our children is best left to the authorities should remember that the police rarely perform actual last second rescues. Said another way, seldom is the cavalry on the way, and Officer Do-Right is stuck in traffic. Perhaps if there were security officers stationed at every door of every classroom such confidence in authority might be justified. But since economy prevents such a condition, it seems naught but foolhardy to be comforted by the illusion of inviolability provided by the faux fiat that is the law. One is forced by the reality of such events as Virginia Tech to acknowledge that such law is secured only by the consensual agreement to comply and that for some, such agreement is apparently viewed as non-binding.

When one begins to appreciate the true genius of the US Constitution and its Amendments, it becomes quite clear that our founding fathers wished fervently to ensure that their descendents would never again be the powerless subjects of their governors, but would instead remain citizens in a free republic into perpetuity. I fully understand the attraction of self as subject, of wanting all things (especially security) to be provided by the state. But the subject is only slightly freer than the plantation slave, who must also be provided his security, and so must also settle for what seems reasonable to his betters. He cannot be allowed to arrange for it himself like the citizen because his elitist masters view him as part of an unruly mob, in dire need of being controlled.

As for myself and a good many other Americans, we prefer to carry firearms in order to have within our own grasp the means to secure our persons and property and are quite willing to vociferously oppose those who would deny that constitutionally guaranteed preference through foul legislation or judicial decree. As Thomas Jefferson once noted, “...a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."

Perhaps it is instinctual for people to try to ban those items which appear to facilitate crime, since prohibition has historically been the knee-jerk reflex of those with the authority to make law. Prohibition has only proven effective as a means of controlling such items in a police state, where the people have few rights and may be subjected to search and seizure at the whim of any government agent. In countries such as ours it has failed miserably, as the bans against guns, alcohol and drugs have markedly proven. These failures seem to suggest that prohibition and freedom are incongruous, if not entirely immiscible.

Even Thomas Jefferson recognized that citizens should never be disarmed, having copied by hand into his "Commonplace Book", this quote from the 18th century criminologist, Cesare Beccaria:

"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." "

Was Jefferson bitterly clinging to his guns and religion?

I think not.
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Works Cited​

Kleck, Gary , and Marc Gertz. Second Amendment Foundation. 1995. Google. 10 June 2008 <http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/KleckAndGertz1.htm>.
Wolfgang, Marvin E. "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed."Second Amendment Foundation.1995. Google.10 June 2008. <http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Wolfgang1.html>.
President GERALD R. FORD, remarks to a joint session of Congress, August 12, 1974.&#8213;The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford, 1974, p.6.Google. 10June2008<http://www.quotesandsayings.com/finquoteframes.htm>
Thomas Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in Chapter 40 of "On Crimes and Punishment", 1764