Fact: 25% of this unreliable figure1 includes “direct war deaths”, and another 14% are suicides. The bulk of the rest come from violence prone and near lawless localities.
Fact: The source for these raw data admits “A complete dataset on people killed in conflict— directly or indirectly—does not exist. All published figures are estimates based on [...]
Posts from ‘December, 2008’
Myth: 1,000 people die each day from guns
Myth: .50-calibers are the favorite weapon of terrorists
Fact: Most terrorist attacks are in the form of bombings (90%). Other acts, such as kidnapping (6%), armed attack (2%), arson (1%), firebombing (1%), and other methods (2%), are far less common.1Of the “armed attacks,” the most common weapons used are fully-automatic AK-47 rifles.
Fact: A single.50 caliber rifle costs upwards of $10,000, yet terrorists can [...]
FBI Uniform Crime Reports
Readers of this blog may be interested in knowing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Reports are available on the FBI website for reporting years 1995 through 2007. Invaluable research matterial, the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to [...]
Myth: If it saves the life of one child, it is worth it
Fact: Firearms in private hands are used an estimated 2.5 million times (or 6,849 times each day) each year to prevent crime;1 this includes rapes, aggravated assaults, and kidnapping. The number of innocent children protected by firearm owning parents far outweighs the number of children harmed.
Fact: Most Americans (firearm owners or not) believe that the [...]
Myth: Guns are often used to commit violent crimes
Fact: 90% of all violent crimes in the U.S. do not involve firearms of any type.1
Fact: Even in crimes where the offender possessed a gun during the commission of the crime, 83% did not use or threaten to use the gun.2
Fact: Less than 1% of firearms will ever be used in the commission of a [...]
Myth: You are more likely to be injured or killed using a gun for self-defense
Fact: You are far more likely to survive a violent assault if you defend yourself with a gun. In episodes where a robbery victim was injured, the injury/defense rates were:1
Resisting with a gun [...]
Policy Change: National Parks to Allow Right-to-Carry
A new policy update makes national park carry laws consistent with the states that the parks are located in:
Fairfax, Va. - The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), through the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has announced the final amended version of its changes to rules on carrying of firearms in [...]
Myth: Licensing will keep bad people from obtaining or using guns
Fact: Not in Canada. Canadian homicide rates were virtually unchanged before and after gun registration requirements were implemented (151/100,000 people in 1998 and 149/100,000 in 2002).1
Fact: In New York State alone, approximately 100,000 persons are convicted of unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle each year, and this is probably a small proportion of the actual [...]
