2016 Dec 20^th

Today we have a column by one of our favorite commentators, Dr. Thomas Sowell. His current rant is against “The New York Times” whose editorial recently irritated him because it suggested that citizens shouldn’t be allowed to carry concealed weapons. Dr. Sowell has some limited military experience…as a photographer in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. He says, “The only time I ever pointed a gun at a human being was when someone was sneaking up behind me… in the middle of the night. …I told him to stop and he stopped.” Sowell does not realize that if this person also had a gun, and had been on drugs, the outcome might have been very different; Sowell might have been stopped quite permanently.

He then takes some liberties with history by insisting that WW 2 was caused by disarmament agreements that were ignored by the Germans. They did ignore them eventually but in 1938 the French army could have crushed the German army and Hitler knew it. France and England simply lacked the will to invade Germany despite their (temporarily) superior numbers. To say that France had disarmed is to display a rank ignorance of history.

As to our citizens being armed Sowell twists the data to agree with his agenda. In 1980 51 percent of households had a gun; in 2016 that had dropped to 36 percent. Gee, Dr. Sowell, wouldn’t that drop in the percentage of households having a gun lead to an enormous increase in crime? Well, no! In fact, the crime rate in 2014, the most recent data available, is now much lower than it was in 1980 and it continues to drop.

In 1980 we had 5353 property crimes per 100 thousand of population; in 2014 that had dropped to 2565 crimes per 100 thousand of population a drop of about 50 percent; and that is with fewer households having guns.

In 1980 we had 10.2 murders per 100 thousand of population; in 2014 that had dropped to 4.5, less than half as many murders, again with fewer households having guns. Are there pockets where violence and crime have increased? Of course there are and I’m sure you can cherry pick those to try to make your case.

The distribution of gun ownership is interesting. At this writing the average gun owner owns eight guns; in 2004 that was just 6.6 guns. This increase may have to do with the false narrative circulated by conservatives that Hillary Clinton would confiscate guns. But there are folks who really do have an extreme love of guns. The top three percent of gun owners have an average of 25 guns. If the NRA is going to increase gun sales, these gun huggers will have to be the targets. Unfortunately, Trump is a staunch defender of “second amendment rights” so getting people to buy more guns to secrete them in the outhouse, the barn and under the mattress so as to hide them from the feds probably won’t work anymore.