Guns Have Nothing to Do with a Country's Murder Rate
In response to my article Jim Carrey is an Idiot, a reader from Bergen, Norway left the following comment that mistakenly assumes it is the strict gun-control policy in his country that leads to a low murder rate:
I don't know. I can only compare the policy on gun-control in my country Norway vs. USA. And we have pretty strict law in that respect. Even our police officers normally are unarmed (!) Look here for the facts: Wikipedia.
Norway has a rate of 0.6 per 100.000 inhabitants.
USA has a rate of 4.8 per 100.000 inhabitants.And with your capital area being the #1 murder city in the US.
~ Commenter: ElmerFudd666
I responded:
Gun Ownership has nothing to do with the murder rate. Norwegians have a higher rate of gun ownership than Germany, yet Germany has a murder rate 33% higher than Norway's (using your same Wiki link). If gun ownership is the problem then it should be the other way around. Me, I blame Germany's higher murder rate not on guns but on Germany's higher percentage of Muslims (5%) than Norway's (3%) [source: Wikipedia].
Another reason for Norway's lower murder rate is that they do not have the death penalty. As I and others have often mentioned, the states with the highest murder rate are those that have the death penalty; see my article thou shalt surely die.
Another reason for Norway's lower murder rate is that they do not have a War on Drugs. As I wrote in my article Drugs and the Never-ending War, we created the high murder rate among drug gangs because we created drug gangs by criminalizing drugs.
The problem is not limited to the US, Mexico's tremendous spike in violence and murders is directly attributable to anti-drug efforts in Mexico.
Another reason for Norway's lower murder rate is that they have an incarceration rate that is ten times smaller than ours and they treat their prisoners more humanely (1). Putting non-dangerous drug users in prison only teaches them to be more violent and murderous.
Another reason for Norway's lower murder rate is that they have fewer non-integrated members of society than we do. I am not talking about immigrants, I am talking about many of our inner-city blacks (2). If you take out the murders committed by blacks in this country, the US murder rate would be one of the lowest in the world. As I noted from FBI reports in my article Why The MSM doesn`t Report Black on White Murders: Blacks commit the majority of murders in the US (In 2005, offending rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites).
As for mass murders, which have grabbed headlines of late but have little significance on our high murder rate, mass murders have nothing to do with guns. In China they have had a rash of mass murders in schools, but the killings were done with hammers, knives, and axes, see my article Meat Cleavers, Hammers, and Knives Need to Be Banned in China. The problem is not the weapon used - the problem is society's inability to adequately deal with their mentally ill.
As for the cities with the highest murder rates, that too can be blamed on too-restrictive laws against gun ownership. I would feel safer in a movie theater where everyone is packing than where no one is packing.
ENDNOTES
(1):
ThinkProgress, 25 Jul 2011, As The Right Bemoans Norway’s Criminal Justice System, It Is One Of The Safest Countries On Earth
- Norway’s Incarceration Rate Is A Fraction Of That Of The United States: 71 out of every 100,000 Norwegian citizens is incarcerated. In the United States, 743 out of every 100,000 citizens was incarcerated in 2009. The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate....
While many Americans may have an understandable emotional reaction to a country that strives to treat even the most heinous of murderers humanely, they should also be aware of the fact that Norway’s criminal justice system appears to have produced a nation that is much safer and imprisons far less of its people than the United States or just about any other country.
(2):
Regarding Charges of Racism:
For readers who are new to my blog, I am not mentioning these things to denigrate black people, but rather to expose a problem that needs to be fixed. Too many black youth do not identify with American culture. The solution I believe is for black leaders to stop glorifying Africa, stop demonizing whites, and stop blaming all troubles of the black community on racism. The only racism in this country is black racism against whites.
Black kids need to "act white" if they are to succeed in this country. Acting black should be negatively portrayed in our media even if it means being politically incorrect.
