We’ve had a massive decline in gun violence in the United States. Here’s why.
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We’ve had a massive decline in gun violence in the United States. Here’s why.


We’ve had a massive decline in gun violence in the United States. Here’s why. - The Washington Post:

"In 1993, there were seven homicides by firearm for every 100,000 Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2013, that figure had fallen by nearly half, to 3.6 — a total of 11,208 firearm homicides. "

The article goes on to say that there's some evidence that gun violence in prior decades was even worse, but the actual data is incomplete. And yet every time there's a high-profile shooting the immediate call is for gun control when there's no evidence that gun control laws have anything to do with the decline. But the reason the first response is gun control is because there's no other place to look to assign blame for most of these politicians and left-wing pundits. When we've rejected man's fallen nature and capacity for sin and need for a Savior, then all we can do is shrug and blame the tool used to commit the crime. If man is essentially immutable, then it makes no sense to focus any efforts of understanding or change in that direction.

Meanwhile, the New York Times published an article by an editor at that noted right-wing rag Mother Jones that shows that the current media narrative of 355 mass shootings in the US in 2015 is a bunch of baloney and that the real number, if you use the real definition is 4. Why make the distinction if they both involve guns?

While all the victims are important, conflating those many other crimes with indiscriminate slaughter in public venues obscures our understanding of this complicated and growing problem. Everyone is desperate to know why these attacks happen and how we might stop them — and we can’t know, unless we collect and focus on useful data that filter out the noise.

Plus, I'd rather accept my definition and count of violent crimes from the FBI and not some Reddit vigilantes with an axe to grind.

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p style="font-style: italic;font-size: 8px;">Photo: Brandon Anderson/Flickr. CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

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