Sunday, March 1, 2015

Amusing...

Seen on Facebook.  Bill Whittle beats the "gun ownership rate and murder rate" canard into a fair pulp.


It's hardly perfect.  I've never liked Whittle's insistence on the standard left/right red herring (there are disarmers and there is everyone else, period), and of course it's no secret that in the end I care as little for statistics as the Force! Helplessness! Now! crowd--our arguments each being wholly moral ones rather than statistically reversible.  (That is, neither of us is going to suddenly change our minds over the matter because of some measurable threshold at which the unacceptable suddenly becomes acceptable.)

But the whiny canard (which basically reduces to "US has more gunz.  US has higher murder rate than some place that bans them.  Therefore US is barbaric.  'Murica!") has been around for at least my whole life, and it is so fantastically tired, facile, and hackneyed that, I admit, I do take some visceral pleasure in seeing it dismantled, and Whittle does seem to have his own style at turning the sanctimony around.

Especially at a time in which the feeding frenzy seems nearly inexhaustible, I'll take it.  It's not that Bill Whittle "speaks for me", but that is hardly required to recognize that what he says here is...simply true.

1 comment:

MamaLiberty said...

Can't understand anything being said on the video, as usual. That being the case, I can't know what he said, but I can guess.

No, some absolutely utilitarian argument will never change the fact that humans have the right to live and defend themselves by any means they choose.

The problem with using ANY "statistics" is the sad fact that they are no better than those who gather them, and sometimes not even that good. All research, studies and polls are biased, one way or another, and the analysis of what is gathered is even more subject to distortion because they are necessarily limited in so many ways. No matter what the intentions or integrity of the authors.

So, even if it were relevant, we have ZERO way to know the full truth about a great many things, especially those happening in other countries.

Of course, all these idiots keep wanting the whole question to be about guns, number of guns, etc... but murder, robbery and other crimes of aggression do not require a gun at all.

When violent crimes of all kinds are listed together, to the best measure we can achieve - and exclude all justifiable self defense homicide and suicide, it becomes crystal clear that guns are not a big problem at all, regardless of how one "feels" about it.