Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
January 4, 2019
Guns are banned in the UK, but the black market is booming and criminals are loading up on firearms.
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/when-proggies-advocate-for-uk-style-gun-control-laws-show-them-this-police-struggle-to-stop-flood-of-firearms-into-uk/
I have often wondered what is the real agenda of gun ban advocates. More people die from falls than from being shot. Deaths from accidents far exceed deaths from being shot.
The FBI reports that there were 1,247,321 violent crimes in the US in 2017. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/violent-crime
Aggravated assault and robbery account for 91% of violent crimes. Rapes account for 7.7%. Murders accounted for only 1.4% of violent crime. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2016-crime-statistics-released
According to the FBI, there were 17,284 murders in 2017. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/murder
Assailants using rifles killed 403 people, and 1,591 were killed by people using knives. Handguns were used in 7,032 killings, many of which resulted from criminals killing one another over, for example, drug distribution.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls
See also: https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/
The police were responsible for 987 shooting deaths, about one-fourth of which were mentally disturbed people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/nationwide-police-shot-and-killed-nearly-1000-people-in-2017/2018/01/04/4eed5f34-e4e9-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.c7ff0f9c8b3d
There were 40,327 motor vehicle accident deaths in 2017. About 4,000 people died from drowning. There were 34,673 deaths from accidental falls. There were 58,335 accidental poisoning deaths. All unintentional deaths totalled 161,374. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm
It turns out that prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death, which puts it up there with cancer and heart attacks. Harvard University reports that properly prescribed medications hospitalize 1.9 million Americans annually, killing 128,000 people, which places prescribed medicines fourth place with strokes as a leading cause of death. Far more lives could be saved by focusing on careful drug testing rather than on gun control. https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/new-prescription-drugs-major-health-risk-few-offsetting-advantages
What then explains the fixation and constant propaganda about banning “assault rifles” when the total annual murders by assailants using all kinds of rifles is 403?
What explains the fixation on handguns that are the weapon of choice in only 41% of murders numbering only 7,032 deaths?
What is the point of disarming the population when private ownership of firearms prevents a large number of crimes? A study by criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz concluded that Americans use their guns annually to prevent more than 2 million crimes. https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=6853&context=jclc
John Lott also found that gun ownership reduces crime. https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/how-many-lives-are-saved-by-guns-and-why-dont-gun-controllers-care/
Those who advocate banning gun ownership demur, claiming guns are used defensively 100,000 times a year. Why then do gun controllers want to take away guns that prevent crimes six times the number of homicides?
Those who want to ban guns use deceptive and dishonest terms such as “gun violence,” an illiterate use of language. Guns are inanimate objects like a hammer or a screwdriver. They are not capable of taking action such as committing violence. They have to be used or misused by people intent on committing violence. Therefore, there can be no such thing as “gun violence.” There can only be violence committed by people using guns or hammers or screwdrivers, or whatever.
Murders committed by assailants using handguns comprise a tiny 0.0056% of violent crimes. What explains the fixation on such a small problem?
Moreover, gun ban advocates, who so deplore the deaths by “gun violence” of Americans they have never met, are short on sympathy for the millions of victims of American gun violence in the Middle East and North Africa. They show no concern about the mounting conflicts orchestrated by Washington with Russia and China, conflicts that could destroy all life on earth in nuclear Armageddon.
Clearly, gun ban advocates are insincere about the few deaths of strangers that they so greatly deplore and use their insincerity to disguise an undeclared agenda.
Their agenda is the disarming of the American people, a people already disarmed of the protections of the US Constitution by the fake “war on terror.” The only remaining barrier to tyrannized Americans is the large percentage of the population that is armed and skilled in the use of “gun violence.”
Who funds the gun banners? Who is behind the long-standing and continuous assault on the Second Amendment of the US Constitution? What is the agenda behind the assault?
The First Amendment has already fallen. No white American any longer has free speech. It has become a firing offense. A lawsuit offense. A career-ending offense. The Jewish lobbies’ and the liberal/progressive/left and Democratic Party’s Identity Politics have murdered the First Amendment. Exercise your First Amendment rights and Antifa appears outside your home or at your restaurant table threatening you with violence.
The American media has been turned into a Propaganda Ministry for war in behalf of US hegemony over the world and in behalf of Washington’s and Israel’s control over the explanations fed to the American population. The New York Times, “the newspaper of record,” will leave a shameful, sordid record if anyone is left to read it.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and confirmed to the office by the U.S. Senate. He also served as consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Dr. Roberts was associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He was a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States. He has held academic appointments at Virginia Tech, Tulane University, University of New Mexico, Stanford University where he was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution, George Mason University where he had a joint appointment as professor of economics and professor of business administration, and Georgetown University where he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is one of the most influential minds in the truth media today.
Website: PaulCraigRoberts.org
