The truth about guns movie#
The truth about guns tv#

Also, it appears that when the good guys are armed there is less gun violence. Overall, some of the most heavily-armed states have very low violent crime rates and vice versa.

Turns out, 19th century Dodge City was more peaceful than most American cities are today! Robert Heinlein explained why: ∺n armed society is a polite society, he wrote. It may be good theater, but its lousy history. Before long, they start shooting each other. When they go into a bar, they start drinking. Each additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women three to four times more than an additional armed man reduces the murder rate for men.ĭo More Guns Cause More Crime? In the typical Western movie, everyone has a gun. While murder rates drop when either sex carries more guns, the effect is especially pronounced when women carry. According to research by renowned Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, guns are used between 800,000 and 2.5 million times every year in self-defense.Ī study by John Lott and David Mustard found that handguns appear to help women more than men. That brings us to another obsession: the insistence that guns are useless as tools of self-defense.Īre Guns Useful for Self-Defense? As it turns out, they are. This illustrates two things: (1) the bumper stickers have it right: guns dont kill, people do and (2) we can have reasonable restrictions on access to guns without banning them altogether. Now here is something interesting: despite all those guns in private hands, there appears not to be a single instance of a legally owned machine gun being used to commit a crime throughout the entire 80 year period. However, you can obtain one under special permit and there are about 250,000 in private hands. It has been illegal to buy a machine gun on the open market in the United States for more than 80 years.

The truth about guns tv#

What About Machine Guns? Most TV commentators who decry assault weapons imply that they are automaticthat you just pull the trigger and bullets start flying. The offensive features included plastic stocks, extended ammunition clips, collapsible butt-stocks, and other decorative devices that made them look like, but not operate as, a fully functional assault rifle.Ĭontrary to the claims that military-looking weapons are only designed to kill human beings, they are, in fact, the fastest growing segment of the hunting rifle market! If accused killer James Holmes had been prevented from buying this gun, he could have found plenty of others that would have served his purpose just as well.īasically, what disqualified a weapon when the short-lived assault weapons ban was in effect was looking like a military weapon. The features that disqualified a gun under the federal ban were ones that didnt affect destructiveness, such as pistol grips and bayonet mounts. They dont fire more rapidly, they dont deliver more lethal rounds, and they dont spray bullets. As Steve Chapman explained the other day: Assault weapons are functionally indistinguishable from ordinary semiautomatic hunting rifles. Assault weapons are mainly defined by their appearance. What Are Assault Weapons? You would think that the definition would hinge on a weapons fire power or its capacity to maim or kill. Still, gun opponents seem obsessed about them. George Hennard, who killed 22 people at a Lubys Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, used two ordinary pistols. James Huberty, who killed 20 people at a McDonalds restaurant in San Ysidro, California, in 1984, used a shotgun, a pistol and a hunting rifle. Neither of the two worst shooting sprees in U.S. Should We Be Especially Worried About Assault Weapons? Assault weapons are not usually the weapon of choice. Instead, the focus these days is on so-called assault weapons. Antigun activists and politicians almost never propose banning them. Yet in most American cities, just about anybody can buy a shotgun at the drop of a hat. And unlike semiautomatics, they dont typically jam. Twelve-gauge shotguns often fire five shells, and sometimes more, before needing to be reloaded. Every shotgun shell can spray a half-dozen or more pellets, each capable of killing or maiming a person.

The truth about guns movie#

In a closed, crowded setting like a movie theater, the shotgun was probably the most lethal of the three. Lets try to add some facts to the justified emotion.Īre Some Guns More Dangerous than Others? The shooter in Aurora had three firearms when he entered the theater: a pump action shotgun, a semiautomatic rifle and a semiautomatic handgun. The tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, has led to a lot of unfortunate misinformation about firearms. Single Issues of The Independent Review.International Economics and Development.