Gun ban and government "holism".

[WoodsyHowl]

California prosecutor relates gun ban to a "holistic" society.

From http://news.yahoo.com/guns-crime-sta...125425959.html :

Burke Strunsky [is] the senior district attorney specializing in homicide cases in Riverside County, California. His perspective is, the more guns there are available, the more likely homicides and suicides are going to occur because of them.

"What we do know is we have more guns in circulation than ever before in our history," says Strunsky. "You know you look at that number compared to U.S. gun violence ... it's 20 times more than other advanced, industrial countries have. To say that's not related to the proliferation of guns, I think that's just disingenuous."

The one who is disingenous is Strunsky himself because he is saying that the vast majority of legally-owned firearms by law abiding US citizens ARE the guns at issue, not the illegal guns possessed by bad people responsible for gun violence, and Strunsky does not distinguish between illegally possessed guns that are going to be around no matter how stringent gun control laws are and the vast majority of legally owned guns that will never have any such reputation for criminal violence. They are all one and the same guns, according to Strunsky. It's a crucial distinction to make, not least of all because making it shoots down his position in the article. He would simply ban them all as one and the same negative sound byte.

Perhaps he is unaware that Russia has some of the most stringent gun laws in the world, and it's firearms violence rate is at least triple that in the US. The guns used in Russian gun violence are illegally possessed guns.

The article quotes Bureau of Justice Statistics data for 2009:

-- 22 percent of all violent crimes were committed by an offender wielding a weapon -- gun, knife or other object.
-- 8 percent involved a firearm.
-- 28 percent of crimes committed using a firearm were robberies.

Hmm ... The writer continues ...

What does this survey say about firearms used in violent crimes historically? In 1992, handguns accounted for 13 percent of all violent crimes. This shows that between 1992 and 2009, the use of firearms to commit violent crimes dropped.

Hmm ... that time frame roughly coincides with the increase in the number of mass shootings, which the government continues to wrong-headedly present as its reason for expanded gun restrictions but which if anything, are increasing with increased gun restrictions.

What a deal, eh? If the government can get you to support more restrictions every time there's another mass shooting, which get worse with more restrictions, the government can't lose for being flat out wrong and/or lying.

The writer continues with some FBI Violent Crime data for 2011:

-- More than 137,200 cases of aggravated assault involved firearms, while more than 126,800 involved knives, more than 222,100 involved "other" weapons and more than 154,100 "hands, fists, feet, etc."

Hmm ... I'd say outlaw hands and feet and definitely other weapons. Finally, the writer lobs a dischordant bone for the prosecutor:

-- 67.7 percent of all murders, 41.3 percent of robberies and 21.2 percent of aggravated assaults were conducted with guns.
-- More than 128,900 cases of robbery involved firearms, compared to 24,300 with knives and more than 27,000 with other weapons. More than 130,000 cases were "strong arms."

Whew ... and so continues Strunsky:

"Had they not had access to a gun, most murders, most suicides, would not have been a fatal incident." ... Contrary to what many pro-Second Amendment advocates might think, gun control is "not the first step to disarm the population."

Yes, actually gun control is the first step to disarming the population -- every single time throughout history, not coincidentally being also the first step toward killing off a lot of that population.

Seriously, does Strunsky make any sense at all? Does he even have a clue to what he's talking about?

To [Strunsky], stepping up gun control with background checks, like those that were shot down in the Senate recently, would have been "no more of an imposition than the TSA line." He said he believes those seeing it as the first step to disarmament do not truly understand the Second Amendment.

Technically, background checks are the first step to gun confiscations and bans since the government needs to know who legally owns guns before they can illegally take them away from the legal owners, given legal gun owners' continued willingness to cooperate.

[Strunsky] acknowledges there are other measures to reduce violent crimes, at least homicides. He, like many others, think a more holistic approach needs to be taken. He said exposure to violence in childhood greatly increases the likelihood of someone committing a violent crime in their teenage or adult years.

Holistic approach? Neither Strunsky nor the writer take that any further.

"We just need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals," he said. "The ability of a criminal to get their hands on guns is directly related to the proliferation and number of guns we have. Sure, they'll get guns. Let's not make it easy though."

I suggest that Strunsky reconcile far higher gun violence in Russia or better yet, North Korea, in both of which countries guns are totally banned and which have very high penalties, including death, for gun possession, with his myopic, short-sighted, highly disingenous, sometimes incoherent remarks in this article.

Unfortunately, Strunsky's anti-gun position might be only part of the radical left wing political package alluded to by his "holistic approach" to creating better individuals.

What is a "holistic approach"? Holism embraces the social engineering of the individuals' environment based on psycho-social theory that is really a warm and fuzzy euphemism for state-mandated conformity to its designs. It is not too far down the road from what is contemplated in the Left's march toward outlawing guns.

How convenient. How California. How Democrat.

That's my opinion.

[LifeInPa]

Sounds like another leftist moon bat to me, nothing to see here.

[harold63]

Even a retarded bad guy will avoid getting shot if he can help it. It's the straight up, 'date with the devil' bad guys that will go postal on you. More law abiding people owning guns means bad guys have more of a chance of getting shot when they rob, steal; whatever. This is the dumbest argument the fucktard, liberals make, and it keeps getting funnier every time they try to convince someone of what they claim. Too bad there are a ton of dopey, naive people that fall for that BS.