Facing Legal Obstacles To Gun Bans, Prohibitionists Shift The Narrative

“America has a massive gun violence problem,” Belgian economist and founder of Money & Macro Media Joeri Schasfoort declares on MSN. “Compared to other wealthy countries, the U.S. murder rate is extremely high, and behind most of these deaths is the pull of the trigger.”

That’s three bits of concentrated disinformation that unquestioning, low-information viewers will accept as authoritative, packed into just the first 10 seconds of the video.

The first is that “gun violence” is a politically engineered and emotionally charged propaganda term that attributes actions to inert objects and is then used to sway public opinion by lumping separate issues like justifiable homicides and suicides in with criminal misuse of firearms.

The second is the impression that violence plagues all of America. As economist and author John Lott has shown, “Most counties experience no murders, a smaller subset of counties where there are a few murders, and then a minuscule subset of counties where murders are very common.”

The third is the undefined and cherry-picked chart of “other wealthy countries,” specifically noting two prominent ones that are consistently omitted from such displays. Anybody see Russia or Mexico listed, both with more restrictive gun laws and higher violent crime than the U.S.? Whether one consults the UN, the IMF, the World Bank or the CIA Factbook, they both have a larger GDP than some of the nations that qualify as “developed” when it suits gun-grabber purposes.

Schasfoort then declares, “The obvious solution is then to ban guns, but…”

The pesky right to keep and bear arms gets in the way of that, along with statements from some gun owners who want no part of prohibitions.

So a ban is “unlikely to happen,” Schasfoort admits. “Luckily, I have some good news. Social scientists have recently conducted extensive experiments that confirm that U.S. gun violence can actually be drastically reduced without banning guns.”

Bear in mind there are two kinds of luck, “good news” is in the eye of the beholder, and he’s still using that loaded term. Still, let’s hear him out and see what the “scientists” are hypothesizing. After all, we’re only 44 seconds into the video at this point and we still have over 18 minutes to go.

It seems the University of Pennsylvania has concluded that violence has been statistically reduced in select Philadelphia locations when vacant land was cleaned up and developed into community centers. The working theory is that drawing people out together drives clandestine criminal activity to go somewhere else, and that people present can act as “violence interrupters” to mediate disputes. What’s unclear is if the claimed reduction in “gun violence” is an anomaly that will hold and what other factors might be at play (including increases in “legal” gun sales). But OK, at least they’re not demanding infringements.

To give the contention gravitas, Schasfoort brings in Chicago professor and economist Jens Ludwig, “one of the leading researchers on gun violence [sic],” who also happens to be “Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab,” with all that implies. Most homicides, we are told, aren’t planned with “calculated criminal intent,” but arise “from fights or arguments that escalated beyond control.”

So, it comes from a sense of unearned entitlement, anger management issues, and poor impulse control. Recalling Lott’s findings, in a “miniscule subset,” that should surprise no one.

“The murder rate in the United States today is almost exactly the same as it was in 1900,” Ludwig explains. If you think about it, that admission doesn’t do much for the prohibitionist argument. Nor do the facts about how many guns there are in this country. As for the nod to Japan and South Korea having essentially disarmed populations and the “lowest homicide rates in the world,” they also have homogenous populations. It’s an inconvenient truth that the millions of members of groups like NRA, GOA, SAF, and other national and state groups, the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet, are every bit as statistically peaceable. When 80,000 armed gun owners show up at an annual meeting, there are plenty of opportunities for arguments to arise that never result in shots being fired.

Not according to the “leading researcher.”

“The research that I’ve done and what other people have done show that when a place has more guns on net, the murder rate goes up, so whatever deterrent effect more gun ownership might have to prevent crime is outweighed by the effects of guns increasing lethality of interpersonal conflict,” Ludwig, who apparently has never been to an NRA convention or a competition match, or Appleseed training, or an armed march, proclaims.

Again, attributing the inability of that “minuscule subset” to control its passions on the rest of the Republic is the essence of “gun control.” And gun possession is not the same thing as gun ownership.

There’s also a carrot (as if you can bribe predators) and stick analogy that doesn’t factor in a truism—while violence to the public can be temporarily curbed when those who can’t be trusted with a gun are in cages, releasing them makes further victimization inevitable. Also, BAM (Becoming a Man) training can only go so far when the Democrats who rule in those areas can’t seem to define what a man is. And good grief, the example they present is someone who thinks not murderously assaulting a person who inadvertently bumps into him is a major behavioral achievement. Don’t be surprised to see that guy in the news before too long.

There’s plenty more to go through in the video (including the purposeful omission of attributing violence reductions to armed citizens and the inevitable vulnerabilities of “gun free zones”) but there’s not much point to going on — except to encourage readers to watch the rest of it with a critical eye now that we’re familiar with how these people operate, what they say, and what they don’t.

It’s good, a victory actually, that people who would like to ban guns – and that, of course, is their ultimate goal – have a sense that it’s not going to happen politically, at least in the near term. But just because they talk about “progress” without prohibitions doesn’t mean they’ve given up on the idea.  The smarter gun-grabbers see which way the momentum is going, and two recent preliminary injunctions against Virginia’s semi-auto ban and the Supreme Court granting cert to national challenges show them that demanding bans  — at this time — is a political non-starter.

Let Democrats advance in the midterms with an eye toward recapturing the White House (and SCOTUS appointments) in 2028, and expect to see gun bans back with a vengeance.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.