OK, let's count the murders -- again

Vin Suprynowicz

OK, let's count the murders -- again

Posted: Feb. 13, 2011 | 2:04 a.m.
As we grow older, hearing an old, familiar tune can make us wax nostalgic.
The other day, I heard this one again:

"Gun control does work in reducing the amount of violent crime.
Any look at the statistics comparing our rates of violent crime
to those of Western Europe is enough to demonstrate that clearly."

Ah, the joy of repeating ourselves. One more time:

What's the murder rate in America, per capita? Right now it's 0.042 per 1,000,
ranking us 24th in the world, behind Colombia (0.617 per thousand --
the missing zero after the decimal point means Colombia's rate is
fifteen times ours), South Africa at 0.496, Jamaica at 0.324,
Venezuela at 0.316, Russia at 0.201 and Mexico at 0.130, among others.

Your American drug war money proudly at work.

Now take four or five European countries, where "sensible gun control
laws" have made it nearly impossible for the typical working-class
citizen to own a personal self-defense or military-style firearm for
the past century. Let's choose Germany, France, Poland, Russia and
the Ukraine.

What's the murder rate for those countries for the past century?

Because they were disarmed by their own governments and thus
unable to resist Hitler's Einsatzgruppen, Stalin's NKVD and starvation
brigades and the gentle ways of the rest of the Wehrmacht and the
Red Army when it comes to "treatment of non-combatants in
conquered territories," at least 30 million civilians were murdered in
those four countries from 1929 to 1945.

We're excluding the "normal" deaths caused by uniformed soldiers
killing each other in times of war, and pretending there were no
other murders in those countries from 1910-2010. But even though
we've left aside people killed when they were in uniform, that
averages out to 300,000 murders of civilians per year for the past
century in Germany, France, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, combined.

Last year, there were 16,204 murders in America, which has a
current population of about 312 million, compared to a population of
373 million for Germany, France, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine combined.

In fact, there were a thousand murders reported in France last year alone
(Do they batter each other with baguettes?) There were 4,400 in Ukraine,
for a per capita rate there of 0.094, more than twice America's rate.

An average of 300,000 murders per year with "admirably severe gun control,"
versus 16,000 murders per year in a cowboy nation with "ridiculously
little gun control." Hm.

What's that? Oh, you don't want to count those? Well, tough.
If we're debating the costs versus benefits of having an unarmed
populace versus a populace able to defend itself with "all the
terrible instruments of the soldier" (Tench Coxe), you must count
civilians murdered by their own governments, or by the invading
armies of neighboring states, which are precisely the inevitable and
deadly forces that an armed populace is designed to guard against.

I know perfectly well these twits don't want to count those murders
because they were committed by governments -- usually the victims'
own governments. The main reason the founders insisted we retain a
populace armed with "every terrible instrument of the solder" is
because a well-armed force of "plainclothes" citizens, able to act as
a militia, able to take on any standing "regular army" in the streets
and in the fields, is "necessary to the security of a free state" ... an
explanation the gun-grabbers routinely accuse our side of ignoring!

What's that? It's all ancient history? Nothing like that has happened
anywhere for the past 65 years?

How many millions of unarmed Chinamen did Mao Tse-Tung murder in
the 1950s? How many millions of unarmed Cambodians did Pol Pot
murder in the 1970s, including every schoolteacher, every Cambodian
who wore eyeglasses or a watch?

See the chart at http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm#chart.
(There's a hyphen on either side of the "a".) Please.

Cherry-picking a few peaceful decades in Denmark or Luxembourg
because said nations are currently between genocides is not very
convincing proof that you're safer, in the long run, if you encourage
your own government to bar you from owning any useful military or
self-defense weaponry while the guvgoons practice their Kevlar-
swaddled "dynamic entry techniques" by day and by night.

Remember, when the ATF attacked the church at Waco -- as the
helicopters closed in to hose down the second story bedroom
windows from the rear with fully automatic fire, killing nursing mom
Jaydean Wendel as her baby watched from the floor -- the first thing
the black-clad storm troopers did was to shoot and kill the dog and
her puppies in the front-yard pen.

Then they started shooting in through the windows at the women
and children. In some cases, they did this while cowering behind
parked cars and holding their rifles over their heads, in defiance of
their standing orders to withdraw immediately if they met return fire.
One government sniper testified he shot whenever he "saw a curtain move."
For this they got medals.

Time and again, by a factor of hundreds of thousands, your most
likely murderer is the government you trusted to keep you safe.

"The great object is that every man be armed; everyone who is able
may have a gun." (Patrick Henry)

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal,
and author of the novel "The Black Arrow" and the nonfiction
"Send in the Waco Killers." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.