Very telling

The ironically named “Freedom State Alliance” has this to say:



With over 30,000 gun deaths in the U.S. each year — including the 4 police officers shot and killed in Oakland, California on March 21st — an appropriate response to this carnage should be bold and comprehensive policies to prevent further homicides, suicides and unintentional injuries.



Meanwhile, little is being done to address the elephant in the room: the 280 million guns already in circulation and how to reduce this staggering number. Although there are some good gun laws in place, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of gun violence prevention advocates and survivors, there has been little success in addressing the sheer volume of guns.



Japan is a good case in point as to why fewer guns make a difference. With a population of 128 million people, it is estimated that Japan has fewer than 400,000 legally owned guns resulting in a total of 22 gun murders in 2007 according to Japan’s National Police Agency.

The United States on the other hand has a population of 306 million, 280 million guns and over 12,000 gun homicides each year. Even if, for arguments sake, we were to more than double Japan’s population to match the U.S. population, that would leave Japan with just over 50 gun homicides compared to America’s over 12,000 gun murders. It’s shameful.


America needs to decide what kind of country it wants to be. Do we want to be a nation willing to be bullied by an extremist lobby and misguided in our way of thinking about our nation’s gun problem?


I find it very telling the one-man show at the “Freedom State Alliance” (FSA) refers to “the extremist lobby” which is composed of several million members of the NRA, hundreds of thousands with SAF and CCRKBA. And 10 of millions of people that are members at local gun clubs and ranges. I probably have more people attend Boomershoot each year than the “Freedom State Alliance” can count as members.


I find it very telling that the FSA looks at only the GUN related homicides in Japan and not the total homicide and suicide rates which paint a very different picture when compared to the U.S.


I find it very telling that FSA uses the number 30,000 dead. Because that includes legally justified defensive shootings by police officers and private citizens! In order to get the numbers up FSA uses praiseworthy uses of firearms–then they spin it to be something negative.


I find it very telling the FSA laments the number of people exercising a specific enumerated right. What would the the response of the general public if the KKK were whining about the number of blacks running around free and unregulated instead of being slaves?


What this tells me is the FSA is a bigoted organization that must spin and deceive in their attempts to get traction on the destruction of a critical portion of our Bill of Rights.

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4 thoughts on “Very telling

  1. Actually, Joe, homicide by police officers is given its own category in the CDC numbers and doesn’t show up in the normal death-by-firearm count. Why, I couldn’t tell you.

    I ran the numbers myself a while back and made a great reference post on the 30,000 lie. The sad part is you can even give them the justifiable police shootings because there’s no way to discern between justifiable non-police shootings. The cops get special treatment here.

    Now, out of the 29,569 deaths, 16,750 are suicide. That leaves 12,819 homicides. Even considering those all “murders” (many are justifiable, the vast majority are criminal on criminal related), that’s still such a far cry from the 30,000 deaths lie as to be pathetic.

  2. If you do the math based on these (dubious) stats, assuming every individual death was caused by a separate firearm, then 30,000 deaths were caused by is 1% of the total firearms listed.

    So we should make 99% of the responsible gun owners in the country pay for the actions of 1%?

    1% who, by the way, didn’t obey the laws ALREADY on the books.

    Idiots.

    BTW, Lurve the blog, and linked you at mine.

  3. You just can’t compare Japan to America. There’s huge cultural differences at the very least, such as that specific to family honor.

    The number of youth suicides because the child couldn’t live up to the parent’s expectations double that of USA for starters. Does that mean all razor blades, kitchen knives, etc. should be banned here too?

  4. 22/400,000 = 0.000055 murders per gun in Japan.

    12,000/280,000,000 = 0.000043 murders per gun in the US.

    Once again, more guns equals less crime.

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