I am not arguing here that higher rates of gun ownership cause higher rates of crime, violent crime, or homicide. Such causation is difficult to show because so many other factors bear on the incidence of crime. For instance, simple cross-national comparisons of gun availability and crime do not control for the degree to which various countries impose legal restrictions on firearms. It also is difficult to sort out whether high levels of gun ownership lead to high crime rates or whether high crime rates lead to high levels of gun ownership.
Dennis A. Henigan
Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy page 107.
[I find this an extremely interesting admission. With this admission how can he in good faith advocate for restricting private citizen access to firearms? In essence he is admitting that he cannot answer Just One Question yet he wants to push the envelope as far as he can in infringing upon a specific enumerated right.
As I said in a Tweet yesterday after getting off the plane, I’m nearly certain I could find a fatal flaw on every page of his book. It’s filled with half-truths, cherry picked data, and straw man arguments. I stand behind my nickname of Half-Truth Henigan for him.
I do have to give him credit for pointing out a few valid instances of NRA (almost all his attention is directed at the NRA) overstating things as well. John Lott gets some valid criticism too. He is not stupid but he’s not going to be winning any awards for piercing insight either.
I’ll be posting much more on this book over the next few days. In the meantime take a look at Dave Kopel’s review of it.–Joe]
Joe, It will come as no surprise to you that I loved Henigan’s book. I thought his description early on in the book of the machine gun history was compelling. Didn’t you?
Another thing off the top of my head was the way he addressed the myth that gun control laws are useless because criminals won’t obey them. Basically he said proper laws are aimed at the law-abiding in order to diminish the availability of guns to the criminals. I thought that was a well written chapter.
Mike,
I’ll deal with the machine guns and the uselessness of the laws all in due time.
MikeB302000,
Did any of the laws on the books at the time of your illegally purchased firearms stop you?
What laws would have stopped you from buying firearms illegally?
And I’ll add, that if MikeB actually cares about gun availability to the criminal element, as he claims to, I’ll ask why he admits to owning guns illegally at some point in his life, but refuses to discuss how he acquired those guns and why?
Or he can not answer those questions and point out that he is nothing more than a troll who has no concern for the laws or human lives.
Either way we’ll get an answer soon.
Alcohol Prohibition worked out so well, lets try it with drugs and guns. In all cases it results in a profitable, government-guaranteed monopoly for the most aggressive criminal organizations. That, and a bunch more jobs for government bureaucrats and enforcement personnel, and whole new categories of rationalizations and excuses for more restrictions on average citizens. So it’s win win for the statists and criminals, and lose lose for everyone else. Answer that, ye troll.
So, at what point do we pull an Algore and simply proclaim, “the science is settled” and that “the time for debate is over” and that the time for “direct action” is at hand? How long should we have to lower ourselves by arguing with retards over our most basic of rights? The whole idea of an enumerated right is that we should be spared such indignities.
Maybe if we were allowed to carry our guns everywhere with us wherever we go, criminals would have a much harder time stealing them from us…
Responce on other threads, but none her.
Like we needed the data, but MikeB doesn’t actually care about lives or guns. He’s just a troll.
Hope you’ll listen to my interview of Dennis Henigan here:
http://www.iotconline.com/radio/aview/TAV%20Hennegan_Nov13.mp3
I think he has undoubtedly set a new Guinness World Indoor Record for saying the most idiotic, unConstitutional things on a one-hour radio show, mine. In fact, I think he has retired the title. Comments welcome.
John Lofton, Editor TheAmericanView.com
Communications Director, Institute on the Constitution
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com