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Venezuela Gun Ban Failure
Gun bans are a bad idea.
Imagine Detroit's police response times and lack of 911 service during the worst years. Then imagine that they banned guns, were able to keep ordinances that looked for law-abiding civilian guns, but were unable to keep up the ban against the criminal element.
That is exactly what happened during Venezuela's ongoing collapse. Guns were banned. Police put all their resources in getting guns off the streets. Police realized that the gangs were unaffected by the gun ban. Police were unable to then help the defenseless citizens of whose guns they had just confiscated and destroyed.
Just like Detroit was able to maintain perfect parking enforcement, Venezuela has been able to ticket and hound those who do not post the gun ban notices at their places of business. Just don't expect anyone to come when you call police.
Gun bans can easily equate to the government being there when you don't need them, and not being there when you do. Essentially, it is the worst possible scenario. The gun ban did not stop the flow of weapons to the gangs of Venezuela. The gun ban did stop the flow of weapons to those defending their business or family.
Why mass shootings are defined by 'modern' history
Data isn't there for earlier shootings
...Fox offers another line of thinking for why we tend to think of mass shootings in a modern sense: Our own experiences and, perhaps, our own fear.
"A significant portion of America wasn't alive in, say, the 1940s, so part of it is just a function of memory," he says. "The bigger part has to do with technology and media. When these things happened, maybe we saw some grainy film days later, but we certainly didn't hear it like we do now. There weren't satellite trucks that would rush to the scene of a mass shooting and carry images of carnage right into our living rooms, making it feel like it's happening just down the street."
Lowest and highest murder rates by state from all causes
Right column is number of murders from all causes per 100,000 population.
New Hampshire |
1,330,111 |
14 |
1.1 |
Hawaii |
1,425,157 |
19 |
1.3 |
Vermont |
626,088 |
10 |
1.6 |
Maine |
1,329,453 |
23 |
1.7 |
Utah |
2,990,632 |
54 |
1.8 |
Idaho |
1,652,828 |
32 |
1.9 |
Massachusetts |
6,784,240 |
128 |
1.9 |
Iowa |
3,121,997 |
72 |
2.3 |
Missouri |
6,076,204 |
502 |
8.3 |
Maryland |
5,994,983 |
516 |
8.6 |
Mississippi |
2,989,390 |
259 |
8.7 |
Louisiana |
4,668,960 |
481 |
10.3 |
District of Columbia |
670,377 |
162 |
24.2 |
There were 17,250 homicides in the US in 2016. There were also 908,000 abortions in the US in 2015 although abortions are not considered homicides. "Between 2014 and 2016, the nationwide homicide rate has increased more than 20%, and the 3.4% increase in the US violent crime rate from 2015 to 2016 was the largest single-year increase in 25 years, the Justice Department said." -CNN,