Obama Bunko
Speaking to a conclave of top cops, Barack Obama decided to promote gun control (it should be noted this was an international association of primarily politically appointed chiefs, so their opinion does not reflect that of the average patrol officer).
In his talk, Obama made several rather insane proclamations. My job is to stomp on his sound bites.
60% of Crime Guns (In Chicago) Come From Out Of State
Obama’s gambit was to claim that states with strict gun control laws suffer from guns imported from states with more relaxed laws. We handily disproved this was that case, but also showed that strict states are more likely to import crime guns from other strict states … by a two-to-one ratio.
More to the point, in his home state of Illinois, a full 84% of recovered crime guns came from Illinois and another 3% came from states with strict gun control laws. That’s 87% of the problem, so Barack needs to recalibrate his thinking about priorities. Imported guns from less restrictive states is a relative non-issue.
Cops are outgunned by Assault Weapons
Obama specifically tied so-called “assault weapons” to criminal street gangs, and stated these were a threat to police.
He should visit a police evidence locker.
According to the federal government 1 71% of recovered and traced crime guns are either pistols or revolvers (small handguns that can be concealed, as street thugs so like to do). When you add shotguns (not typically within the “assault weapon” political classification) the number rises to 82%. Every pre-federal-assault-weapon-ban study showed that these mythical firearms were used in less than 1% of crimes.
Obama’s claim that cops were in constant and immediate danger of these guns was outright fraud.
400,000 Gun Violence Deaths Since 9/11
| Year | Firearm Homicides | Firearm Suicides | Percent Suicides |
| 2001 | 11,348 | 16,869 | 60% |
| 2002 | 11,829 | 17,108 | 59% |
| 2003 | 11,920 | 16,907 | 59% |
| 2004 | 11,624 | 16,750 | 59% |
| 2005 | 12,352 | 17,002 | 58% |
| 2006 | 12,791 | 16,883 | 57% |
| 2007 | 12,632 | 17,352 | 58% |
| 2008 | 12,179 | 18,223 | 60% |
| 2009 | 11,493 | 18,735 | 62% |
| 2010 | 11,078 | 19,392 | 64% |
| 2011 | 11,068 | 19,990 | 64% |
| 2012 | 11,622 | 20,666 | 64% |
| 2013 | 11,208 | 21,175 | 65% |
In the 14 years since 9/11, 400,000 gun violence deaths would equal about 28,570 each year. But the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mortality databases show that to arrive at this 400,000 number, Obama would have to include the “gun violence” called suicide (funny how propaganda often requires blurring definitions).
In the latest CDC reporting year, a full 65% of gun deaths were suicides. More to the point, the number of gun homicides has remained relatively stable since 2001 despite the population increasing 11%.
In gun control propaganda, using big and scary sounding numbers (regardless of their validity) has been a tool to motivate low-information voters. This too has been Obama’s tool of choice.
Why He Won’t See Action
Despite trying to scare people, despite using phony data, despite creating false police endangerment scenarios, Obama’s demand for “common sense” gun control will be ignored. Public polling shows voters favoring gun rights over gun control, in no small part because these easily dissected falsehoods become Internet fodder in mere minutes.
Barack, people understand where the gang bangers roam. They also understand that your gun control day dreams do nothing to curtail their activities. If you truly hope for change, then you need to change course.
Notes:
- Firearms Trace Data – 2014, BATFE ↩
Its pro forma for Barack to promote Marxist lies to his base of useful idiot drones.
Interesting how Obama wants to impose gun-control on law-abiding Americans, while he and Congress send thousands of machine guns to Free Syria Army, Libyan rebels to go shoot up their own governments; gee, how come gun control applies to every one else except Obama ? The rebels don’t have to submit to “conceal-carry permits”, do they?
If the number of firearm murders has been fairly stable over 15 years, and the homicide rate per hundred thousand has fallen from about 9 to 4.5 over 30 years, what explains the latter? Is it only the population rise? That seems bad math. Or is it something else? For instance, CA we control for murder rate in the inner cities and for gang/drug involvement? Are these murder types rising while the general rate in ordinary society is failing?
I suggest this as a new area of research or simply a reworking of the data.
According to the CDC database, since their peak years, firearm homicides have fallen 51% and non-firearm homicides have dropped 57%. See http://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Firearm-and-non-firearm-homicides-1999-2014.jpg
So the question is what caused the decline from the peak years, which on a nation-wide basis started in 1993? We see from the charts that the violence rates fell from 1993, then plateaued around 2000, then declined some more. So the first 15 years was the large, structural drop.
What we know in the U.S. many states passed started passing “get tough on crime” laws in the early 1990s. This included a variety of three-strike and 10-20-Life laws (see http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/understanding-californias-crime-collapse/). Given the violent crime incarceration rates, this was fundamental.
What we have seen though is that the remaining violence is highly clustered in inner cities (see http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/). Gang violence being a significant factor has not been properly addressed, from either a legislative or social aspect (inner city gang culture and music practically endorse homicide).