Gun Love | Sobering Statistics | America Is An Armed Fortress

HopeTracker| Timothy Egan is a self-described third-generation Westerner who have lived in and around guns his entire life.  Writing “Myth of the Hero Gunslinger” for the NYT, Egan says that the argument that more guns will make people safer is flawed. This argument is front and center in the wake of the Tucson shootings.

Arizona is moving to legislate guns in the schools, and yes, packing a pistol in Congress will become law if Texas Republican Rep Louie Gohmert’s bill to allow firearms in the Capitol Building passes.

Are control control advocates just spineless, American whimps?

Gun Holders 4.5 Times More Likely to Be Shot in Assault

Egan suggests we have brains and common sense, citing a 2009 survey by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine finding that rather than protecting gun-toters from being shot in an assault, he/she was four times more likely to be shot when confronted by an armed assailant.

In Philadelphia about 5 people are shot every day and one dies. The study concluded that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.

Gun Owning States Also Highest Gun Deaths State

Egan shares statistics that states with the highest rates of gun ownership have much higher gun-related death rates. In Hawaii 9.7 percent of residents own guns and the state has the lowest gun death rates in the country.

Forty-five percent of Louisiana residents are armed, making it the most armed state in America, and it has the highest gun death rate. Arizona, scene of the recent carnage, is in the top 10 states for gun ownership and gun deaths. The pressure now in Arizona is to arm citizens with more guns.

In the Harvard study Egan refers to, levels of suicide are also significantly higher in gun-toting states.

The NYT comments in Egan’s article are amazingly lucid, including one that refers to the mythology that has grown up around the Wild West and explored by Richard Haring Davis.

The reader Bejay from Williamsburg, Va writes:

One thing stood out, reading Davis’ book: that even in the wildest period of the wild west, as soon as law and order were established in a region it was understood that guns were no longer appropriate in crowded places. That in town, law and order meant disarming people generally. Hollywood notwithstanding, when the rancher bumped into the schoolmarm down at the general store, he wasn’t packing heat.

And the posse were not vigilantes. They were citizens drafted into a temporary but legally authorized force. If it wasn’t constituted under a court order, with the members duly sworn in, bound under oath to obey the orders of the court appointed leader, be he sheriff or deputy, then it wasn’t the ‘posse comitatus’ the ‘power of the community’. The posse was community-based law enforcement, not the spontaneous uprising of ‘concerned individuals.’ Without the oath and the writ and the sheriff at its head, it was not a posse. It was a mob. And mobs were illegal.

Anne here, admitting that I  am speechless beyond words, having just posted the civilian gun ownership graph above. I had NO idea that America was so absurdly armed, compared to the rest of the world. I knew we had more guns than other countries but the disparity in gun ownerships tells us more about American values vs other countries than any graph I’ve examined in my life.

What a staggeringly stark look at my country, one that leaves me feeling clueless.

Updated due to reader interest. This recent National Geographic video points out the reality that in the midst of America’s economic recession, gun sales are up 8%.

Guns in America | National Geographic Channel