Tag Archives: Gun control

Freedom, Politics, The Mint

Worldwide Gun ownership and homicide rate info-graphic and the purpose of bad news

2/12/2013 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

Tonight’s State of the Union address by President Obama will once again draw a sharp focus on gun control, or lack thereof in the United States.  The theory held out by gun control advocates is that restricting access to guns will serve as a deterrent to violence.  Unfortunately, the statistics on a national and global scale argue firmly against this cause/effect relationship, as the following info-graphic illustrates:

image

Contrary to Utopian logic, an increase in overall gun ownership serves to decrease the rate of intentional homicides, not the reverse.

If a higher incidence of gun ownership paradoxically produces a lower intentional homicide rate, why would the idea of gun control be floated by the leader of the “Free” world at all, especially when such ideas are in clear contradiction with the document which He has sworn to uphold?

The Benefits of bad news

Mr. Obama and the rest of the well-meaning individuals who are at the head of the rallying cry for increased gun control have one thing in mind when they float such ideas:

Outliers

Columbine, Sandy Hook, and innumerable other mass shootings in recent history have cast a stigma over gun ownership that world improvers, our pet name for those who believe that they and only they know what is best for humanity, have latched on to as evidence that only certain persons should be allowed to possess firearms.

Clearly, mass shootings are horrific tragedies and attempts to avoid them should be made at all costs.   Again, paradoxically, they seem to occur in environments when the instigator(s) are the only ones in possession of a firearm.  However, while they race to the top of the news feeds when they occur, mass shootings are generally outliers to the human experience.  As such, while they are horrific tragedies, they are not as common as one would think.

It is for these reasons, both that they are uncommon and that they are horrific, that the national psyche attaches to them and examines them the way one would rise to investigate an unexpected sound in the night.  For it is our rightly held belief as human beings that these things should not be, and if they have occurred, then something must be wrong.  The glory of free societies is the indomitable belief that if something is wrong, we, the people, can work to make it right.

In this sense, while we cringe at the many headlines that announce a mass shooting, or any act of violence, for that matter, we have trained ourselves to breathe a sigh of relief.  For the very fact that they are being reported on means that an investigation of their root causes will rise to a level of national debate.  This reporting and national debate is one of the healthiest expressions of free speech that can occur.

While we do not believe that gun control will serve to mitigate tragedies, we are pleased that the debate rages on, for the answers are out there, and it gives us hope for all of mankind that we are diligently searching for it.

After you are shocked by the next tragic headline that comes your way, remember to give thanks for your reaction.  For this reaction, at its core, is an inkling of the hope for the betterment of all mankind that is alive and well within you.

So carry on, Mr. President, as Free men and women, we are privileged to hear you out, as well as disagree on solutions.  We share your sorrow at these events, and will work to make a better world for ourselves and our posterity.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for February 12, 2013

Copper Price per Lb: $3.72
Oil Price per Barrel:  $97.59
Corn Price per Bushel:  $6.96
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.98%
FED Target Rate:  0.14%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,651 THE GOLD RUSH IS ON!
MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  0.25%
Unemployment Rate:  7.9%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  0.0%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  14,019
M1 Monetary Base:  $2,522,600,000,000 LOTS OF DOUGH ON THE STREET!
M2 Monetary Base:  $10,334,600,000,000

Politics

3D Printer manufactures a HI-CAP

3D printing has come a long ways, but few imagined it would coincide with the national gun control debate. The technology, on the surface, allows one to create a plastic prototype of nearly anything that will fit into its print area.

While the national gun control debate rages on, these guys are using 3D print technology to great a ban that does not, as of yet, exist.  Moral judgments aside, we present it of as an example that control, in this case control over the manufacture of high capacity magazines, is an illusion or delusion, the line between the two is determined by how much control a group of people think they have over another.

Without voluntary compliance, laws are impossible to enforce, and unjust laws are the first to be ignored. We are all subject to natural law, and must answer to it. In the meantime, we imagine that, while a novelty, those who have use for a HI-CAP, most of whom wear a military uniform, will opt to get them from a mass producer.

Politics, The Mint

Despite Piers Morgan’s Anti-gun Argument, Britain is a much more violent society than the US via Reality check

While much of the focus of the policy response to the recent tragedies in the US has focused on some form of gun control, it is important to recognize the limits of gun control as a means of diminishing violence.

As the video above suggests, removing guns from a society may have either no effect on violent crime rates or, in the worst case scenario, actually backfire and increase the rate of violent crime.

Yes, you read correctly, that imposing restrictions on gun ownership by the populace may actually increase violent crime rates.  Prominent examples of this phenomenon can be found in Piers Morgan’s jolly old England, which, while having a lower incidence of gun crime, boasts a violent crime rate which is substantially higher than the United States and even South Africa.  They can also be found in Chicago, which, despite the most restrictive gun laws in the US, lamentably has the highest student death toll by firearms.

How can this be?  To understand the answer, one must understand something about Contrarian thought as well as game theory.

First, Contrarian thought.  This logic is detestable and unacceptable for anyone in the anti-gun control, “if it even saves one life,” crowd.  Likewise, it will be unpalatable for those who see capital punishment as repaying evil with evil.  None the less, the following logic is compelling.

Permitting gun ownership by citizens serves as a tacit deterrent to perpetrators of gun crimes who, if they are carrying a gun in a zone where gun ownership is illegal or legally restricted, can assume that a great majority of the population that they will encounter in that zone will not be carrying a firearm, a fact that puts the criminal perpetrator at a great advantage and the peaceful citizens at a great disadvantage.  The anti-gun control argument falls apart once the inescapable fact that it is impossible to guarantee 100% compliance with such laws.

On the other hand, if the perpetrator approaches an individual or crowd with no way of knowing whether or not they can defend themselves, this element of uncertainty may serve as a deterrent to any number of gun crimes which are not permitted.  This is a data point that, by definition, is silent in the statistics, how many violent crimes have been deterred or aborted in the planning stages due to the perceived probability of the victims being armed.

The same argument holds in theory for capital punishment.  If perpetrators of violent crimes knew that their violent act was likely to be punished by death, it follows that this ever present deterrent would be taken into account, and an unknown number of potential violent crimes would be deterred or aborted in the planning phase.

While gun control may serve as a deterrent for impulsive violence, it is just as likely to invite a number of premeditated acts of violence, where the perpetrator can operate with a high degree of certainty that they will not, at least at first, be challenged by an adversary that can harm them in self defense, thereby thwarting their plan.

The understanding of game theory is important in this analysis as well with regards to the assumption on the part of perpetrators of violent crimes as to whether or not their victims can defend themselves and repel an armed assault in kind.

In his famous book, The Strategy of Conflict, Thomas C. Schelling goes to great pains to prove that two individuals who have the ability to destroy each other will tacitly gravitate to living in an uneasy peace with one another, mostly owed to the perception that any act of aggression taken will cause the instigator to suffer in-kind retaliation from the other party. Given the assumption that both parties possess the same capabilities when it comes to weaponry, they are more likely to tacitly choose to peacefully coexist than to instigate violence in hopes of gaining what in game theory is called the “first strike advantage.”

Schelling used the US and the USSR’s offsetting nuclear capabilities to prove this theory, and, in theory, the same tacit decision to peacefully coexistence would be reached among those who live in an armed population.  If this theory is correct, the right to bear arms, which on the surface appears to be the cause of a great deal of violent crime, may actually serve as the best deterrent to an increase in violent crime in a population, while having the side effect of discouraging foreign invasion.

While the cry for gun control rings loud and clear throughout the land, it is proper for all citizens to be appalled at the heinous acts which have been committed.  However, as in the game of Clue, the weapon is only one piece of the mystery, and the violent crime rates in England suggest that, were the revolver removed from the game, the rate of homicide inside the mansion would scarcely decrease.

Events, Freedom

On gun control

12/18/2012 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

With the unthinkable tragedy that has taken place in Connecticut, it has become fashionable to once again to turn to a form of national gun control legislation as the answer.  The nation has been down this road all too often in its brief history, as such, it is normal and proper that these events shock the public conscience into some sort of action.

However, even though we, at The Mint, advocate what we call “peaceful, non-resistance,” meaning that we believe that the most effective way of ending violence is to personally renounce it, to avoid confrontation where possible and, when impossible, to meet violent individuals with a spirit of peace, we also recognize that we do not live in the utopia that gun control advocates unwittingly presume when peddling their legislative plans to remove guns from the society.

We consider Portland to be one of the most peaceful places on the planet.  This may or may not be true for everyone here, but it will help us to prove a point regarding Police to Citizen ratios.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the ideal Full time Police Officer ratio for a city the size of Portland is 2.5 for every 1,000 residents.  Portland’s current force is roughly 940 for a population of 593,820, which is a ratio of roughly 1.58 officers for every 1,000 residents, or one officer for every 631 residents.

No matter how you slice it, 631 people is a lot for one man or woman to be responsible for protecting.

For perspective, this ratio is claimed to be closer to 5 officers per 1,000 in New York and Los Angeles.  On the other side of the spectrum, we have heard that Santa Cruz, Bolivia, considered to be the wild west, the ratio is something like 1 officer per 1,000 residents.

To see if increased police protection is synonymous with lower homicide rates, we’ve compiled some rough data which maps homicide rates in major cities against their Police to citizen ratio.  Here, we present a rough graph of our rough data for your perusal:

Homicide vs Police to citizen ratios

In addition to the cities above, we threw in London, England, which has combined both stringent gun control with a larger than average police force.

It is interesting to note that, while New York and Los Angeles have the highest police force to citizen ratio in our sample, they also have the highest homicide rates.  As such, it is difficult to tell if a larger police force is the key to controlling urban homicides.

However, it is interesting to note that, in urban areas, it appears that gun control may be effective in controlling homicides.  However, this theory is seriously impaired when a city like Chicago or Washington, DC is considered.

As long as human beings are imperfect, unpredictable violence is likely to remain a part of the social landscape.  While it is even more shocking when it occurs in low crime areas, it should be clear that unpredictable violence is just that, unpredictable. Policy remedies are imperfect.

So why the second amendment?  To explain why the right to bear arms is integral to the operation of any free society, we turn to video of testimony by Dr. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, who is a survivor of the 1991 Luby’s massacre and leading advocate of the individual’s right to carry a concealed weapon.  In her famous closing words, which can be seen in the clip below, she articulately states that the second amendment (we paraphrase) “wasn’t meant to protect our right to hunt ducks, it was meant to give us a means to protect ourselves from y’all (the government)”

Is it right to categorically deny a population of nearly 400 million persons the right to defend themselves (or hunt ducks, for that matter)?  Second amendment advocates and the peoples of the former Soviet Union, Turkey, and Cambodia, who were systematically exterminated after surrendering such a right, would say no.

On the other hand, peace loving individuals who live in dense, urban populations may have a different opinion, where ideological battles such as the right to bear arms are meaningless if the threat of urban warfare is too close for comfort.

Whatever the choice, it can only be made at the individual level, there is no policy prescription, save the to often ignored 5th commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” to which Jesus added, “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.”

Perhaps rather than attempting to control anything, a greater respect for human life and the Golden rule should be espoused by all.  This may be the only thing that everyone involved can truly live with.

May the victims of this most recent of tragedies rest in peace, and may we be shocked into peacefully renouncing violence against one another.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of the third sign and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for December 18, 2012

Copper Price per Lb: $3.62
Oil Price per Barrel:  $88.06
Corn Price per Bushel:  $7.20
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  1.83%
FED Target Rate:  0.16%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,669
MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  0.25%
Unemployment Rate:  7.7%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.3%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  13,332
M1 Monetary Base:  $2,527,700,000,000 LOTS OF DOUGH ON THE STREET!
M2 Monetary Base:  $10,375,100,000,000