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People in Great Britain, Japan, Australia and many other countries with low murder rates – they have the same human hearts that we do, right? I’m pretty sure the human heart is standard equipment, regardless of national borders. Yet those countries have nowhere near the murder rate that we do. Is Johnson telling us that American hearts are somehow different, that our hearts are more cruel and bloodthirsty than hearts in other countries?

Is that why God hath forsaken us?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offers yet another explanation, arguing on the presidential campaign trail that we have a high murder rate “because of liberal, soft-on-crime policies.”

Again, though, we have a problem. If putting more people in prison could solve gun violence, we should be the safest country on the planet, because the United States has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. We put people in prison at 200 times the rate of Japan, four times the rate of Australia, five times the rate of France and nine times the rate of Germany. Yet those countries, with their “liberal, soft-on-crime policies,” have much lower gun fatality rates than we do.

So here’s where we find ourselves:

We pray, but those prayers aren’t working. We look for answers in our hearts, and we find none. We imprison and imprison and imprison, but that too isn’t working. We buy more guns, and allow them in more places, but if anything our sense of safety in public spaces has gotten worse not better.

And now we talk about turning teachers into guns for hire. It’s almost as if we know what the real source of the problem is, but those in power are willing to do anything and say anything, even truly silly and absurd things, to avoid acknowledging it.

— Jay Bookman in Bookman: Turning Teachers Into Guns for Hire an Absurd Answer to School Shootings

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

75 COMMENTS

  2. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

    ( Attributed to several historical peeps.)

    • jay bookman is clearly an unarmed sack of lying demoCrap who thinks you should be like him…easy peasy pickings for criminals and the hamas butt kissers stinking up college campuses and the unchecked coming through our borders. I suggest jay bookman move to countries where he and his family can be defenseless like Jews on the border of Gaza and be subjected to being carved up with a knife, bludgeoned with a pipe, kidnapped in a motor vehicle, etc. In other words…gfy jay bookman you deranged Gun Control nazi.
      https://youtube.com/watch?v=WlItbl9SOAg&feature=shared

      • Chip Roy — one of 22 Repubs to join with the Donks to vote against the censure of anti-semitic, anti-Israel and anti-Jew Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

        Now why would he do that?

        • He’s my rep, he did it because her behavior must be public. We must allow open speech or it becomes too easy to pretend it didn’t happen….

  3. Gun-Free Japan has an Intentional Death Rate (Homicides + Suicides) that is 32% higher than the US. Guns don’t matter, culture is to blame. Absent guns, other means will be used.
    In the US, if someone is assaulted, embarrassed or humiliated by another person, the “victim” often responds with violence against the perp.
    In Japan, if someone is assaulted, embarrassed or humiliated by another person, the “victim” often responds with suicide.
    Humans are fundamentally violent critters, Get Over It !

    • You and your contextually accurate assessment of data is racist (probably) and should be cancelled. Sarc obviously but it occasionally scares me how few people can process percapita and/or amalgamation of information inputs.

    • and Australia has the second highest rate of rapes in the world, right behind that other bastion of 1st world freedom, Botswana…

  4. Just FYI – Steven Crowder is releasing the Nashville shooters manifesto at 10 EST on his youtube show.

  5. So many inanities with this that I dont know where to start; first, though, and always, they default to these comparatively small countries with comparatively small percentages of foreign born population that are subjects of a monarchy. And we all know that subjects get subjugated.

    • They also ignore countries (mostly in Latin America) that have much higher rates of “gun violence” than the US, despite their restrictions. By comparing the US only to “other developed countries” or “other wealthy countries”, they’re basically admiting that it’s more a socioeconomic problem than a gun problem.

      • …if the Europeans keep importing third-worlders and failing to assimilate them, the US will gradually become less and less of an outlier among ‘developed countries’.

  6. Unmentioned are the usual suspects. Dim’s,leftards and street gangs. And now we can add cartels & middle east terrorists. Ya know in Chiraq the murder rate in the 70’s-90’s was HIGHER than now? It wasn’t covered day & night. Generally crime like carjacking & robbery is far higher than years ago. What’s absurd is disarmed Illinois residents & no cash bail for the the vast #of perps🙄😧

    • They’re mentioned alright. Just on the sky. Japan, Australia, France and Germany. Predominantly homogeneous cultures and people. France and Germany have experienced an increase in rates of crime that just happens to coincide with their increasing diversity. Japan won’t get a taste of the strength diversity offers for some time yet but Oz is in a great hurry to burn itself down.

      Calling out the United States as a whole for any one thing is absurd. The ethics, culture and economy of various regions in the US vary greater than the nations of Europe or Asia. The US may be one country but it’s made up of dozens of completely independent and often incompatible cultures. We don’t melt anymore. We just gather in local tribes and look out for ourselves. Any participation at a higher level such as state or nation is just about what you’re gonna get out of it. Muh free shit or muh petty power.Purely animalistic first-order thinking. A nation of lizard brained children.

  7. What a mess of arguments.

    “. . . those countries have nowhere near the murder rate that we do.” Look at the statistics. The countries with the highest homicide rates have strict gun control. Countries with high gun homicide rates have strict gun control.

    America has a problem with homicide to the extent that it has human hearts with a propensity to homicide. Japan and Switzerland have a negligible problem with homicide to the extent of their citizens’ propensity to homicide. Culture matters. It matters not one iota that Japan has nearly no guns, and Switzerland is awash in guns.

    Criminologists tell us that the distribution of homicides across perpetrators is not even. It is not the case that the modal number of homicides per perpetrator is 1-single victim. Most of the homicides are perpetrated by offenders with multiple victoms. If not offenders with multiple notches on their gun-belts, certainly by multiple offenders of aggravated assault. If and to the extent this is really true, then we would have a substantially smaller problem with homicide if our criminal justice system incarcerated violent criminals for much longer periods of time. We don’t do that. We maintain a revolving-door prison system.

    Why are our prisons so densely populated? What are the crimes for which prisoners are incarcerated? https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp reveals that drug offenses account for 65,000 inmates while weapons, explosives, and arson account for 32,000 inmates. America has chosen to allocate prison space to criminals violating drug laws, so less space is available for criminals who violate gun laws. Homicide inmates account for only 5,000 inmates; immigration for 7,000 inmates. Judges and prosecutors decide how to allocate prison cells, not the NRA.

    “We buy more guns, and allow them in more places, . . . ” We, the People of the Gun, are doing our part by buying more guns. But the legislators are doing their part by FORBIDDING them in more places. If there were no “gun-free zones” (read crazys’ free-fire zones), would “our sense of safety in public spaces [get] worse [or] better”?

    • I’m guessing it would get worse for awhile and then it would get better.
      In a way laws protect criminals because the law abiding are law abiding.
      Without law enforcement We citizens would be on the same playing field as the criminals.
      ” The SOB needed kilt.” Would be good enough.
      It’s a lot to go into, however, if a hoodlum breaks into your house and you chase him down the road and blow a hole in his back,,,,Your going to jail.
      Take that out and the hoodlums wouldn’t be so keen on breaking into your house.
      As my uncle said 20 years ago, ” Its time for the vigilante to ride.”

      • I keep saying, if the ‘de-fund the cops’ is taken to it’s logical conclusion, who is going to protect the Antifa types from –>> US<< — ?

    • America has a problem with gun-happy blacks…separate them from the equation and things don’t look so bad….

  8. Looking at murder and crime rates, and gun ownership numbers, even how many guns owned per person… just putting those numbers onto paper and comparing to another country, that’s a different comparison. Other countries don’t have the same values of freedom, so it doesn’t matter if a police state or dictatorship has low rates of anything. They also have low rates of freedom and a high tyranny rate…

    But back to the numbers, looking at them separately doesn’t mean anything. If me and a lot of my neighbors legally own 10-25 guns or more per household, but within the county crime is high, oh ho, more guns = more crime right?

    Wait, did anyone check, are those with legally purchased guns committing the crimes? Who is commiting the crime, and where did their guns come from? The author implies lots of guns = bad. Once you go down to the local gun shop and fill out your form, wait a couple days, then you get your gun and immediately start working your way through the city, John Wick style, killing countless innocent people who crossed your path on your way to Walmart.

    No doubt those armed gun slinging teachers the author is worried about will start executing minority students if they interrupt in class or get a bad grade, and probably will have daily teachers lounge cowboy duels too.

    Law abiding gun owners are definitely the issue, killing people to take their iPhone or car is just what most gun owners do for fun day in, day out. I am sure the numbers will clearly show that is the case. That’s why they like to get carry permits because it grants a free license to kill as well, super handy to have.

    Note lots of sarc and snark above.

  9. In Japan they use fire and poison gas, in China and England they use knives, in Sweden it’s explosives (hand grenades)… The US ranks 37th in the world for intentional deaths (murder plus suicides), 36th in intentional deaths by homicide, and does not make the 20 most dangerous countries in the world list for 2023… Considering that the US is the 3rd most populous country in the world I’d say we’re doing pretty good…

  10. Nothing like completely over simplifying a multifaceted issue into one variable (guns)!
    It’s definitely NOT an apples to apples comparison!

  11. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?most_recent_value_desc=true

    Several hellholes, including Mexico, have murder rates 4 or more times greater than our own. 7 murders per 100,000 seems a lot, but, it is what it is. The global rate is 6, so, we’re only just above “average”. It’s not like the world averages 1 or 2, while we have 7. What’s more, the “civilized” and “developed” countries that socialists love so much all have murder rates 1/4 to 1/2 of our own. Oh – a secret about the UK. They don’t record a murder until someone is convicted of murder. Meaning, if they never solve the crime, the crime doesn’t even go into the statistics. Wonder how many other “civilized” countries have accounting methods that ignore inconvenient facts?

    • In the 1990s the UK Home Office openly admitted to “adjusting” crime statistics since at least the early 1960s.

      Over there, a murder is only recorded as a murder if someone is convicted of the murder. If they plead on a lesser charge, it is not murder.

  12. “Is Johnson telling us that American hearts are somehow different, that our hearts are more cruel and bloodthirsty than hearts in other countries?”

    He wasn’t speaking of ‘American hearts’ as in every ‘American heart’ like you are so deceptively trying to frame it. He was talking about the ‘Americans’ in terms of the people who do have ‘cruel and bloodthirsty’ in their ‘hearts’. Or in other words, the ‘criminal’ element created and facilitated and emboldened by left wing liberal democrats.

    “And now we talk about turning teachers into guns for hire.”

    The left wing anti-gun call it “guns for hire”, but out here in the real world of reality its completely voluntary and no teacher is ‘hired’ to carry a gun. The facts of reality speak for its self that mass killers are likely to avoid places where ordinary law abiding people can be and are armed. So yeah, I have a kid in school I want them protected by someone with a gun, it offers the best chance of deterring or stopping those mass killers, else why do the ‘guns for hire’ police show up with guns when they respond (which is usually, 99.9999999% of the time, after the killer has already shot defenseless victims because there was no opposition to deter or stop them because no one was armed except the mass killer)?

    • So says the self anointed hero Booger Brain who claimed he went through 4 magazines shooting at 2 robbers after Booger Brain (the reincarnation of Wyatt Earp) claims that he broke cover 3 times and never got a scratch.

      All this was hilariously especially when one other T Tag poster told you he would sooner believe you if you told him purple rabbits existed.

      And now Booger Brain is claiming we can turn teachers also into the reincarnation of Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson even when the majority of them think people like Booger Brain need to be locked up in an insane asylum because they want nothing to do with carrying firearms in the classroom proving they are at least sane.

  13. Ever notice these articles never have any place to send feedback?
    How convenient.

    I did find this. however;
    [email protected]

    And sent them this:
    Subject : Bookman

    Might mention to him the Maine shootings happened in GUN FREE ZONES, so legally, there was no armed good guy that was available that could actually have
    “ridden to the victims’ rescue.”

    • his “detail” applies o lmost all “massshootings” and attempts in the US.

      There ws one
      ,ass shooting that never was”. Portland Oregon, Clackamas Towne Centre Mall. Signs declaring”no gun allowed” all over the place, but those are “eecutive” signs, and do not meet state complaince standards therefor are ot binding. We who go there know this, and carry anyway, lmowing we canno face any legal cnsequences.
      Perp entered with a gymn bag and a longer case. The bag was stuffed with TEN ROUND magazeins preped for the AR patttern rifle. He set up at a crossroads inside, took out two people, pandeminium broke out, chaos, all that, normal stuff. ne man of 32 or 33 years of age head INTO the danger zone, found the perp, drew his own handgun and got a good bead on the perp. He held his fire because he saw an innocent behind the perp in his own line of fire. Not wanting to risk missing perp and hitting innicent, he held fire. Perp saw him, stepped off his higher perch, walked dow one of the passageways and into a service corridor, still carrying his rifle. Further down, he made the best use of that instrument he’d made of it all day.. he used one of his rounds to kill himself.
      Many were fearful for the young man who saved many lives (perp had enough ammunition to take out several hundred victims) but “violated the law’ by being armed in a “gun free zone”. Many wondered when the coppers did nothing to him but take is statement and record his identity. No charges. (it would have been VERY politically incorrect had they charged him for the GFZ “violation” but for anyone who knows the law, which in Oregon includes a three hour rraining course to get your Mother May I Card, and which course always teaches us HOW to identify true gun free zones and how to know when the signage is meaningless.. which emans the signs compy with mandated state standards or they are not signs at all but suggstions or pretty please don’t do that” rules. We who carry KNOW the rules and since we REALLY like our Mother May I Cards we abide by them. That means ifnoring non0compliant signage when we see it, as this Hero did when he put an end to the certain intended massacre.

      • Yep. Heard about that one when it happened.

        Since the CCW holder did not even HAVE TO FIRE, the false ‘statisticians’ like the The Trace, Brady, Bloomburg, and Giffords, will NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE that merely the threat of DEADLY FORCE caused the shooter to ‘self terminate.’ These types of incidents always cause me to wonder, just what would be learned if the shooter was ‘captured alive’, so to speak…

        In the overall crime picture, that happens more often than not.

        A car jacker gets a gun stuffed in their face by the victim, and all of a sudden, they have somewhere else to be, quickly.

        Same with muggers, and strong arm robberies.

        A large percentage of defensive gun uses occur WITHOUT A SHOT BEING FIRED.

        And, I’d wager that there is also extreme under reporting of those incidents, ESPECIALLY in places like California, New York, New Jersey, etc. where the system will focus on the VICTIM having a gun, and not give a shit about the crook.

        Dr. John Lott has excellent articles on exactly the above situations and piles of statistics on https://crimeresearch.org.

        The leftist/socialists/Marxists, (pointing at YOU shitdiggingidiot,) all keep trying to debunk his information, but they have a real tough time of it, when he has the ‘receipts’ to back up his studies.

        For all the folks that like to read VERY detailed essays on the aspect of firearms and law, I would suggest looking at https://arbalestquarrel.com. It’s not a ‘fast read’ site. It takes TIME to wade through a lot of their blog posts, but it is usually worth the effort.

    • no firearms in either place of business in Maine…which struck me as odd…best they could do was a guy with a knife…and he got shot for his trouble

  14. Thing is, given enough time will we see gun violence rates decline in schools with armed teachers?
    How will the gun grabbers explain it away?

    • Look into the FASTER Saves Lives programme developed in Ohio. In the fifteen years or so of the programme, in the 2000 school districts where it is in place there has not been ONE gun related incident of any kind… not even a stray handgun dumped by the biden creature into a dumpster and found by a school kid.

      I’d say a zero incidence record in a test are that large and for that many years is pretty solid proof it WORKS. Meanwhile in NON-FASTER disricts, the record is not so perfect….. perps know, because they make it their business to know. The ‘success” of their abominations depends on peroper research beforehand. Note well the Aurora colorado theatre shooting… he ravelled quite a distance fo a theatre showing THAT film that had a NO GUNS policy. Not one person in that screening room besides him had a gun, thos no ne could do anything but dive under his seat and hope perp didn’t find him, or die right there.

    • THAT explains a lot… If that had been a “straight” white guy (aka supremacist) that shit would have been live on every Left Wing fake news channel 15 minutes after it was found…

      • “I wonder what part of a prison does a transgender go to?”

        They don’t get to go to such inhuman hell-holes, just being ‘Trans’ is criminal sentence enough for the poor soul.

        (*Dripping* with sarcasm if it isn’t obvious… 🙁 )

    • And if you actually TALK to an RCMP officer, (we did, we were invited to go along to a sniper competition in Chilliwack, BC years ago,) you’ll find out that the Asian gangs in places like Vancouver PREFER knives as they are ‘up close and personal,’ and QUIET.

      Even then, they were pulling out full auto weapons from gang strongholds..

  19. Silly approach. There were a lot more guns per person in the country a hundred years ago, and a lot less murder. I have included a link that shows murder rates by country. The US has a relatively low rate. Interestingly, the US Virgin Islands, where firearms are illegal, has quite a high rate of murder. Mexico, just across the border with much stricter gun laws has a much higher murder rate. Interestingly, the ten nations with the highest murder rates all have very strict gun laws. This also ignores the tradeoff of a very powerful and dangerous government and disarmed public, vs. a free people.
    It is soft on crime issue. The correlation is quite strong, particularly when noting the low incidence of murders in death penalty nations, and those in which law enforcement is empowered. A look at the bleow indicates that murder and violent are very strongly linked to policies that tend to weaken families, trivilize drugs, and go soft on crime – all are liberal policies. It is no wonder the left hates guns, and trioes to scapegoat gun owners for the wave of violence that liberal polices predicably create.
    It is a race issue, which almost no one wants to talk about. The correlation is VERY strong.
    It is a drug related issue with VERY strong correlations with drug use and durg distribution.
    It is a soft on crime issue with strong correlations with the trivilazation of violent crime.
    It is a weakened family issue, with quite a strong correlation to single family households.
    It can be a poverty issue. Though it is by no means limited to the impoverished.
    It can be a gun issue only to the extent that firearms are a preferred method. Yet murder far precedes the invention of firearms, and the most dangerous nations all have significant gun laws.

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country

  20. Outstandingly frank and honest article.

    The problem is with the Far Right Fanatics whose paranoia makes it impossible for them to see the truth or think clearly or logically.

    When you mix in Far Right racism and hate and the fact that the Far Right are so cheap and stingy they would rather die with the first penny they ever made clutched in their fingers so tightly its screaming for mercy its not any wonder the Fanatics on the Far Right only worship the gun and money.

    • Dacidiot,
      “…. and the fact that the Far Right are so cheap and stingy they would rather die with the first penny they ever made clutched in their fingers so tightly its screaming for mercy…”

      So, which group of people, (liberal vs conservative,) consistently donate the most to charities?

    • Can I borrow a couple grand dacian?
      You sound like the type of guy that would loan a poor possum some money, or are you a penny pincher?

      • Nah! He wants to “redistribute the wealth” to himself and his antifa troop, after shooting the former owners into the execution pit.

    • Dacian hates black people. Why else does he and the other leftist, Big Gov maniacs ignore GANGS and the genocide of young black men by other young black men. Gotta have that voting block for money and power huh, you pig.

    • dacian, the DUNDERHEAD, figures you would “think” so.
      Oh great sage, please tell us what gun was ever convicted or even charged with assault, murder or any crime of violence?

      As to racism, you Leftists have a long, long history of racism dating back to Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt, Lyndon B Johnson, etc. And you have the gall to infer that Conservatives are “racists”? If you look up your American History you will find it was Conservative Republicans who authored and sponsored every Civil Rights Bill ever passed by Congress.

      Time for you to give up the ghost on your revisionist history.

      • To Walter the Beverly Hillbilly

        Its you who constantly promote revisionist History because you are either an abject liar or you flunked History classes.

        It was President Johnson who introduced the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the majority of the Criminal Racist Republicans refused to pass it until Hubert Humphrey convinced just barely enough Republicans to vote to pass it.

        On June 10, a coalition of 27 Republicans and 44 Democrats ended the filibuster

        https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilRightsAct1964.htm

        Try again you failed.

    • YOU certainly are an expert on paranoia and its effects on the mind or in YOUR case the SIMPLE mind…

  21. Bookman summed up the entire tirate at the end: “say anything, even truly silly and absurd things, to avoid acknowledging it.” That statement does not apply to POTG. Take 3 guesses as to whom it applies to and the first 2 don’t count!

    • Isolationism will get ya killed in this world, and sometimes the best defense is a good offense, which often requires extreme firepower. The left wants us defenseless…so I’ll go in the opposite direction which offers high paying jobs and is (as you pointed out) good for the economy.

  24. For once I agree with Bill O’Reilly….. “Bad guys shooting people is the price of freedom. Liberty is risky business. That’s why our Founding Fathers recognized our God-given right to shoot back.”
    Of course, it is not the guns, but the Defective Citizens that are the root of violence using guns.
    The violence is the Evil side of the battle from the beginning of time between Good and Evil. Those Defective Citizens largely come from single-parent homes, non-church attending families…..both greatly promoted through government welfare, and government suppression of faith in God in our country.

  25. We do not need to be arming teachers.

    What we truly do need is to get rid of gun free school zones. Doing that would do more to stop disarming them.

    • We should allow teachers who wish to take on the responsibility of being armed while at school, to do so. Many states do. There have been no shootings at a school where the staff is armed.

        • A shooting at a Texas elementary school left 14 children and one teacher murdered. While about 30% of school districts in Texas 2020 had armed teachers and staff, unfortunately, the Robb Elementary School in the Uvalde, Texas CISD doesn’t appear to be one of them. Their firearm regulations are detailed here. There are no provisions in their regulations for teachers or staff to carry.

  27. The author cites the “low murder rates and rare cases of mass shooting in Britain, France, Japan and other developed countries.”

    The answer is obvious: the United States is not a developed country. Certain parts of the United States are developed, but other parts are still 3rd-world s**tholes. Everyone knows which parts. Hint: check out the inner cities with the highest murder rates.

    The author is deliberately deceptive when he says, “Maine has some of the weakest gun laws in the country, with a high rate of gun ownership,” and talks about the recent mass shooting (the worst one in 247 years in Maine) but neglects (or “forgets”) to mention that Maine has nearly the LOWEST murder rate in America. That’s deliberate deception, leaving out that crucial fact. The same is true for Vermont, loosest gun rules (until other states joined “Vermont carry” by also passing permitless carry), and the lowest murder rate.

  28. I once did the math with the best data I could find. Less than .00000084% of legally purchased/obtained firearms are used in crimes. Such a huge issue!

  29. People used to ask in the 80’s, “Why doesn’t the US have European-like crime statistics?”
    Well, if you take out Blacks and Hispanics, we DO have European-like crime rates.
    If you want European-like crime rates, give us European-like demographics.
    Turns out people really, Really, REALLY hate that answer.

  30. Or ask them if guns are the problem, why doesn’t Switzerland have mass shootings every day with people being slaughtered willy-nilly in the markets and stores?

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