The Truth About Gun Control (VOX Rebuttal)

Originally posted July of 2013, updated January 2019

(Louder with Crowder) Misrepresenting numbers, massaging “facts,” are tactics used by leftists daily. Misrepresentation is the secret ingredient in their half-caf soy latte. Leftists always have a pre-determined outcome in mind. In Vox’s case (like all leftists), TAINT GUN OWNERSHIP. Make gun owners look like out of control whack jobs with no hearts.

Crowder likewise showed that the “Gun Show Loophole” exists only in the leftists mind:

Here is a great video by Encounter Books:

From the video description:

The right to keep and bear arms has always been central to the American identity. The American Revolution was sparked by British attempts to confiscate guns. After the Civil War, America changed the Constitution to defeat America’s first gun control organization, the Ku Klux Klan. When Hitler and Stalin demonstrated how gun registration paves the way for gun confiscation which paves the way for genocide, Americans resolved to make sure it never happens here.

Gun control is not an issue of left vs. right, or urban vs. rural. Liberal icons such as Hubert Humphrey and Eleanor Roosevelt recognized the right to arms as fundamental to preventing large-scale tyranny by criminal governments, and small-scale tyranny by ordinary criminals. Barack Obama’s gun control program is founded on disinformation, and is a direct assault on the Constitution.

To learn more read The Truth about Gun Control, by David B. Kopel.

Here is the OG info via John Lott:


UPDATED INFO (2019)


One thing gun control advocates such as Vox would never mention is that every single time that guns are banned — either all guns or all handguns — homicide/murder rates rise.  This is a remarkable fact.  One would think that just due to random chance, one or two countries would have a drop in homicides after banning guns.

Vox begins its discussion on mass public shootings using data collected by Jaclyn Schildkraut of the State University of New York-Oswego and H. Jaymi Elsass, a researcher at Texas State University.  Unfortunately, in December 2015, when it was pointed out that their list was missing a lot of cases, Washington Post “Fact Checker” reporter Michelle Lee wrote Dr. Lott: “[Schilkraut] said they are still adding cases, and that it’s not a complete database.” However, Schilkraut and Elsass had already gone public with their findings about how the U.S. compared to other countries. They did so with full knowledge that they were missing many shootings in foreign countries.  Not only did they miss cases, but Vox also doesn’t present the numbers for different countries on a per capita basis.  It is startling that Vox puts other numbers in per capita terms, but not these numbers.

Here is a much more complete list of mass public shootings in the US.  For cases around the world, see here.

Responding to Vox’s and the New York Times’ graphs.

1) Vox.com’s Claim #1 and New York Times Claim #1: “America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany”

Vox offers no explanation for why it compares only these 14 countries or why the New York Times looks at just 11. The New York Times graph is also mislabeled, as it clearly concerns firearm homicides, not murders. OECD, the organization of developed countries, has 34 member nations. But 192 countries worldwide provide homicide data.

Here are homicide rates across all countries for which data is available (click on figures to enlarge).  Even disregarding the problems with homicide data being underreported in many countries, the US homicide rate is less than the median rate and half of the mean average for all countries (the raw data for this section are available here).

LINKED TO LARGER GRAPHIC
ONCE AT THAT IMAGE, RIGHT CLICK AND “OPEN IMAGE IN NEW TAB” ~ THAT IS THE BIG ONE!

HERE IS JOHN LOTT EXPLAINING THE ABOVE GRAPH

….READ THE REST! It is a beast of an article/rebuttal!

JOHN STOSSEL

Dozens of news outlets reported that America has the most mass shooters in the world. Many say that shows America needs more gun control.

Who’s the Fairest of Them All? The Laffer Curve Tells Us

(Video description) Should Taxes Be Higher? It’s the million dollar question! Up? Down? No change? Where in the world should taxes go? In election years, the question of tax rates fills the airwaves. In non-election years, the question of tax rates, again, fills the airwaves. So what’s the answer? UCLA Professor of Economics Tim Groseclose explains his research on the topic. Basically, there’s a certain point at which higher tax rates actually reduce the amount of revenue the government collects. What’s that point? When are tax rates too high? Learn a valuable lesson in economics, and public policy.

Video Description:

President Obama has declared that the standard by which all policies and policy outcomes are judged is fairness. This video explores what it means for our economic system and our economic results to be “fair.” Does it mean that everyone has a fair shot? Does it mean that everyone gets the same? Does it mean the government is supposed to play the role of Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor? The surprising answer: Nations with free market systems that allow ALL people to get ahead are the fairest of them all.

Learn more in Who’s the Fairest of Them All? The Truth about Taxes, Opportunity, and Wealth in America by Stephen Moore:

http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/whos-the-fairest-of-them-all/

Security Means Less Freedoms, America`s March Toward Europe ~ Whiteboard Video

George Gilder Explains an Economic Law

Speaking about government guarentees and especially “protections” (regulations) like Dodd-Frank, George Gilder enumerated the following Law:

“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”

~ George Gilder in an Interview with Dennis Prager about his book, Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World.

From video description:

Across the Atlantic, Americans see European economies faltering under enormous debt, overburdened welfare states, governments controlling close to fifty percent of the economy, high taxation, heavily regulated labor markets, aging populations, and large numbers of public sector workers. They also see a European political class that is unable — and, in many cases, unwilling — to implement economic reform.

This timely and sobering video explains why Americans cannot ignore the “canary in the coalmine” across the pond in determining our future. We must ask the question: “Is America becoming Europe?”

To learn more read Dr. Samuel Gregg’s Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594036373/

“This is a book that every economist, historian, and politician should read.” ~ Amity Shlaes, syndicated Bloomberg News columnist

“Europe is a terrifying example of what happens when the state gets too large and the money runs out. Don’t imagine that it couldn’t happen to you.” ~ Daniel Hannan, British Conservative Member of the European Parliament

Is America Becoming Europe? (Whiteboard Videos)

Video description:

Across the Atlantic, Americans see European economies faltering under enormous debt, overburdened welfare states, governments controlling close to fifty percent of the economy, high taxation, heavily regulated labor markets, aging populations, and large numbers of public sector workers. They also see a European political class that is unable — and, in many cases, unwilling — to implement economic reform.

This timely and sobering video explains why Americans cannot ignore the “canary in the coalmine” across the pond in determining our future. We must ask the question: “Is America becoming Europe?”

To learn more read Dr. Samuel Gregg’s Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594036373/

Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate by Whiteboard Videos

Video Description:

For over a generation, shocking cases of censorship at America’s colleges and universities have taught students the wrong lessons about living in a free society. This video explains how higher education fails to teach its students to become critical thinkers by supercharging ideological divisions, promoting groupthink, and encouraging an unscholarly certainty about complex issues.

For more on this issue, read Greg Lukianoff’s new book Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.

Visit www.unlearningliberty.com

Catching Up With Some `WhiteBoard` Videos

From video description (above video):

Each year, the United States spends $65,000 per poor family to “fight poverty” — in a country in which the average family income is just under $50,000. Meanwhile, most of that money goes to middle-class and upper-middle-class families, and the current U.S. poverty rate is higher than it was before the government began spending trillions of dollars on antipoverty programs.

The Dependency Agenda uncovers the hidden politics of the welfare state and documents the historical evidence that proves that Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” was designed to do one thing: maximize the number of Americans dependent upon the government. The welfare state was never meant to eliminate privation; it was created to keep Democrats in power.

Learn more here: http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-dependency-agenda/

From video description (above video):

America is facing a higher education bubble. Like the housing bubble, it is the product of cheap credit coupled with popular expectations of ever-increasing returns on investment, and as with housing prices, the cheap credit has caused college tuitions to vastly outpace inflation and family incomes. Now this bubble is bursting.

Learn more at: http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-higher-education-bubble/

From video description (above video):

In the Age of Obama, the racism charge, rather than abating, has become more prevalent than ever. Why? Because to tell the truth about matters like crime, racial profiling, social fallout of single parent homes, or the ways racial preferences distort the very meaning of equity and justice would mean facing up to the soul-destroying pathologies of urban black culture. Instead, black leaders and their guilty white allies blame these problems on historic oppression and lack of government aid, and demonize those who challenge such views as — what else? — racist.