Spencer's Super-Happy Fun-Time Right-Wing Word Pit

As I was perusing the Digg today, I saw an article that caught my eye.

Headline:

US right to bear arms may get its day in court

For the first time in 70 years, the US Supreme Court may decide next week whether to examine the question of the right to bear arms, something which is fiercely upheld by millions of Americans.

To be honest, I haven't read the article yet, but in typical "me vs. you" fashion, a gun debate was started over the article. All the cliche's were present from "guns kill people" to "the Second Amendment is about the National Guard". I found it intriguing that people actually think that if we take guns away, violent crime will stop. It's almost like if we walk away from Iraq and destroy all of our weapons of war, we will have peace. Pretty absurd, if you ask me.

First, let's address the Amendment itself.

"A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Mind you, I am no scholar, but I do have a dictionary. So I looked up the term militia...

"A private, non-government force, not necessarily directly supported or sanctioned by its government."

National Guard? I think not. However, the dictionary on my desk is 20 years old. Dictionary.com and the Wikipedia now include the term National Guard. Agenda? hmmmm.

Anyway, the best part of the debate came here... where people start to make sense and then some idiot chimes in with a misstatement and makes a complete fool of himself. So Digger Blantano starts the ball rolling with sensical argument to whit:



"Taking away guns from the people will not take away guns from the criminals."

Agreed. Common sense tells us that law is only upheld by those who abide by the law. Blantano's argument is later sustained by Jamile who says:



"Exactly. Both Australia and the UK have proven this point. Since Port Arthur and Dunblane (their respective "let's make handguns illegal" triggering events) both countries have had equal or more handgun crime than before. All that's happened is that gun ownership by law-abiding people has been decimated or, in the case of the UK and handguns, obliterated. Gun prohibition works in the same way as alcohol prohibition - the law abiding are screwed and the criminals keep going as they are. And let's not forget - said criminals now have much less chance of encountering a victim who's able to use equal force. And that's not even beginning to talk about governmental agendas, etc..."

I can see his point, however, I do not see any cited sources to uphold his facts. But hey... I do agree that a society with defenseless people will be preyed upon by the evil and unjust among us. Now here is where it gets stupid. Leftist genius halavais opens his big mouth and vomits this gem of wisdom:



"Old numbers (1994), from the CDC, but I'm too lazy to dig up more recent stats: Gun death rate (per 100K): U.S.A. 14.24 Australia 2.65 Scotland 0.54 England and Wales 0.41 When guns are outlawed, a substantially fewer number of outlaws have guns."

Wow, halavais, it looks like the big bad ol' US has a bigger gun violence problem than these countries because, well, look at the numbers. 14 is higher than 2 or .41. Good job, idiot. Look at what he posted. Right...... here..."per 100K" Per One Hundred Thousand people. Does anyone else see the flaw here. Again, halavais, has cited no real source, so I will take his numbers at face value to demonstrate his complete failure to contribute to society. Lets start by getting population numbers for 1994 for each of the countries listed here.

The United States Population (The numbers are from 1990 since the census is only gathered once every 10 yrs, but a lower population only helps halavais, so I will give it to him) according the the 1990 Census the population is 248,709,873 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States)

Australian Population 1994 is 17,951,300 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia)

Scotland census is dated 1991 and lists the population at 5,083,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Scotland)

England's population circa 1991 is sitting at 48,067,300 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_England) while Wales was at 2,877,700 (http://new.wales.gov.uk/docrepos/40382/40382313/statistics/population/pop-2007/wales-pop2005/wales-pop2005-e1.pdf?lang=en) giving is a total of 50,945,000 for this section of the numbers.

These numbers are not perfect, but lower numbers, again only helps halavais in his quest for glory. Now, the numbers in the example given by halavais are per 100,000. So how may 100,000 sections are contained in each population. This can be found by simply dividing the population for each country by 100,000 (population / 100000). halavais gave us the number per 100,000 of gun deaths for 1994 in each country. To get a percentage, take that number (Gun Deaths Per 100K or GDP1K) and divide it by the number of 100,000 units in each population to get the estimated total Gun Related Deaths for each population rated in a percentage as it relates to the population as a whole. The formula is as follows.
A = Population
B = Gun Deaths per 100,000
C = Total Percent of the population dead at the hands of a gun.

B / [A / 100,000] = C

Let's plug that formula in for each Population, shall we?

United States:
14.24 / [248,709,873 / 100,000] = 0.005%

Australia:
2.65 / [17,951,300 / 100000] = 0.015%

Scotland:
0.54 / [5,083,000 / 100000] = 0.01%

England and Wales:
0.41 / [50,945,000 / 100000] = 0.008%

So... Who has a lower percentage of gun deaths per population? That's right, the country without a gun ban.
Eat it, anti-gun lefty's