Target Shooting & Crime
In Australia, the gun controllers claim:
Gun Control Australia said a surge in young shooters could lead to a rise in violent crime.
“Guns and puberty are a dangerous mix,” said president John Crook.
“Targeting juniors increases the likelihood of gun addiction.
“The trouble with kids is that they may think that violence is a way of solving problems.”
The exact opposite is the case:
The study was conducted from 1993-1995 by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Child psychologists tracked 4,000 boys and girls aged 6 to 15 in Denver, Pittsburgh, and Rochester, N.Y. Their findings?
– Children who get guns from their parents don’t commit gun crimes (0 percent) while children who get guns illegally are quite likely to do so (21 percent).
– Children who get guns from parents are less likely to commit any kind of street crime (14 percent) than children who have no gun in the house (24 percent) — and are dramatically less likely to do so than children who acquire an illegal gun (74 percent.)
– Children who get guns from parents are less likely to use banned drugs (13 percent) than children who get illegal guns (41 percent.)
– Most strikingly, the study found: “Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use (than boys who own illegal guns) and are even slightly less delinquent than non-owners of guns.”
Take a kid shooting.
September 3rd, 2007 at 11:21 am
Don’t let Robyn see this, her paradigm might shift without using the clutch, causing major damage.
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
She is already so badly damaged that I don’t know how anyone could tell if she sustained more.
September 3rd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Correlation is not causation. Parents who do a better job of instructing their kids have more responsible, more capable, more trustworthy, more confident and better educated kids. We are also more likely to buy our kids guns. (Like how I threw that “we” in there?)
Deadbeat parents are more likely to raise deadbeat kids, and less likely to buy them guns. They are also more likely to vote Democrat (to keep the welfare coming and/or to hurt the “rich”) take drugs, and commit crimes. A deadbeat parent simply making the shift to buying the deadbeat kids guns will not fix the kids’ deadbeatedness. (Like that: “deadbeatedness”?)
So for all you deadbeat, leftwing parents out there: Don’t buy your deadbeat kids guns. They’ll probably steal one later anyway, and end up getting shot in the commission of a crime. Then you can join the Violence Policy Center and blame it all on my freedom.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:47 am
The problem (or at least one of the problems) is that “modern” society has a tendency to either glorify or demonize firearms, when, in the end, they are nothing more than tools. Unless a child is properly taught by a parent to respect firearms as a reasonably dangerous (in the wrong – or right – hands) tool, he or she will be raised on Hollywood’s viewpoint… or that of the MSM, and neither are particularly safe or rational ones.
Responsibility is responsibility, no matter how you look at it, and teaching a child how to properly and safely handle (or not handle, and get an adult) a firearm is kind of like teaching him or her how to drive safely – it keeps your child safe, in addition to all of those people around them.