Gun Crimes Quotes

While it is probably true that communities with high gun ownership rates do prevent some gun deaths by intimadating some criminals or neutralzing them, but the ready and common availability of guns in such communities also enable many criminals. In addition the high gen density makes gun death in spontaneous anger and conflict situations more likely adn the accident and suicide rates go way up the more guns are accessible.

Like many other ideologues, the Senator was a better politician than he was a historian. He had a tendency to not be very accurate in his facts. In this particular gaff, which was castigated by critics, he was wrong about both facts he gave. First, not only was it not the case that there were few gun crimes “back then”. See {640086} and {640085} . Second his implication that everyone carried guns, and the guns were responsible for the “low” gun crime rate, was also false. Gun crime was so prevalent that most towns and cities in the West had gun control ordinances prohibiting carrying guns in the city limits. The famous Gunfight at the OK Corral which the Senator cited was in Tombstone, AZ in 1881. At that time, it was illegal to carry a gun in Tombstone. See {640063} for the gun control ordinance. As a matter of fact, the OK Corral gunfight was fought because Sheriff Wyatt Earp was disarming some cowboys who brought their guns to town. Glen Kessler, The Washington Post fact checker gave this quotation “3 Pinocchios”.