'Gun violence': why are other forms of violence preferable?

     Oleg Volk photo

One puzzling characteristic of citizen disarmament advocates is their bizarre apparent belief that "gun violence" is somehow "worse" than other forms of violence.  One would think that being stabbed, beaten, bludgeoned, strangled, etc. to death would be just as bad as being shot to death, but apparently that's not a universally held belief.

I was reminded of this peculiar attitude yesterday when reading "New York's Gun Battle," an article in the Gotham Gazette about current attempts to make gun laws in New York state even more restrictive than they are now (the Brady Campaign ranks New York the 6th most draconian state in the nation):

Bloomberg's push to rid New York City of illegal guns has seen results. The number of guns recovered from crime scenes in the city dropped by 13 percent from last year. The number of people shot to death dropped from 347 in 2007 to 292 in 2008. Overall, murders increased from 2007 to 2008, but only due to an increase in crimes committed with knives.

The implication is that Mayor Bloomberg's anti-gun jihad has been successful, despite an increase in murders, simply because fewer of those murders were committed with guns.  Somehow, we are to believe that murders committed with knives are less tragic than those committed with guns.  That's something in which to take comfort in your last seconds of consciousness, as you bleed out from your slashed carotid artery.

So as not to appear to be picking on the Gotham Gazette, I should point out that the above paragraph is merely a particularly illustrative example of my point.  Another example can be found in the fact that in an average year, approximately half of the deaths by gunshot in the U.S. are suicides.  These deaths are very often lumped in with the "gun violence" statistics, despite the rather questionable characterization of suicide as "violence."  One does not, for instance, generally hear of a person who washes down a  fistful of valium with a fifth of vodka as having committed "pharmaceutical violence," or  of a swan dive off a penthouse balcony described as "gravitational violence."

But I digress.  Let us not quibble with the notion of classifying the deliberate shooting of oneself to death as "gun violence," despite the fact that other methods of suicide are rarely, if ever, thought of as being "violent" acts.  Instead, let us consider the fact that in Japan, where private ownership of firearms is regulated to an extent that even extremist anti-gun organizations like the Violence Policy Center only dream of, suicide rates are significantly higher than in the U.S.  At least, though, very few of those suicides are committed with firearms.  Apparently that is something from which the Japanese should take comfort.

Speaking of the Violence Policy Center, another example would be that organization's recent press release ranking states by gun ownership rate and "gun death" rate, and attempting to show a correlation (utterly ignoring the fact that correlation does not necessarily imply causation).  That press release is also reticent about the fact that some of the states with high rates of "gun violence" also have high rates of murder committed without guns.

VPC also failed to mention that Alaska's non-gun murder rate is higher than its gun murder rate, despite widespread gun ownership in the state, and that Louisiana and Nevada also are among the highest five states in terms of their non-gun murder rates.

It's almost as if only "gun murders" count.

I could go on--the soaring rates of violence in the U.K. in the wake of draconian gun laws, Chicago's status of "murder capital" of the U.S., despite (?) a near total ban of privately owned handguns, Washington D.C.'s frequent ownership of that same title, concurrent with that city's even more restrictive gun laws, etc., but the point I really want to make is somewhat different, although related.

That point is that not all violence is created equal.  That is to say, although violence is something that any moral person strives to avoid, some violence--defensive violence--is not only morally acceptable, it is necessary.  When a 105 lb. woman shoots a 250 lb. would-be rapist, violence has certainly been committed, but evil has been defeated.  When an 80-year-old man shoots the young thug who has decided that mugging isn't enough--that he needs to experience the "fun" of taking a life--that's violent, too, but it's far from wrong.

Some would have us "imagine a world without guns."  I fully support that idea--do so.  Imagine a world in which the strong dominate the weak, the old and infirm are ruled by the young and ruthless, and a woman must belong to a strong man in order to ensure her safety.

That's not a world in which I wish to live.  There will always be violence, and guess what--that violence is almost never initiated by the 105 lb. woman, the 80-year-old man, or the wheelchair-bound paraplegic.  Sometimes, "gun violence" provides peaceable people their only hope of survival.