This morning, British viewers could watch Piers Morgan interviewing Donald Trump. I won't say much about Piers Morgan or Donald Trump - they can both say pretty stupid things at times. But, when it comes to this whole 'gun control' debate, Piers always comes up with silly arguments.
Here is one of them (talking of a shooting in Paris):
"More people were shot dead in America that week than have died from guns in Paris since the Second World War."
Sounds like a pretty crazy statistic, doesn't it? Surely that's evidence that guns are bad or evil?
No, the crazy part about the statistic is the vast difference in populations. America has a far greater population than Paris, even if you try to figure out the 'population' of Paris since WWII. That numbers game alone shows that it would be expected that there would be more shootings in America... because there are more people! A mathematical similarity would be saying that more sixes are rolled when 200 people roll dice than when 5 people roll dice. Well, d'uh!!
Piers actually pointed the real issue when he says:
"In Britain, we have 35 gun deaths a year."
What he's essentially saying (although avoiding saying it directly) is that when a country bans guns, there are still shootings.
Banning guns does not reduce this number to zero. What is does do, though, is increase other areas of crime. As Trump rightly states:
"But Piers, in London you have stabbings all over."
So, whilst still having a degree of gun crime, the UK has a huge problem with knife crime.
And hence the reality of the statement that if people want to commit a crime, they will find a way to do it.
The problem is that some people don't follow laws, and they get away with it for a while. In the UK, people can get hold of guns illegally. And that's the same in the USA: people who would be banned from purchasing a gun somehow slip through the net.
The problem isn't the gun, it's the crime.
Here is one of them (talking of a shooting in Paris):
"More people were shot dead in America that week than have died from guns in Paris since the Second World War."
Sounds like a pretty crazy statistic, doesn't it? Surely that's evidence that guns are bad or evil?
No, the crazy part about the statistic is the vast difference in populations. America has a far greater population than Paris, even if you try to figure out the 'population' of Paris since WWII. That numbers game alone shows that it would be expected that there would be more shootings in America... because there are more people! A mathematical similarity would be saying that more sixes are rolled when 200 people roll dice than when 5 people roll dice. Well, d'uh!!
Piers actually pointed the real issue when he says:
"In Britain, we have 35 gun deaths a year."
What he's essentially saying (although avoiding saying it directly) is that when a country bans guns, there are still shootings.
Banning guns does not reduce this number to zero. What is does do, though, is increase other areas of crime. As Trump rightly states:
"But Piers, in London you have stabbings all over."
So, whilst still having a degree of gun crime, the UK has a huge problem with knife crime.
And hence the reality of the statement that if people want to commit a crime, they will find a way to do it.
The problem is that some people don't follow laws, and they get away with it for a while. In the UK, people can get hold of guns illegally. And that's the same in the USA: people who would be banned from purchasing a gun somehow slip through the net.
The problem isn't the gun, it's the crime.
No comments:
Post a Comment