This year, among the socks and sweaters, bottles of wine, a large number of Americans will find another present: guns.You can almost feel the angst.
Gun shop owners across the US have reported a marked increase in interest in their products over the holidays. In November, the FBI ran more than 2.2m gun background checks, a 24% increase from last year. Gun background checks hit a new record on Black Friday, when 185,345 were processed by the FBI.
On another note, here's an annotated chart of the American homicide rates for the last 130 years:
From here
You can draw your own conclusions.
The person who made that chart thinks gun control "suddenly" became an issue last year.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little concerned that the chart isn't credited with labrls, a source and definitions. It's a common tactic for both sides to cherry-pick data and definitions. Following the links didn't turn up a source of the data or definitions. I'd be much happier with both.
ReplyDeleteYeah, everywhere I've seen it folks worried the same thing but tracked it against FBI data and it matches up pretty good. The quality of pre WWI data is a little iffy, admittedly.
ReplyDeleteOr let Wikipedia do the tracking for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade
ReplyDeleteAnd it also jibes there (gibes?). For the most part.
I can't easily present someone with a firearm.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia requires me to conduct such transactions at a licensed firearms dealer's establishment. Even parent to child.