Friday, March 16, 2018

Asking for it

Men love the way women look. It was designed that way. No matter how a woman dresses, men will generally look. The latest fad is leggings or tights in all situations. That's ok. For almost all men, this is simply a pleasure to the eye. The way a woman dresses is not an invitation to be assaulted, and the thought would never cross most men's minds, no matter how a woman is dressed. However, sick individuals, predisposed to assault women, will do so whether they are wearing leggings, a mini-skirt, or a potato sack. These are sick individuals. An attack by a sick individual is not the result of a woman "asking for it" by the way she dresses.

Expecting students to take responsibility for the way they act is a good thing in general. But to somehow suggest that they can prevent a sick individual from attacking students individually, in a group, or en masse as in the case of school shooters by "being nicer to them" is as ridiculous as saying that women ask for it by the way they dress.

And yet, some people had both views simultaneously. That a woman is not asking for it, but that kids by not being nice, or even by ostracizing and individual because his (or her - rarely) actions, are in a sense, asking for it. I hold that women are not asking for deranged individuals to assault them, and kids are not asking for deranged individuals to attack or shoot them.

The problem, in both cases, is the deranged individual (substitute whatever politically correct euphemism that makes you happy, but beware you may add to the problem by doing so).

There is roughly a one-to-one ratio of privately held guns to individuals in the population, and yet very few are used in assaults or mass shootings. The ratio of deranged individuals to individuals in the population is substantially smaller than the one-to-one gun ratio (which would require that every individual be deranged). And yet the clamor is to somehow blame the guns, and try to infringe a constitutional right rather than deal with, or even discuss rationally, the real problems. Guns are no more the problem than are mini-skirts.

Many students are protesting, and walking out of class (how hard is it to get that to happen) to protest gun laws. While some are informed, if you asked the average "protestor" what the current gun laws are, how or if they are enforced, where most gun fatalities occur and what the circumstances are, you would get blank stares. You would instead hear "something must be done about guns" or "down with the NRA."

This week there was a "7000 Shoes Memorial" [sic] at the White House. Looking at the CDC Mortality Tables, from 1999-2016, the following jumps out. For youths aged 1-24 yrs, the death rate by guns of any type across the US is 4.1 per 100,000. For black males only, the rate jumps to 29.5 per 100,000, and for just the state of Illinois, the rate for black males jumps to 60.6 per 100,000, accounting for 10% of all black male youth gun deaths in the US. This rate is 15 times higher than the national average. While ALL gun deaths are tragic, especially among youth, this is clearly not (just) a gun problem. Go here to do your own research, as I did: https://wonder.cdc.gov. The results of my search are in the attached figures.

One can also look at world-wide statistics comparing gun deaths per 100,000 individuals, and the US is high on that list. But is you also look at the number of guns per 100,000 individuals, and then compare the number of deaths per gun owned, the US is near the bottom. Jamaica, for example, has over 4 deaths per gun owned. These guns are busy! (For those who attribute the deaths to the gun, and not to the murderous individual holding it).

If you break down the numbers in the US alone, the areas with the strictest gun controls have the highest rate of deaths per gun. Since most memes promoting tighter gun control cite hand-picked statistics out of context, I can say that, just looking at statistics, it would appear that the best defense against gun deaths is to increase the number of guns in the population. At least my statements are fully supported by results anyone can check.

Wearing a skirt does not invite sexual assault. Gun ownership does not invite murderous crimes. Individuals who are sick or bent on committing crimes do. While banning mini-skirts won't reduce so-called sexual assaults, at least this wouldn't reduce the ability of a woman to defend herself against an attack. But restricting her access to firearms certainly would.








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