In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw
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Doesn't matter that we're right in their minds. Guns are the problem. "Less guns" is the solution and so confiscation is a good thing.
According to the Criminal Justice Council’s Statistical Analysis Center (a Delaware’s Executive Department agency that reports to the Markell Administration), the annual average number of arrests for all firearm offenses combined, over the two most recent two years for which complete data is available (2010 & 2011) was 2426. Less than 1 in 8 of these arrests (311) resulted in convictions far the original charge or a lesser offense.
According to the 2010 Census, Delaware's population is about 917,000.
That is an annual rate of gun crimes of 0.03% of the population (or 33.9 per 100,000 population if you prefer the way the FBI reports crime rates).
And the scariest part of all of this is that the majority of this tiny number of arrests and convictions probably were complete bullshit.