Pick Your Poison - Gas, Guns, or Elitism
by Lewis DerkinsJune 4th, 2008, 8:58 pm
You may have heard about the recent promotion by a car dealership in Kansas City that offered a free gun or free gas with the purchase of a car. Our friends at Streetsblog certainly have, and were kind enough to enlighten the public on the subject of firearms and automobiles with the headline, “Car Buyers Pick Their Poison: Free Gun or Free Gas”. As Streetsblog pointed out,
According to the Centers for Disease Control, guns were responsible for 30,694 deaths in 2005, and motor vehicles caused 45,520. You can say this for the latte-sipping elite — the CDC reported no deaths by espresso.
How much of a body count did self-indulged smugness rack up?
Here’s what you won’t hear on Streetsblog – guns save way more lives than they take every year. New York is experiencing a historic decline in crime. Murder rates are at the lowest than have been in years - but we aren’t sitting around holding hands and singing Kumbaya due to new bike lanes and better subways. We’re enjoying that low crime rate because of guns and automobiles.
In the 1990’s, New York embarked on a “zero tolerance” policy for crime that was coupled with new advancements in technology and with the training of about 5,000 additional police officers. In case you aren’t paying attention, police officers carry guns.
The police also deployed what was, at the time, a very innovative computerized crime tracking system that allowed them flexibility to anticipate patterns in crime and shift coverage quickly. Cars are obviously instrumental in this strategy, allowing officers quick access to where the trouble is.
But it’s not just guns in the hands of police that save lives; concealed carry weapons are the single most cost effective deterrent to crime in existence. In every state that has adopted concealed carry laws, violent crime rates have fallen dramatically. One of the foremost experts on the topic is John R. Lott, Jr. In his book More Guns, Less Crime
One of Lott’s biggest revelations is that guns are used defensively over 2 million times per year, and in 95% of those incidents, the intended victim is able to protect him/herself without firing a shot. Not only do guns afford protection to people who can’t defend themselves, but concealed carry owners have almost no criminal offenses related to handguns.
What you won’t hear StreetsBlog say about those 30,694 gun deaths is that well over half – 17,002 were intentional suicides – so does it really matter that a gun was the method of choice? Is that really the fault of guns? If guns were gone, do we really believe those people would still be alive?
Now that’s not to say that it’s acceptable to have nearly 13,000 murders, but let’s look at the 2 million defensive gun uses again. If a little more than half of 1% of those people saved a life by using their guns, and you can bet that’s probably accurate, then guns save far more people than they kill every year.
What you also won’t hear about are the lives saved by automobiles when police officers respond to crimes or ambulances rush people to hospitals.
But of course those things don’t help you write an article about picking your poison between gas and guns. You can be the judge, but at least now you know both sides.
When asked by the bloggers at Wheels why drivers choose guns over gas, Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner explained that most consumers prefer their prizes to come in the form of an optional purchase — the gun — rather than a necessary purchase — the gas. “For many coffee-drinking New Yorkers, an equivalent may be the choice between $250 grocery money and an espresso machine,” the blog says.
If that last sentence doesn’t say enough about how out of touch Streetsbloggers are with real issues, I don’t know what does. Espresso machines or groceries? For some people who are having trouble affording groceries due to rising fuel prices that drive the costs of food up, that little comment seems to smack of elitism.
Related Posts
- Part 1: Car Haters: Streetsblog
- Part 2: Pete at Streetsblog: “Few Ideas” at Commuter Outrage
- Part 3: Who Is Mark Gorton?
- Part 4: StreetsBlog: StreetCritiques
- Part 5: Pick Your Poison - Gas, Guns, or Elitism
- Part 6: Streetsblog’s Comment Moderation Policy: Waaaaaaaaaaa!
- Part 7: A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words
- Part 8: Bike Box?
Posted in Gas Prices, Uncategorized Rage |
I would point out that in printing the groceries-espresso machine sentence, Streetsblog is quoting the NYT blog Wheels. Extended quote (from Wheels):
“For many coffee-drinking New Yorkers, an equivalent may be the choice between $250 grocery money and an espresso machine.
The right (financially sound) choice is taking the grocery money because that’s cash you’re going to spend anyway, so you would be saving money. But I think I’d go for the espresso machine every time.
“There’s a lot of research that shows that people treat windfall profits totally differently than they treat regular income (it’s called ‘mental accounting,’ in general),” Mr. Dubner added, “so while your point makes perfect sense, we don’t always think so sensibly.” ”
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/why-guns-over-gas/
Derk, Did you know that the computerized tracking system you mention above - CompStat - has been so successful that NYC Transit wants to create a similar system “to treat skyrocketing subway delays like a crime.”
Of course, NYC Transit gets it completely wrong …
http://www.commuteroutrage.com/2008/05/25/nyc-subway-delay-compstat
That last sentence came from Steve Dubner at Freakonomics, not “Streetsbloggers.”
That’s an interesting theory you’ve got there that the presence of cop cars and guns are responsible for the decline in crime in NYC. Cops had cars and guns when the murder rate was 2,500 a year.
In fact, one of the new ideas that came back into vogue when Bratton and Rudy launched CompStat in ‘94 was community policing and walking the beat. Cops getting out of their cars. Getting connected to neighborhoods and communities again. Getting cops out of their cars was an effective deterrent to crime.
Marty,
What difference does it make where that sentence came from? Streetsblog used it as an integral part of their overall point.
The not so subtle intimation is that in New York - “we are too sophisticated to need guns - not like the dumb hicks in this article.”
Your theory about falling crime rates is interesting since it still depends on the 5,000 cops and 5,000 additional guns on the street that I mention. I’ve got news for you, beat cops aren’t walking all the way from the precinct house out into the neighborhoods, they’re driving, parking somewhere strategic, and walking around. And they were carrying guns because hugs and kisses don’t tend to deter violent criminals in a city with 2,500+ murders - and they still carry guns to this day for the same reason.
I don’t deny that walking the beat had an effect, but you’d be foolish to think that such a huge increase in man and firepower didn’t play into that decline too.
If guns spawn crime - why have crime rates been falling in every single state that has enacted concealed carry laws - including New York?