Gun Control & the Catholic Church

[Zooey]

OK, if you say so . . .

Britain, Australia top U.S. in violent crime

Rates Down Under increase despite strict gun-control measures By Jon Dougherty

© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
Law enforcement and anti-crime activists regularly claim that the United States tops the charts in most crime-rate categories, but a new international study says that America’s former master – Great Britain – has much higher levels of crime.
The International Crime Victims Survey, conducted by Leiden University in Holland, found that England and Wales ranked second overall in violent crime among industrialized nations.
** Twenty-six percent of English citizens – roughly one-quarter of the population – have been victimized by violent crime. Australia led the list with more than 30 percent of its population victimized. **
The United States didn’t even make the “top 10” list of industrialized nations whose citizens were victimized by crime.
Highlights of the study indicated that:

• The percentage of the population that suffered “contact crime” in England and Wales was 3.6 percent, compared with 1.9 percent in the United States and 0.4 percent in Japan.
• Burglary rates in England and Wales were also among the highest recorded. Australia (3.9 percent) and Denmark (3.1 per cent) had higher rates of burglary with entry than England and Wales (2.8 percent). In the U.S., the rate was 2.6 percent, according to 1995 figures;
• “After Australia and England and Wales, the highest prevalence of crime was in Holland (25 percent), Sweden (25 percent) and Canada (24 percent). The United States, despite its high murder rate, was among the middle ranking countries with a 21 percent victimization rate,” the London Telegraph said.
• England and Wales also led in automobile thefts. More than 2.5 percent of the population had been victimized by car theft, followed by 2.1 percent in Australia and 1.9 percent in France. Again, the U.S. was not listed among the “top 10” nations.
• The study found that Australia led in burglary rates, with nearly 4 percent of the population having been victimized by a burglary. Denmark was second with 3.1 percent; the U.S. was listed eighth at about 1.8 percent.
  Interestingly, the study found that one of the lowest victimization rates – just 15 percent overall – occurred in Northern Ireland, home of the Irish Republican Army and scene of years of terrorist violence.

The rest of the story is at this link: [geoffmetcalf.com/guncontrol_20010302.html](http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/guncontrol_20010302.html)

:clapping: :clapping: Thank you kindly for posting the** facts**!!
God bless you & yours.

Exactly as I have been saying all along.

 

[Bennie_P]

Zooey:
:clapping: :clapping: Thank you kindly for posting the** facts**!!
God bless you & yours.

Exactly as I have been saying all along.

Is there an independant source to verify these “facts”? They call it a study but I don’t see any source quoted but from those that oppose gun control. and quoting the London Telegraph without date and it’s source of data is really not a verifible source.

Oh Zooey here is the Teaching of your Church about Gun Control

Gun Control
Violence and, more particularly, violence to children and youth is a primary concern for United Methodists. We recognize and deplore violence which kills and injures children and youth. In the name of Christ, who came so that persons might know abundant life, we call upon the church to affirm its faith through vigorous efforts to curb and eliminate gun violence. Gun violence is killing America’s children. Based on statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, there are an estimated 223 million firearms in the United States. Approximately one out of every four households owns a handgun. The risk of handgun violence to children and youth is more prevalent in the United States today than in any previous generation. Our communities and schools are so exposed to large numbers of privately owned guns that no mere attempts at providing slightly better security can match the awful threat of guns finding their way through our well-intentioned safety systems. A significant total reduction in the numbers of guns in our communities is our goal in ministry. We serve and our society’s children go to school amidst passionately violent segments of current youth culture. No appeals to individual autonomy are sufficient to justify our church’s ignorance of this threat. The need to prevent the incidence of firearm-related injury and death is an issue of increasing concern and a priority U.S. public health issue. The United Methodist Church is among those religious communions calling for social policies and personal lifestyles that bring an end to senseless gun violence..source

Of course they are more clear then the Caholic Church is about the issue:shrug:

 

[Sir_Knight]

Your exegesis is incorrect. Check any bible with notes…But we’ve done that before haven’t we? You said that the Bishops and the Vatican had it wrong and you had it right if I remember correctly

According to the Catholic faith, bishops are NOT assured infallibility and as far as I know, the ONLY time that the the Vatican has spoken out on this subject was IN SUPPORT of the private ownership of firearms – thus, making your position, and NOT my position, incorrect.

Yeah but not by shooting people!

Where does it say that? It says that we are REQUIERED to stop an unjust aggressor from causing harm and even if we have to kill that person, we will not be guilty of murder. CCC2264&2265.

So are you trying to tell me that it if we shoot someone to stop them, it is wrong but if we kill them with our bare hands or some other it means, it is not wrong?

I completely agree with those positions.

You do? Please explain.

You completely agree with them by shooting people until they are dead or incapacitated I don’t.

We are to use whatever force is necessary to render an unjust aggressor from causing further harm. The goal is to STOP the attack – not kill the attacker. If they should die as a result, while tragic, they are victims of actions which they themselves initiated.

I have never said that we don’t have a responsibility to protect the innocent. That’s what you want me to say, but I haven’t said it. I think a lot of what you say makes sense, but I don’t agree with guns and I don’t think it’s Catholic because they are a deadly weapon.

Church teaching does not say that owning or using deadly weapons is wrong. As I said before, the only place that the Vatican has spoken out on this subject was IN FAVOR of the private ownership and use of firearms.

Sorry I’m all out of medals

That’s okay. I already go mine and it was blessed. Thus, making it a scramental.

The glorification of fire arm and the position that the Church supports the use of firearms-- which it CLEARLY doesn’t. Sorry, but it just doesn’t. That’s why the Vatican wont EVER accept Saint Gabriel as a patron saint of guns. It is incongruous with the faith!!!

That’s where you are wrong the church CLEARLY does support the private onwership and use of firearms. It says so on the Vatican’s own website.

OK he did shoot a gun at a lizard and it scared off some nasty people. I think he’s a great Saint and used his head to save others- nothing else! That’s twisty! Saint of guns-- honestly!! Good grief!!!

And if had not used a gun in the past and had expereince with it, he would have never been able to hit a running lizard. It was his skill with a handgun which scared them off. Skill, which was obtained from practise with shooting a handgun.

If he was not experienced with a handgun, he would have missed the lizard and they would not have been impressed and they would not have run off. Requiring him to either kill them or be killed himself or allow them to terrorize the village and it’s people.

The presence of a handgun and his BEFORE HAND knowledge in how to use it allowed him to save others without any bloodshed. The same holds true today. The mere presence of a handgun ends a potential attack 9 out of 10 times without a shot being fired or anyone getting hurt.

 

[Ray_Scheel]

Ok, let us go back to only the production of guns that were available in 1955. Including the type of hunting rifles, shot guns and handguns that were available then and only allow the same per- capita citizen to gun ownership as in 1955, I could live with that, could you?

I’d welcome a return to the 1955 per capita gun ownership rates, as that would be a substantial increase. As far as restricting the technology, this is a recast version of the “we should only have muskets and ball pistol” arguments that have already been discussed at length, with the proponents of that argument repeatedly (that would now include you, if you didn’t catch that) not bothering to address the problems with that type of proposal that have already been presented…

 

[Sir_Knight]

What was the population in the 1950’s compared to the 1990’s???

What does it matter? We’re not talking about the NUMBER of murders of the murder rate per- capita.

This is possible the weakest statistic I have ever seen presented as evidence for anything ever.

In YOUR opinion, it may be a weak statistic but to those without closed minds it clearly shows that when people are exposed to guns and guns are made available, there is LESS criminal use of them.

 

[Sir_Knight]

The best means could be to melt all the firearms in world down and make bells out them - but that is an opinion, and that is all your idea that the best means is for every one to be armed, an opinion, and that opinion is based on Church teaching , not really:shrug:

And when a frail 70-year old in a wheelchair is attacked by a muscular 20-year year old twice his size, how do you suggest he defend himself?

 

[Sir_Knight]

I’m not Sir Knight I agree with what it says in synthesis (qv) with the rest of my faith- a faith that teaches us to love, to do all things with charity, to forgive and to love God and my neighbour!

And part of loving our neighbor is to protect them from harm if they are unjustly attacked and if we are duty bound to protect our neighbor, we are also duty bound to protect ourselves because the Catechism states that we are to take GREATER care of our own life than that of others.

Check out CCC 25: - it is titled Above all charity.

The Roman Catechism teaches us–
The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love.~Roman Catechism, Preface 10; cf. I Cor 13 8.

And none of that negates 2263-2265 … or, are you saying that the church is contradicting itself?

 

[Bennie_P]

I’d welcome a return to the 1955 per capita gun ownership rates, as that would be a substantial increase. …

Prove it? That household with guns would be more the today and the number of guns within household with firearms would be higher? Then today?

As far as restricting the technology, this is a recast version of the “we should only have muskets and ball pistol” arguments that have already been discussed at length, with the proponents of that argument repeatedly (that would now include you, if you didn’t catch that) not bothering to address the problems with that type of proposal that have already been presented…

I’m not the one that mention the the 50s:shrug:

 

[Sir_Knight]

Prove it? That household with guns would be more the today and the number of guns within household with firearms would be higher? Then today?

What

 

[Brendan]

The best means could be to melt all the firearms in world down and make bells out them - but that is an opinion, and that is all your idea that the best means is for every one to be armed, an opinion, and that opinion is based on Church teaching , not really:shrug:

And that would last how long?

I made a gun myself, using block steel from a junk yard and tools I bought at a local hardware store.

It’s really not all that hard if you’ve ever had basic shop classes. In a city like mine (Detroit) there are literally 100’s of thousands of folks with the necessary skills to make firearms.

So if all the guns were somehow melted down, how long do you think it would take before homemade guns started showing up on the streets.

And who do you think would have those guns?

 

[Bennie_P]

What

I would like to see some stats that there were more guns per capita in the 1950s then today I don’t know were to find them.

 

[Bennie_P]

And that would last how long?

I made a gun myself, using block steel from a junk yard and tools I bought at a local hardware store.

That wasn’t my point, my point was, it is just an opinion no more then what Sir Knight’s claim that the best defense is to own a gun.

When I was a kid, an older teenager should me and my friends how to make zip guns with a broken car antenna, a nail, a rubber band and 22 bullet. so your point?

 

[Bennie_P]

Zooey:
:clapping: :clapping: Thank you kindly for posting the** facts**!!
God bless you & yours.

Exactly as I have been saying all along.

Your welcome and I still think the homicide rate, including gun related is higher in the USA then other developed countries. And guns help make those rates higher.

Teenage violence: Life at the sharp end
By Olga Craig, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 2:00am BST 02/07/2007
At face value, Home Office statistics do not reveal a startling increase in knife-crime deaths: 246 people died as a result of stabbing last year, compared with 231 in 1994. But what has changed dramatically is the expectation that young boys, and often girls, will carry knives. Three years ago, a British Crime Survey found that 60,000 11- to 16-year-olds carried them habitually. And even if many said they did it merely to look “cool”, to be “tooled up” is common among the young.
The Home Office has no figures for the number of teenagers who are in jail as murder suspects, but research by King’s College London indicates that at least 15 murder and attempted murder suspects, aged 18 or under, are being held after being charged in the past six months. Frighteningly, 69 teenagers were shot dead in 2006, almost double the 35 killed by guns in 1997. Four years ago, 31 youths under 20 were charged with gun-related murder in London. Interim figures for this year show that this has already risen to 76.

In England 2006
69 shot dead
246 stabbed
315 total shot and stabbed

In USA 2003
cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/YV_DataSheet.pdf

• In 2003, 5,570 young people ages 10 to 24 were
murdered—an average of 16 each day (CDC 2006a).
• Homicide was the 2nd leading cause of death for young
people ages 15 to 24 years old (CDC 2006a).
• Among 10 to 24 year-olds, 86% (4769) of homicide
victims were male and 14% (801) were female (CDC
2006a).
• Among homicide victims ages 10 to 24 years-old, 82%
were killed with a firearm (CDC 2006a). (4,567)

Canada****'s homicide rate of 1.73 victims per 100,000 was about one-third of that of the United States (5.69 per 100,000) and was slightly lower than that of England and Wales (1.93) but higher than France (1.65) ands Australia (1.63).

Canada - Police reported that one in every seven homicides in 2003 involved organized crime or street gangs.

 

[Sir_Knight]

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1163&stc=1&d=1183688206

 

[Lou_F]

It all boils down to this: If one refuses the duty to responsibly defend their family unselfishly (by unselfishly I mean at the cost of one’s own life, and, even at the cost of their own opinion to never use a gun) they are either selfish, stubborn, or a coward. Nobody has to be made to carry a gun, but neither should the right for a person to bear arms be banded. Why do so many accept that others can do their “dirty work” (like a military or police department to responsibly defend oneself or family) but will refuse to responsibly defend their own at the price of their own opinion? Every parent, every person, doesn’t need to be a doctor or nurse, but shouldn’t every parent, every person, know how to save themselves or those they are responsible for from choking, and other medical emergencies that they can be capable of preventing? Yes, knowing how, and the actual act of aiding another during a medical emergecy is a good thing. Isn’t then, knowing how, and the actual act of responsibly and unselfishly defending the life of oneslf or a loved one (even at the expense of an opinion) also a good thing, even if it requries the use of a firearm?

 

[Sir_Knight]

You bring up an excellent point. It’s amazing how many people see nothing wrong with calling someone else with a GUN (the police) to protect them but feel that it is wrong to protect themselves with that same GUN.

It’s not WHO use it that makes it good or bad but HOW it is used.

 

[Alphonsus_John]

I’m going to throw my 2 cents in here.

I oppose gun control. When I’m 60 and no longer in the best shape or health, I’d like the means to defend myself and my family from violent attack. Even if guns could be made to magically vanish from the planet people would still do each other harm. It happened since Cain and Abel and will go on happening when people are scooting around in the starship Enterprise. Firearms are a great equalizer. A 90 lb. 80 yr. old woman or a paraplegic in a wheelchair can defend themselves with guns against multiple attackers who are younger and stronger. They cannot with fists, clubs, etc.

I can only imagine how frightening it is to have 911 on the line with police’s 5-10 minute response time and someone in your house looking to do you harm. Until they come out with phasers on stun, I’d much rather have the security of being able to defend myself with a firearm.

 

[MariaGorettiGrl]

While I like the idea of only the cops having guns, it’s never going to be that way. If criminals want guns, they will get guns. If it isn’t legal for them to buy them, they’ll get them illegally ( :bigyikes: criminals breaking laws?!?)

Criminals are as afraid of guns being pointed at them as everyone else. When they think that a household might have guns, they don’t rob that house. I do not want to live in a world where criminals can freely waltz into anywhere being assured that they will have the deadliest weapon.

It may sound weird, but what we need is MORE people using guns. Can you imagine if we taught flight attendants how to shoot and they all carried hand guns? Lets see how brave a terrorist feels when he doesn’t know he’s the only armed one on the plane!

 

[vern_humphrey]

I’m going to throw my 2 cents in here.

I oppose gun control. When I’m 60 and no longer in the best shape or health, I’d like the means to defend myself and my family from violent attack. Even if guns could be made to magically vanish from the planet people would still do each other harm. It happened since Cain and Abel and will go on happening when people are scooting around in the starship Enterprise. Firearms are a great equalizer. A 90 lb. 80 yr. old woman or a paraplegic in a wheelchair can defend themselves with guns against multiple attackers who are younger and stronger. They cannot with fists, clubs, etc.

I can only imagine how frightening it is to have 911 on the line with police’s 5-10 minute response time and someone in your house looking to do you harm. Until they come out with phasers on stun, I’d much rather have the security of being able to defend myself with a firearm.

I spent a year and a half in the Detroit area a decade or so ago. They always had problems there – in once case, a woman was murdered after calling 911 repeatedly.

On TV the Chief of Police, McKenna, was asked, “What’s the average response time for 911?”

And he said, and I quote, “I don’t know the average response time for 911.”

Fortunately, as a legal resident of Virginia, I had a Virginia concealed carry permit – and Michigan honored it.

 

[melensdad]

At what age did she get started? Does she shoot any handguns? If so, which one/ones? I was thinking about a Ruger Single-Action in .22 for my little one when she eventually starts shooting.

Sorry I’m so late at replying, I’ve been out of town for over a week and just saw your post.

I wanted to start her at age 8, my wife suggested we wait until my daughter showed some real interest. I figured age 10 is actually a pretty good age to start and I was wrong. Age 8 is probably better because there are all sorts of youth shooting events for kids and many are very competitive by age 10. At 12 years old my daughter loves to shoot, but is already outclassed by younger shooters who have several years of competitive shooting experience.

She does shoot a handgun. She’s tried my 9mm and does not like it. Too much noise. She has a Ruger MKII semi auto pistol that she shoots, but really likes the Ruger 10/22 rifle the most.

---

In a prior post regarding guns/violence/etc I stated that suicide should be eliminated from “gun” statistics because they would occur whether a gun was used or not. That post was rebutted, in part, with the following information:

Suicide should not be removed, without guns, many suicide attempts ‘fail’ because there is time to reconsider your action.

I will again restate my logic that guns do not increase the suicide rate and while suicide is tragic and horrible, it is not “caused by” guns. In fact in a government report compiled and called: America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007 it clearly states:

Suffocation, mainly from hanging, accounted for 40 percent of suicides.

So if 4 out of 10 suicides by children are suffocation from hanging, clearly we need to regulate rope because rope is clearly one of the leading “causes” of child suicide. Now I’m not trying to make light of the problem, but to illustrate the point. There are only so many things we can actually ‘control’ and some of those things are ‘blamed’ for ‘events’ that they do not ‘cause.’

---

Criminals are as afraid of guns being pointed at them as everyone else. When they think that a household might have guns, they don’t rob that house. I do not want to live in a world where criminals can freely waltz into anywhere being assured that they will have the deadliest weapon.

While I do not live in fear, I do live in an area where a typical response time is LONGER THAN 30 MINUTES if you dial 9-1-1 and consequently it is hard to justify allowing yourself to be unprepared for an emergency.

Since we moved out into the country we were “snowed in” for 4 days. We lost power for 8 days when temperatures reached -20 degrees. We’ve had rains that have flooded out the roads for 36 hours before they were passable. We are prepared for all these events and can heat our home, power our well, keep the lights on . . . even if the power grid fails. We can also protect our home, if necessary.

Isn’t that all just common sense