that's a lot of belgians!

I'm pretty sure the problem is Belgian Waffling.

Mind you, it's kind of hard to shoot someone when the instructions are in Flemish.

I'm not sure I do get the picture. Not to agree with Coulter, but if we had 11,101 gun homicides and 50% were black Americans, then the remaining 50% would be Latino, Asian, and other races, not just white. My guess would be Latinos account for a larger group than whites. Anyway, isn't the easiest way to prove Coulter wrong to just look up how many white people were killed in gun-related homicides?

It's not America's gun problem, it's America's race problem! I wish more of these gun nuts would be forthright about it.

Why do all these old angry white guys want AR-15's so badly? 5280's pal Massad Ayoob explains this in good detail. It's the blacks and the Latinos. They're charging bull elephants. They charge in packs of 10 to 20 at a time, and you need a lot of firepower to bring one down, let alone a dozen of them. You're going to wish your 30 round magazine was 40 rounds when the black and brown people home invasion you and try to rape your dog and cat and all your daughters.

Just look at this from the point of view of a very, very frightened white man.

4, i did lump hispanic whites with non-hispanic whites.

True. Coulter IS nuts.

But. The relevant statistic is the race of the VICTIMS.

Are non-whites victims of gun homicides at a much higher and disproportionate rate? Currently, I'm not sure. But historically undoubtably this was true.

Yes, and, today the perpetrators are usually same race as the victim.

So the fact remains, and facts are neither racist or biased—they are facts—that mass shootings, by white people or anybody else, are a very small percentage of gun homicides.

If we're open to addressing race/cultural issues when it comes to this small but intense minority of mass shootings then we'd better be open to at least discussing race/cultural issues when it comes to the vast majority of other gun homicides.

Ignoring it all won't help.

The problem is that people, and by "people" I mean idiots, use skin pigmentation as a guide to the likeliness of gun violence occurring instead of economic status and ease of getting your hands on the pocket murder tool they love so.

A conservative is also a racist? I'm shocked.

What a way to butcher an argument.

Mudede's "then there's this" link does not link to the blockquote ... and the "important new study" referenced in (David Frum's) blockquoted argument is from 1986 (NEJM).

Incidentally, the supporting data are from 1978-1983, from a very restricted sample (our very own King County).

Splitting hairs to divert attention.

The issue is Amoklauf massacres, specifically little kids getting slaughtered by a suicidal mental defective white male with a semi-automatic rifle, negligent parents, and training.

Sophists will use any tool they can, even Racism.

8, agree with you all the way.

Not to defend Coulter, but Charles interchangeably using two very different statistics. Coulter was claiming that the murder rates are similar, Charles is claiming that it's incorrect because the gun murder rates are so different. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, so Charles' claim does nothing to counter hers, no matter how incorrect she is. The murder rates could very well be identical, but the gun murder rates very different.

Looking at the figures, the murder rate in Belgium is 1.8 per 100,000. According to the FBI stats, in very nearly exactly half of murders where an arrest is made, the suspects are white (I assume that hispanic people are included in the white category):
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/cri…

If you assume that those rates hold across all the other murders where no arrest was made, that means that white people accounted for 7374 murders in 2010. At a population of 223 million, that puts the rate at about 3.3 per 100,000 - still almost twice that of Belgium.

What I'm trying to say is that clearly neither of you has any idea what you're talking about when it comes to these figures, nor do you care to be at all accurate. With both of you, it's about proving a political point, reality be damned.

@6: You're spot-on here. Assaults, aggravated assaults, robbery, rape and sexual assault no longer occur now that they're illegal. I'm hoping (fingers crossed) we will also make shooting kids in unprotected schools illegal as well, maybe as part of the president's legislative push or imperial decree tomorrow.

It is odd that a last bastion handful of scared, white men would take any kind of precautions STILL in this day and age, even when they know full well that the (imaginary) criminals can't have guns, since that is illegal. Some of these jackasses probably even still have alarms on their houses.

The sooner we get the benefit of enlightened people like you in power, the better.

PS - Ann Coulter is a fucking idiot.

@16 said all that needs to be said:

neither of you [Ann Coulter and Charles Mudede] has any idea what you're talking about when it comes to these figures, nor do you care to be at all accurate. With both of you, it's about proving a political point, reality be damned.

@18

Just like the US Government never oppressed anybody, because guns. If you're going to take this nihilist attitude, why are you even interested in what those of us who care about civilization make legal and illegal? Go crawl into your bunker.

If you don't like me characterizing the gun nut position on race, then you explain it in your words.

@16, i have feeling coulter did not even try to see if what she said made any sense. and to accuse me of being political is a bit odd, as i believe being apolitical is also being political. everything is political, g. but there is a politics that's close to the facts, and a politics that is far from them. your numbers seem to show my politics are actually closer to the facts.

@20: Not nihilist at all, I'm the exact opposite. I'm all for excluding violent people from society, shutting down the illegal drug trade (by removing the "illegal" part) that finances huge amounts of crime and destroys inner cities and the lives of poor people and minorities. I am also in favor of protecting innocent unprotected people (including children) more effectively than today.

My bunker is an (alarmed - stupid, I know) secluded suburban house that unfortunately has quite a bit of shit in it that people might steal, as happens in our neighborhood on a semi-regular basis. As long as my family is not home, they can have it. If my family and I are home, I'm going to call the cops and hope they arrive. If the person(s) leave, awesome. If not, I'm going to shoot them. A lot. As many times as it takes.

It's an exceptionally unlikely event, that unfortunately has a potentially astronomically high cost, i.e. could cost me everything I value most in the world. So, I take precautions, and will continue to do so regardless of whatever law or papal bull comes down directing me otherwise. And I'm not alone.

And I will need to check my Gun Nut Bylaws, but I don't know if I am familiar with the 'position on race.'

@22

The majority of gun owners -- even the majority of NRA members -- support background checks on all gun sales. Limiting magazines? Yep. Assault weapons? Yes. On down the list of common sense proposals that are in the works.

You're (a sock puppet of) one of the minority of gun owners who are standing in the way of the most minimal steps to curb gun violence. That's pretty fucking nihilist. Racism is the only explanation I can think of for this irrational attitude.

And the Slog posters who are behind sock puppets like you have already revealed themselves to be pretty racist. It's actually why they created the sock accounts. The open racism wasn't selling.

Not that "you can't define an assault weapon" is working either. You guys are plummeting in the polls. Even among gun owners.

@22 & 23

this has been going on for weeks and it's getting boring to watch. could you two just fuck and get it over with?

@21:

your numbers seem to show my politics are actually closer to the facts.

She was off by about 50%. You fucked up the murder rate/gun murder rate stats so badly so it's hard to say how far off you are. In that range, certainly. The point isn't "who is more right." It's that neither of you really gives a shit about reality; you're much more interested in fudging the statistics to fit your existing world view.

I think that the real point on gun violence is that as long as it was non-white people, or poor white people, killing themselves off in the ghetto, none of you gave a shit. You (and the 'media') only care because mass shooters seem to target mostly middle-class white people.

That's why you have a fixation with "assault weapons" despite the fact that the last AWB had almost no demonstrable effect and the fact that "assault weapons" make up a miniscule percentage of crime/homicides.

Gun-control-nuts, at least here, seem to refer to a large portion of the gun-nuts as 'racist'. What is truly racist is how all of the gun-control-nuts are up in arms about gun control NOW, after a bunch of white-middle-class people got shot, when the problem has been a huge inner city/poor people problem for decades. (Oh yeah - the AWB is not going to have even the tiniest effect on that. Nor will tighter background checks or a limit on high cap magazines.)

I think you mean "a bunch of little kids had their bodies riddled with multiple bullets over and over", @26.

So how come almost all the mass murderers white dudes?

@27, You are correct, sorry, I meant to say, "a bunch of affluent, white kids had their bodies riddled with multiple bullets over and over." Because you know that has never happened to poor non-white people on a semi-daily basis while living in the inner city/ghetto/wherever.

I suspect that I'm the only one here who has actually had their house shot up in a drive-by shooting. The police found two bullets in her toybox at the foot of her bed. Thankfully the only victims were stuffed toys. Mind you, this was in Massachusetts, home of some of the strictest gun laws in the country. The gang members were, in fact, caught, with the weapons in their car. Cheap handguns, illegally possessed, just like the majority of actual gun crime.

@29, Hey I had my house shot up in a drive-buy when I lived in Austin. We lived two houses down from some sketchy white folks, so the whole row of houses got a good spraying one morning.

What if it's used to kill a household member, in self defense? These options aren't mutually exclusive.

@23: Again, I don't oppose background checks.

Why no handgun ban or limits? Is your magazine limit for handguns as well? They're used in an astonishing number of homicides and crimes.

What would be a suitable ammunition ratio vs. a sociopath that would be OK for me to use to protect myself and my family? Should I get 1/3 the number of rounds, as proposed? Or maybe one-up NY and go for 1/5 as many?

It's also a bizarre coincidence that of the sizeable number of gun owners I know and interact with, including cops and military and ex-military, literally none of them support being turned into criminals by a law that suits your "common sense." Maybe our collective racism keeps us from seeing the light that shines out of your cloistered little bubble from which you deign to tell us how to run our lives?

"It's an exceptionally unlikely event, that unfortunately has a potentially astronomically high cost, i.e. could cost me everything I value most in the world. So, I take precautions, and will continue to do so regardless of whatever law or papal bull comes down directing me otherwise. And I'm not alone."

Could you detail the precautions you all take for shark attack and asteroid strike as well?

@35: That was a pretty fucking stupid comment.

Fuck that fucking tranny.

@9, I'm puzzled: why would economic status have anything to do with people with guns murdering other people?

The thing is guns are a technology that accelerate killing in the same way that cars accelerate walking.

If the Belgians..with gun control..still manage to kill off so many of their countrymen, then they must be some angry little Worlds Fair IHOP loving powdered sugar and strawberries on top mofos.

@39: It's not that weird. Disenfranchised demographics have significantly lower class mobility, so they give up and become shitheads at higher rates. Fixing that is an important part of any effort to reduce violent crime.

Jesus Christ, it's very simple. Ann Coulter is a distraction of the most inane sort. Regardless of race, economic level, age, or access to moonshine, guns- especially assault weapons- should be harder to get. Gun owners should be more thoroughly vetted before they get them. Gun sellers should be held accountable for violations of these stricter laws. All with the goal of decreasing the opportunity for mass murder. We can all agree on mass murder=bad, can't we?

Cannot stand Coulter, but the difference in homicide rates between "non-Hispanic whites" and "blacks" is stunning, according to the CDC, looking at 1999 to 2007. Close to 10-1 overall, with the biggest difference among 20-24yo males:
White: 6.9/100,000
Black: 109/100,000

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml…

@42: Why not semiauto handguns? Why rifles?

You probably already know this, Boring Dad, but under Heller, handgun bans are unconstitutional. And that's almost exactly what a ban on semi-auto handguns would be.

Actually, it was a perfect lampooning of the deluded idiocy of your position, Boring. And since you assholes always get angrily aware of the deluded idiocy of your position when I use it, I intend to keep doing so.

To sum up my point: Fuck you and your NRA talking points.

And what is the color of the people who profit from gun sales in the U.S.? Any guesses?

@46: you're right, I just now realized my delusions, you've shown me the light with your wise words.

In the meantime while I wait for your confiscation squads, I'd suggest that you not break into my house, fuckhead.

@48, what is the color of the people who own every major corporation in America? What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

@50

Hmmmmm... Highly unpopular radical interpretation of the Second Amendment is forced down the nation's throats by a lobbying group using money to manipulate politicians. A lobbying group that doesn't even represent the views of its own members. Rather it slavishly serves the profit interests of the corporations that control it financially.

What does that have to do with race?

@50 The history of American capitalism is the history of white profits off every other race's death and misery. Starting with Native Americans being slaughtered for land. Black slavery. South American dictators. I could go on and on, but why bother.

@42,

Best comment in this thread! Who cares about Coulter? Sensible gun control needs to be implemented. Glad to see President Obama doing something about this problem.

@43 -- The URL you gave was incompletely rendered, but please note the CDC data is tabulated by race of victim, not race of perpetrator.

In general, the share of US gun homicides committed by blacks is around 57%, for whites it's ~42%, with minor variation by year(s) tabulated and by methodology applied to ethnic categories, e.g. Hispanics.

Also as a rule in US gun homicides, blacks victimize blacks (~94%).

@54- Not sure if this site breaks links in comments, but if you google:

cdc "Homicides — United States, 1999–2007" Logan

the report should come up.

It also doesn't break down homicides by method. I wonder if the "57%" matched up with the percentage of the population doesn't come close to the rates per100,000 given in the CDC report.

Dragnet @ 55 -- Again, CDC compiles totals of victims by race. BJS tracks perpetrators by race. Not the same thing.

Also, the tabular data in Logan's paper are for 2007 only. (The line graphs cover 1999-2007.)

@56 Yes, you are right that it is not the same thing, but at 94% Black on Black it gives you an idea of the order of magnitude of difference.
Using your numbers, with 57% of murders perpetrated BY blacks (13% of the population) vs 42% perpetrated by White incl Hispanic (78%) the "murders committed per capita" is about 8x higher, higher still if you separate out Hispanic.

If the goal of policy changes is to reduce total homicides, that information seems relevant. I had no idea there was such a large difference.

Good Evening Charles,
I too, agree with @8 but disagree with your very brief statistical point (I know you didn't bring it up). I simply don't believe in comparing gun-related homicides in Belgium with the USA. They are two different universes regarding violent crime and gun-related homicides in particular.For the record, I don't know if Ann Coulter is nuts, racist or both. I've never read her or listened to her on TV.

However, I do believe this stat from the Dept. of Justice (Nov 2011):

“Blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders. The victimization rate for blacks (27.8 per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000). The offending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000).”

“Males represented 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of offenders. The victimization rate for males (11.6 per 100,000) was 3 times higher than the rate for females (3.4 per 100,000). The offending rate for males (15.1 per 100,000) was almost 9 times higher than the rate for females (1.7 per 100,000).”

“Approximately a third (34%) of murder victims and almost half (49%) of the offenders were under age 25. For both victims and offenders, the rate per 100,000 peaked in the 18 to 24 year-old age group at 17.1 victims per 100,000 and 29.3 offenders per 100,000.”

In addition, I read that the city of Chicago had over 500 murders in 2012. The number was up by more than 20% from the prior year.

There is nary a doubt that THESE are horrific statistics. More has been provided from some of the posts. I totally agree. We must be open to discussing race/cultural issues involved in the vast majority of homicides in the USA. This is a national tragedy.

Oh, Lark, there you go making sense again. Don't you know there's no place for that here?

I can't stand Coulter, but the writer of this piece irritates me almost as much. I honestly can't tell if he doesn't understand the numbers, or is trying to be misleading on purpose.

First he's mixing up murder rate and "gun related deaths" which are not the same, as the latter includes suicides and accidents. Then there's this:

"If black Americans account for about 50 percent of all gun-related homicides (a figure white supremacists love to point out), that would mean there were around 5000 white gun-related deaths in the US in 2005."

No, it doesn't mean that. Did we just forget about all of the ones who are neither white nor black? No Hispanics or Asians were involved in any of this? Wtf?

@60: The other day, Charles wrote a post claiming that urbanites who keep nothing in their freezers are being more efficient than their rural counterparts who keep their freezers full of food. His reasoning was that it's more efficient to keep frozen goods in a communal freezer at the store for as long as possible. He neglected to consider that urbanites don't unplug their freezers when they're not in use, and that empty freezers use more energy than full ones.

That's just one example; he has a pretty solid history of not devoting any real consideration to the positions he takes when he posts here.

It doesn't take a white supremacist to point to a fact. Let's not resort to lies to protect anyone's feelings. There are too many lives at stake. Making an an association between being a white supremacists and accepting an irrefutable fact makes you the lowest of the low.