We will start by saying that this article really needs to be read by everyone that has an interest in the present gun control debate and to tell you that this information is not anything you are likely to encounter in the mainstream media .
That being said we are going to differ from our usual habit of posting a particularly engrossing paragraph in hopes of grabbing your attention . Today we are going to go through the entire essay and present you with some of the more salient facts that we doubt most of you are aware of .
In case any of you are unfamiliar with the author , here is a brief biography of James Bovard , a man who has worked tirelessly his entire life at promoting liberty , freedom , limited government and accountability for said State .
Here we go …
” While the president’s strident warnings about privately owned guns evoked a hallelujah media chorus, his administration is scorning a mandate to track how many Americans are shot and killed each year by government agents.”
Hardly surprising , given Obama’s Statist proclivities ..
” The same 1994 law that temporarily banned the sale of assault weapons also required the federal government to compile data on police shootings nationwide.”
Need we mention that this requirement has been completely ignored ? And note that police shootings are by no means an insignificant part of the annual killings nationwide .
” Shootings by police accounted for almost 10 percent of the homicides in Los Angeles County in 2010, according to the Los Angeles Times.”
Fortunately there are people out there who are attempting to do the government’s job .
“ Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent and criminal law professor, compiled a database of police shootings and estimated that police in the United States in 2011 shot more than 1,100 people, killing 607.”
Remember that number 607 fatalities , and that could well be very much a lowball figure since the police do everything in their power to hide the truth .
” According to the FBI, 323 people were killed nationwide by rifles in 2011 — less than 4 percent of the total deaths by firearms.”
That is killings with ALL types of rifles . The statistics do not distinguish between single shot , pump , bolt action or semi-automatic so it is safe to assume that the number killed by any type of semi-automatic rifle is only a portion of that total . that means that the vilified “assault” rifle is responsible for considerably less than 4 % of gun homicides . Now understand that of the total “death by rifle” nationwide fully 10% of those fatalities invovle the police doing the shooting so that lowers the number of rifle killings NATIONWIDE to 291 … less than half of the people killed by police in the same time frame .
” Not only do government agencies fail to track official violence against Americans, they also sometimes pre-emptively exonerate all such attacks.”
In the past the Justice Department has classified ALL police killings as “felons justifiably killed by police.” State and local police agencies are no more transparent about police shootings than are the Feds .
” For instance, Maryland police are protected by a “Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights” that prohibits questioning a police officer for 10 days after any incident in which he or she used deadly force. “
That would appear to be the rule as opposed to the exception …
” Investigations of police shootings in Las Vegas (which had one of the highest rates of police homicides in the nation) were stymied in 2010 and 2011 because “police unions balked at inquest reforms, first by advising members not to testify at the hearings and then helping officers file a lawsuit challenging the new system’s constitutionality…”
That should give you the picture . As you can see the police and the Justice Department are the last one’s we should be listening to when it comes to having an honest discussion of the dangers posed to the public by an armed populace . The ” thin blue line ” is really a code of silence in regards to police accountability . As we said read the whole thing and take everything professed as the “facts” from the State with a HUGE grain of salt .
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