Guns, Life, and Drugs

I don't have an article on this, but I heard this on the radio the other day...maybe you heard about the Supreme Court recently upholding 2nd amendment rights to gun ownership in the District of Columbia. The host mentioned that Israel has a murder rate of almost 3 per 100,000, while DC has about 30 per 100,000. And that includes terrorist activity. The difference? Up until recently, private gun ownership was banned in DC, while it is not uncommon to see security guards in malls in Israel carrying AK-47s.

If I haven't said it before, private gun ownership is a good thing. Areas where private gun ownership is banned always have higher crime rates because in those instances the only people who benefit from gun bans are the ones planning on breaking the law anyway.

Another interesting note about Israel...in a study comparing fertility rates and suicide rates (essentially the idea behind it is loving life or loving death), Israel ranks first in the world. In second is the United States. Just thought that was kind of interesting.

While I'm jumping topics again, legalization of drugs is the dumbest idea ever. A lot of times the argument for legalization of drugs is that it will reduce the amount of drug related crime and eliminate the black market. What are two of the three most preventable causes of death in the United States? #1 is tobacco use, and #3 is alcohol consumption. Almost 500,000 people die prematurely each year because of each of those legal drugs. In the years from 1995-1999 it cost the United States approximately $157 billion annually in health-related economic losses just from tobacco use. That's staggering, isn't it? Right now the death rate for use of illicit drugs is only 17,000. Can you imagine how that number would surge if we were to decriminalize illicit drug use? That alone is reason enough not to legalize drugs.