Conclusions Not Based On Facts

Bearing Arms posted an article today about the game the media plays comparing apples and oranges in order to infringe on our Second Amendment rights. The latest example the media is sighting is Iceland.

This is a recent quote from NBC News:

Like many of his countrymen, Olaf Garðar Garðarsson is eager to get his hands on a rifle.

But he can’t just walk into a store and buy one. Instead, he is sitting through a mandatory four-hour lecture on the history and physics of the firearm.

This is Iceland — the gun-loving nation that hasn’t experienced a gun-related murder since 2007.

“For us, it would be really strange if you could get a license to buy a gun and you had no idea how to handle it,” says Garðarsson, 28, a mechanical engineer. “I would find it very odd if [a gun owner] had never even learned which is the pointy end and which is the trigger end.”

Iceland is a sparsely populated island in the northern Atlantic. Its tiny population of some 330,000 live on a landmass around the size of Kentucky.

St. Louis, Missouri, which has a population slightly smaller than Iceland’s, had 193 homicides linked to firearms last year.

Icelanders believe the rigorous gun laws on this small, remote volcanic rock can offer lessons to the United States.

I have no problem with gun safety classes. I took one when I moved to North Carolina because I realized very quickly that the culture in North Carolina regarding guns was very different from that of Massachusetts. But I took that course by choice. No one forced me to do it. I think those courses are a good idea. I think forcing people to take them is a bad idea. Our gun crimes haven’t come from citizens who would be willing to take those courses. Even if we banned guns totally, criminals would still find a way to get them. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, but it also has a very high rate of murder by gun. The only reason a politician wants to take guns away from citizens or infringe on citizens’ rights to have guns is to increase the power of the government and decrease the power of citizens to prevent government overreach.

The article further reminds us:

Iceland and the United States are very different when it comes to key issues, namely those of culture. Iceland is culturally homogenous, with 94 percent of its population coming from Norse or Celtic roots and only six percent coming from some other group. Because of this, the Icelandic culture is easily dominant, making those who come from other cultures step up and adhere to the social rules of their new nation as much as the civil and criminal rules. The fact that the culture has been there, more or less, for over a thousand years solidifies that in a lot of minds. While that culture has changed over the years, it’s still there, and it drives society.

Meanwhile, the United States is culturally diverse.

What works for Iceland won’t work for America. Our culture is very different. Iceland is essentially a socialist country. As you drive through the countryside, all of the houses look alike–there are no houses that stand out with creative designs. It is a much more homogenous society than America. Our freedom and diversity are part of what makes us great. When the media says that Icelandic gun laws would work in America, they are doing both countries a disservice.