In the November 14 edition of the Miami Herald, in an article titled: Report: Majority of trafficked guns in Caribbean are from the U.S., shipped from Florida, reporters Jacqueline Charles and Jay Weaver claim a lack of restrictive gun laws in the United States cause high murder rates in Caribbean countries. From the article:

A new report from the U.S. government’s lead investigator on gun trafficking in the Caribbean area is confirming what region leaders have long said: Most of the firearms wreaking havoc in their vulnerable nations and being used in 90% of the homicides are coming from the United States.

Note the premise included in the misuse of the English language in the opening sentence:  the firearms wreaking havoc.

Firearms do not wreak havoc. This is an Orwellian distortion of the language. A firearm is an inanimate object. Guns do not cause harm. Firearms do not have a will of their own.

The correct usage would be: People in vulnerable nations are wreaking havoc with firearms. This is important. Semantics are important. You must correctly understand cause and effect if you are to solve a problem. If you confuse cause and effect, your attempts to solve problems will almost certainly fail. You will attempt to change an effect rather a cause. Occasionally, simply by chance, an action taken with the wrong assumption may line up with a real cause.

Firearms do not cause murders and violent crimes. The evidence does not support this assumption. Firearms numbers vary wildly across the globe, including in the Caribbean. Firearms laws vary wildly across the globe and the Caribbean as well. Murders and violent crime vary wildly as well. There is no correlation between them.

People can sometimes find a correlation between firearms laws and murders/violent crimes committed with firearms. This does not show firearms cause crime. It shows a truism. Firearms can be used in crime.  Firearms can also be used to defend against crime. There is no good evidence to show a decrease in overall murders or overall violent crime when/where extremely restrictive firearm laws are implemented. If overall murder rates or overall violent crime rates do not decrease when firearms laws are implemented, the laws have failed in their stated objectives.

Consider two sets of Islands in the Caribbean, close together. There are the British Virgin Islands and the United States Virgin Islands. They are separated by a few miles. Both sets of Islands have extremely restrictive firearms laws. The US Virgin Islands has the most restrictive firearms laws under any US jurisdiction. The British Virgin Islands have similar firearms laws, inherited from the United Kingdom. The population of the British Virgin Islands is about 39,000. The population of the U.S. Virgin Islands is about 86,000. The British Virgin Islands homicide rate, when reported, averages about 7.5/100,000 of population per year. This correspondent has not found records since 2007. The US Virgin Islands homicide rate has averaged about 40.6/100,000 over the last 25 years.

Jamaica, another island nation in the Caribbean, had relatively low murder rates under British rule and relatively mild gun laws. Jamaica became independent in 1962. In 1967, it instituted extreme, draconian laws restricting gun ownership. Murder rates increased tenfold.

Another entity in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, recently made major reforms in its firearm laws. Puerto Rico greatly reduced restrictions on owning and carrying firearms. The murder rate dropped.

The United States has the largest concentration of firearms in the world. Saying countries in the Caribbean obtain most of their firearms from the United States is similar to saying water is wet.

The purpose of a report showing there are high rates of violent crime committed in some Caribbean nations, with high numbers of murders committed with guns from the United States, is to persuade the reader to believe the solution to violent crime in Caribbean nations is to restrict gun ownership in the United States.

This is not reporting. This is Orwellian propaganda.  This correspondent uses the term Orwellian precisely. The purpose of “news” in Orwell’s novel 1984 was to restrict how people could think. The Miami Herald article is part of an attempt by a political movement to restrict how people can think about firearms ownership. The means of reducing violent crime are well known.  Extreme control of firearms ownership is not required.  To reduce violent crime: Create a “trust society” where people trust the police and the political system and believe a reasonable approximation of justice will be produced by the courts. When the body of the people trust the justice system and work with it, violent crime is reduced to low levels.

• Create laws that are simple and easy to understand.
• Enforce the laws fairly and reasonably effectively.
• Hold people who abuse their legal authority to account.

These actions are the opposite of what Leftist political philosophers require:

• Make laws to govern every situation so that no one knows what is legal or illegal. This maximizes government power.
• Enforce the law based on the political requirements of the moment. Find the man you wish or “need” to prosecute, then find the crime in order to prosecute the man.
• Hold people in power accountable only if it serves the purpose of the political moment.

When a person knowingly subjects others to the last three actions, they fear retribution. High rates of legal firearm ownership give people who are victims of the last three points a way of making life difficult for the people who victimized them.  There appears to be a correlation between high levels of corruption in government and highly restrictive firearms laws.   A knowledgeable source told this correspondent the most corrupt jurisdiction in the United States is the U.S. Virgin Islands.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.