HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 1041.004 2016-2018 COUM
COUNTY CLERK COMP!. tO1
COUNTY OF HAWAII
support for
Resolution 666-18 re. private attorney for case on open carf 1Of SEParrr& All 8: 52
for Hawai'i County Council, 9 AM Wednesday, September 5, 2018, Hilo chambers
from Cory Harden 333cory@dmail.com
We do NOT need to loosen up gun laws.
IMAGE The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's population, but it has almost half of the world's guns
owned by civilians. (1)
A fact sheet for 2003—2013, from Sandy Hook Promise, shows almost 100 people died every day from
gun violence in the U.S. Over 200 a day were injured. (2)
IMAGE The gun homicide rate in the U.S. is 25 times higher than in other high-income countries. (3)
IMAGE If you break it down by state, the states with more guns have more gun deaths. When you move
to the right on this chart, you have more people with guns. When you move up, you have more gun
deaths. As you can see, Hawai'i is low on both counts. We need to keep it that way. (1)
When new laws are passed on owning and buying guns, gun violence tends to go down, according to a
"2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries, published in Epidemiologic Reviews". (1)
"...guns at home were four times more likely to cause an accidental shooting, seven times more likely to
be used in assault or homicide, and 11 times more likely to be used in a suicide than they were to be
used for self-defense"according to a study cited in Scientific American. (4)
"...guns are used for self-defense in less than 1 percent of all crimes that occur in the presence of a
victim"and "self-defense gun use is about as effective as other defensive maneuvers, such as calling for
help."This is from a review of five years of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. (4)
But the scariest part is the suicides.
"Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides... The U.S. gun suicide rate is eight times that of other high-
income countries...Access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by three times."according to
the Everytown website. (3)
"A study from Israeli researchers found that suicides among Israeli soldiers dropped by 40 percent when
the military stopped letting soldiers take their guns home over the weekend. The change was most
pronounced during the weekends." (1)
Scientific American concludes: "People, all of us, lead complicated lives, misinterpret situations, get
angry, make mistakes. And when a mistake involves pulling a trigger,the damage can't be undone." (4)
(1) https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-
charts
(2) https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/promise/pages/17/attachments/original/1445441287/Gun
Facts.pdf?1445441287
(3) https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-america/
(4) More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows, Scientific American, October 1, 2017,
https:://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-stop-more-crimes-evidence-shows/
Comm. No. 1041. 4
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Ref. Date SEP 0 5 2018