Posts Tagged democide

History Of Democide: Commies Killed The Most

From Reason:

During the 20th century, governments murdered over 200 million people. This figure excludes battle deaths from wars. The tables below are from my just-published article Guns Kill People, and Tyrants With Gun Monopolies Kill the Most, 25 Gonzaga Journal of International Law 29 (2021). The data cover 1900 to 1987 and are mainly based on the scholarship of the late University of Hawaii political science professor Rudolph J. Rummel. The few instances in which different figures are used are explained in my article.

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You Risk Your Life With Gun Control

From Reason:

According to gun prohibitionists, Europe is much safer than the United States, because Europe has stricter gun control. In fact, the historical record shows that excessive gun control (as in Europe) is about a hundred times more deadly than “insufficient” gun control (as, supposedly, in the U.S.). While a lone criminal with a gun can be very dangerous, a criminal government with a disarmed population is the deadliest thing on Earth.

In Europe in the 20th century, governments killed about 87.1 million victims, according to research by the late University of Hawaii political scientist R.J. Rummel. That figure does not include combat deaths, such as in World War I or II. It includes only the murder of civilians, from 61.9 million killed by the Soviet Union to 20.9 million killed by Germany. Over the long run, one’s risk of being murdered is much lower in the United States than in Europe. It’s no surprise that migration between the two has always been very heavily in one direction!

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“Gun-Free” Nations

From The Washington Post:

There are lots of means to perpetrate mass murder: with poison gas, with bombs, by running people over with trucks, working them to death in slave labor camps, or even by hacking them with machetes, as in Rwanda. However, mass shootings have been among the most common methods of mass murder around the world for more than a century. Even when victims are killed by other means, such as deliberate starvation or gas chambers, a government monopoly of arms is essential for governments being able to prevent the victims from resisting.

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ATF/FBI Still Have Questions To Answer About Waco

From The Hill:

Twenty-five years ago today, FBI tanks smashed into the ramshackle home of the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas. After the FBI collapsed much of the building atop the residents, a fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble. Unfortunately, the American political system and media have never faced the lessons from that tragic 1993 day.

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Malcolm Gladwell on the Tragedy of The Branch Davidians

From The New Yorker:

Outside the Mount Carmel complex, the F.B.I. assembled what has been called probably the largest military force ever gathered against a civilian suspect in American history: ten Bradley tanks, two Abrams tanks, four combat-engineering vehicles, six hundred and sixty-eight agents in addition to six U.S. Customs officers, fifteen U.S. Army personnel, thirteen members of the Texas National Guard, thirty-one Texas Rangers, a hundred and thirty-one officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, seventeen from the McLennan County sheriff’s office, and eighteen Waco police, for a total of eight hundred and ninety-nine people. Their task, as they saw it, was to peel away the pretense—Koresh’s posturing, his lies, his grandiosity—and compel him to take specific steps toward a resolution.

Here is Gladwell discussing his piece and what got him interested in what happened in Waco:

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