Keep and Bear Arms
Home Members Login/Join About Us News/Editorials Archives Take Action Your Voice Web Services Free Email
You are 1 of 943 active visitors Friday, December 06, 2024
EMAIL NEWS
Main Email List:
Subscribe
Unsubscribe

State Email Lists:
Click Here
SUPPORT KABA
» Join/Renew Online
» Join/Renew by Mail
» Make a Donation
» Magazine Subscriptions
» KABA Memorial Fund
» Advertise Here
» Use KABA Free Email

» JOIN/Renew NOW! «
 
SUPPORT OUR SUPPORTERS

 

YOUR VOTE COUNTS

Keep and Bear Arms - Vote In Our Polls
Do you oppose Biden's anti-gun executive orders?
Yes
No
Undecided

Current results
Earlier poll results
4782 people voted

 

SPONSORED LINKS

 
» U.S. Gun Laws
» AmeriPAC
» NoInternetTax
» Gun Show On The Net
» 2nd Amendment Show
» SEMPER FIrearms
» Colt Collectors Assoc.
» Personal Defense Solutions

 

 


Keep and Bear Arms

Search:

Archived Information

Top | Last 30 Days | Search | Add to Archives | Newsletter | Featured Item


Grabber Gun Trauma
How the Marching Moms and Other Grabbers Victimize a Million Children

by Sean Oberle
(Distribution permitted and encouraged. Please mention that you heard about it first on KeepAndBearArms.com.)

The Million Mom Foundation (Bell Campaign’s new name since teaming up with MMM) is urging the media to use the term “gun trauma” instead of “gun violence.” The group doesn’t exactly put it this way, but “gun violence” doesn’t evoke enough fear since, in most people’s minds, it includes only criminal acts.

You see, faced with rates of gun-related homicide and other violence that are declining at breathtaking paces, it is getting harder for the grabbers to whip up fear about guns – or at least to convince people that “something needs to be done to turn the tide” as they often put it a few years ago.

In fact, the tide has turned – years ago – and the grabbers are left exaggerating the problem by repeating old, disproved predictions (gun deaths surpassing car deaths) or citing a single years’ stats, isolated from the trends. If they do use updated figures (they prefer outdated, higher figures), they write something like, “According to the latest data from CDC, 11,798 people were victims of gun homicide in 1998. This proves we need gun control!”

The first sentence is factual enough as far as it goes, but the whole truth is more like, “According to CDC data, 11,798 people were victims of gun-related homicides in 1998 – a 38% decrease in the rate of such deaths in just five years (7.08 to 4.36). Moreover, preliminary 1999 figures show a likely rate under 4.00, meaning a 44% reduction in six years. If the trend continues through 2000 (and it shows every indication of doing so), we will meet or surpass a 50% reduction in just seven years. Our efforts to curb gun-related violence are working.”

The grabbers know this, and they know that Americans – even passive, believe-anything, couch-potato Americans – are getting harder and harder to scare, even with body-bag journalism. And since grabber success depends on such fear, I expect to see them increase focus on gun-related suicides, which provide larger numbers.

But this too is a losing tactic for the grabbers because gun related suicide rates are down nearly 12% from 1993 to 1998 (7.35 to 6.45), while non-gun suicides actually are up 3% over that period (4.72 to 4.87). In fact, if these two trends hold, in a few years, more suicides will be by non-gun means than by guns, and the overall rate will increase even as the gun rate decreases, undermining any claims that suicide rates depend upon gun availability.

These tactical problems for the grabbers bring us to the following faulty reasoning in the MMF’s plea that the media adopt the term “gun trauma”:

“Even those who have never encountered a gun are aware of the widespread presence of guns in our communities, witness news reports of gun-related crime, domestic murders, and high profile shootings at schools, churches and other public places. The ever-present fear that someone we love might be killed or injured is another form of gun trauma.” (See http://www.bellcampaign.org/media/mediacon.htm.)

OK, I’ll pause while you push down your last meal. Better, now? Good.

My first reaction to that bit of bleeding-heart sophistry is to respond with my own sophistry – If “an ever-present fear” is a type of gun trauma, then the Marching Moms, HCI, VPC and all the other gun grabber groups are the main perpetrators, having worked to whip up such “ever-present fear” beyond any basis in reality while consciously trying to downplay any improvements and draw attention away from solutions that don’t fit their political agenda.

But two sophistries make no one right, and the more I think about it, the angrier I become as I realize their actions point toward their caring more about gun control than about saving lives.

Despite what they’d have us believe, we’ve found solutions. Gun-related violence and crime are going down. Gun-related suicide is going down. Yet the grabbers want us to ignore what did this and seek gun control.

Why? What laws could we add that would speed the decreasing rates? Moreover, why should we invest billions of dollars, millions of man-hours and tens-of-thousands of people in enforcing gun controls that have no certainty of working? Why should we risk undermining what is working to save lives – today – to experiment?

How dare they. How dare they risk increasing real gun trauma with experiments that would suck resources away from what works.

(data from CDC’s on-line injury database at http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars)

Printer Version

 QUOTES TO REMEMBER
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

COPYRIGHT POLICY: The posting of copyrighted articles and other content, in whole or in part, is not allowed here. We have made an effort to educate our users about this policy and we are extremely serious about this. Users who are caught violating this rule will be warned and/or banned.
If you are the owner of content that you believe has been posted on this site without your permission, please contact our webmaster by following this link. Please include with your message: (1) the particulars of the infringement, including a description of the content, (2) a link to that content here and (3) information concerning where the content in question was originally posted/published. We will address your complaint as quickly as possible. Thank you.

 
NOTICE:  The information contained in this site is not to be considered as legal advice. In no way are Keep And Bear Arms .com or any of its agents responsible for the actions of our members or site visitors. Also, because this web site is a Free Speech Zone, opinions, ideas, beliefs, suggestions, practices and concepts throughout this site may or may not represent those of Keep And Bear Arms .com. All rights reserved. Articles that are original to this site may be redistributed provided they are left intact and a link to http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com is given. Click here for Contact Information for representatives of KeepAndBearArms.com.

Thawte.com is the leading provider of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and digital certificate solutions used by enterprises, Web sites, and consumers to conduct secure communications and transactions over the Internet and private networks.

KeepAndBearArms.com, Inc. © 1999-2024, All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy