In the wake of the Las Vegas spree killing, gun control advocates are busy advocating for gun control. This they do by trotting out various facts to try to undermine the case for gun rights. One of the most common: your gun is far more likely to kill you or someone in your home than save you from a violent attack . . .
Here’s how The New York Times rolls that into their editorial Guns Aren’t a Bulwark Against Tyranny. The Rule of Law Is (set to be fully fisked later):
Stories about the use of guns in self-defense — a good guy with a gun dispensing with a bad guy with a gun — are legion among gun enthusiasts and conservative talk radio hosts.
But a 1998 study in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, to take one of many examples, found that “every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides and 11 attempted or completed suicides.”
That means a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense.
Notice the weasel words “a gun in the home.” That totally discounts guns used for self-defense in the workplace or on the street. Also notice no mention is made of the number of defensive gun uses(DGUs).
Even the most stalwart [anti] gun researchers place the number of DGUs at between 55k and 80k per year. Other estimates place the number well over a million. Either way, firearms freedom is a net positive for society.
But here’s the thing: the antis’ “gun owners are inviting death into their homes” stat don’t apply to you.
You are a responsible gun owner. You understand the danger that guns (and other items in your home) pose if misused or abused. So you secure your gun, follow the four rules of gun safety and teach your children how to safely and responsibly handle firearms.
You are not mentally ill. You keep your firearms secure, especially if someone in your home is suffering from mental illness. You don’t abuse your spouse or children. You are not a gang banger or a drug dealer.
You don’t live in the kill zones of Detroit, LA, Houston and other cities suffering the majority of this country’s non-suicide firearms-related homicides.
In short, the statisticians are lumping you in with populations who have a FAR higher risk of a gun in their home being used to harm to themselves or family members. A fact that businessinsider.com — the publication supplying these charts post-Las vegas spree killing — admits:
The chart above does not account for a person’s specific behaviors, age, sex, location, or other factors that can shift the results; it’s an average of the entire US population. But it clearly show gun violence is a leading cause of death in the US.
Does it? Even ignoring the disclaimer, “assault by gun” is, by their reckoning, the 14th “leading” cause of death in the United States.
Anyway, in case you hadn’t figured it out, the antis are using their skewed data to try to take away YOUR guns.
To stop you from exercising your natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms to protect your family. To hunt. To target practice. To defend yourself, your family, your community and your country from tyranny. Or for whatever reason you desire.
Over at The New York Times, at least, that’s 100 percent true.