The News (according to gun ban extremists)

Despite having experienced another series of devastating losses on Election Day 2004, the early signs suggest gun ban extremists are no closer to understanding what a loser issue they are pushing, nor how Americans have risen above cheap fear-based "studies" that warp statistics into "proving" a point they set out to prove.

Consider the following headlines from the Brady Campaign/ Million Mom March's Jointogether.org website:

Gun Grabber "News" Headline #1: Report Says Nonpowder Guns Injure 21,000 Annually

Nonpowder guns that fire BBs, pellets, and paintballs cause 21,000 injuries annually in the U.S., according to an article in the November issue of Pediatrics. Four percent of the injuries from nonpowder guns result in hospitalization. In addition, high-powered air rifles...have caused several deaths per year. Between 1990 and 2000, there were 39 such deaths, 32 of them involving children younger than 15.

For a bit of perspective, it may be helpful to learn that the CDC reports that nearly one million people are given medical treatment for dog bites each year (400,000 are children!). Also according to the CDC, nearly as many children were killed by Fido every two years during the 90's as were killed in the entire decade with air rifles.

About 3.2 million nonpowder guns are sold annually in the U.S., many of them in toy stores. However, "(n)onpowder guns are weapons...and should never be characterized as toys," Dr. Laraque concluded.

Neither, apparently, should dogs be classified as pets.

And speaking of dogs and guns, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this week that a pit bull attacked and injured three people, including two children, before being shot several times by a police officer.

Gun Grabber "News" Headline #2:
Guns in Home Increase Danger to Occupants, Survey Finds

Having guns in the home increases occupants' chances of being killed or injured by firearms, according to the Nov. 15 issue of the Journal of American Epidemiology. The survey found that persons with guns in the home were more likely to die from gun homicides in the home...

This is actually a rehash of a concept introduced in a survey several years ago which "found" that people who have guns in their home are 40 times more likely to be shot. The study was thoroughly debunked after it was learned that to create the numbers, gun grabbers had included criminal on criminal shootings, crimes in which criminals carried guns into the homes where the shootings occurred, etc.

We are still waiting for the headlines announcing the "news" that people who own, ride in or operate automobiles are more likely to be killed in collisions, or that people who pilot or ride in airplanes are more likely to be killed in airplane crashes than people who don't fly.

Gun Grabber "News" Headline #3: No Mandate for Gun Extremism

Last week's elections may have led to victory for more conservatives, but on gun issues, an analysis of the results shows a trend towards greater support for sensible gun laws...

Someone better tell that to John Kerry, John Edwards, and Tom Dascle, to name three...

And someone had better tell Nicholas D. Kristof, a New York Times liberal who writes that "gun control is dead" as a result of the 2004 elections, and outlines yet another strategy for how gun grabbers can hide their agenda in the NEXT election cycle.

Click on the "Read More..." link below to read the Kristof op-ed.

Op-ed: Democrats should shift to gun safety instead of losing the gun-control fight

November 16, 2004
by Nicholas D. Kristof

Nothing kills Democratic candidates’ prospects more than guns. If it weren’t for guns, President-elect Kerry might now be conferring with incoming Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Since the Brady Bill took effect in 1994, gun-control efforts have been a catastrophe for Democrats. They have accomplished almost nothing nationally, other than giving a big boost to the Republicans. Kerry tried to get around the problem by blasting away at small animals, but nervous red-staters still suspected Democrats of plotting to seize guns.

Moreover, it’s clear that in this political climate, further efforts at gun control are a nonstarter. You can talk until you’re blue in the face about the 30,000 gun deaths each year, about children who are nine times as likely to die in a gun accident in America as elsewhere in the developed world, about the $17,000 average cost — half directly borne by taxpayers — of treating each gun injury. But nationally, gun control is dead.

So it’s time for a fundamentally new approach, emblematic of how Democrats must think in new ways about old issues. The new approach is to accept that handguns are part of the American landscape, but to use a public health approach to try to make them much safer.

The model is automobiles, for a high rate of traffic deaths was once thought to be inevitable. But then we figured out ways to mitigate the harm with seat belts, air bags and collapsible steering columns, and the death rate per mile driven has dropped 80 percent since the 1950s.

Similar steps are feasible in the world of guns.

"You can tell whether a camera is loaded by looking at it, and you should be able to tell whether a gun is loaded by looking at it," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Hemenway has written Private Guns, Public Health, a brilliant and clear-eyed primer for the country.

We take safety steps that reduce the risks of everything from chain saws, so they don’t kick back and cut off an arm, to refrigerators, so kids can’t lock themselves inside. But firearms have been exempt. Companies make cell phones that survive if dropped, but some handguns can fire if they hit the ground.

Hemenway notes that in the 1990s, two children a year, on average, died after locking themselves in car trunks. This was considered unacceptable, so a government agency studied the problem, and General Motors and Ford engineered safety mechanisms to prevent such deaths.

In contrast, 15 children under the age of 5 die annually in fatal gun accidents in the United States, along with 18 children 5 to 9 years old. We routinely make aspirin bottles childproof, but not guns, even though childproof pistols were sold back in the 19 th century; they wouldn’t fire unless the shooter put pressure on the handle as well as the trigger.

Aside from making childproof guns, here are other steps we could take:

• Require safeties so a gun cannot be fired when the clip is removed; people can forget that a bullet may still be in the chamber and pull the trigger. Many guns already have such safeties, but not all.

• Finance research to develop "smart guns," which can be fired only by authorized users. If cell phones can be locked with a PIN, why not guns? This innovation would protect children and thwart criminals.

• Start public-safety campaigns urging families to keep guns locked up in a gun safe or with a trigger lock. Now, 12 percent to 14 percent of gun owners with young children keep loaded and unlocked weapons in their homes.

• Encourage doctors to counsel depressed patients not to keep guns, and to advise new parents on storing firearms safely.

• Make serial numbers on guns harder for criminals to remove.

• Create a national database for gun deaths. In a traffic fatality, 120 bits of data are collected, like the positions of the passengers and the local speed limit, so we now understand what works well (air bags, no "right on red") and what doesn’t (driver safety courses). Statistics on gun violence are much flimsier, so we don’t know what policies would work best, and much of the data hurled by rival camps at each other is inaccurate.

Would these steps fly politically? Maybe. One poll showed that 88 percent of the public favors requiring that guns be childproof. And such measures demonstrate the kind of thinking that can keep alive not only thousands of Americans, but the Democratic Party, as well.

Nicholas D. Kristof writes for The New York Times.
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