Op-Ed: Minority Report Card

by C. D. Michel

In its annual publicity stunt "report card," the Brady Campaign released its gun control grades for states. The states that have adopted the most gun control laws promoted by the Brady Campaign get the highest grades. Points are subtracted from states that allow people to use guns for self-defense, and from states where concealed carry licenses are liberally issued.

The report card is a farce. If you want to reduce your chances of being a victim, you should consider avoiding states that the Brady Campaign gives its highest grades. Statistically speaking, the Brady Center's "more gun control laws are better" policy seems to lead to that end.

Brady Center ranks states by the adoption of laws that Brady and other gun control groups like, not any that have proven to be effective. This use of an undocumented "curve" to adjust their grades is not merely unscientific, it's shameful. The basic hoax is that gun control laws mean something. So if a law actually kept guns out of the hands of criminals and lunatics, such a gun control score card might have meaning. But as the National Academy of Science has noted, there is no ascertainable correlation between such laws and a reduction in violence.

California was once again at the top of the Brady class, and was graded as the state with most gun control laws in the land. The Brady Campaign's report card failed to mention that California is graded #16 for violent crime and #18 for homicides. Highly graded Maryland, which takes the #4 spot on the Brady's gun control wish list, is #9 for violent crimes, #7 for murders and #2 for robbery. Way to go Baltimore! And Brady once again omitted Washington, D.C. – a territory that has laws much stricter than California and has a third world homicide rate (320% of the national average and nearly three times higher than even California). Including the nation's murder capital would have spiked the Brady's campaign.

......

The annual Brady State publicity stunt report card should be ignored – by you, by the media, by anyone with cranial blood flow. The scoring system is silly, their rankings have undocumented curve calculations, and the data shows that they have no correlation to public safety – except perhaps for well and easily armed muggers who seem to like the way gun control advocates keep score.

Click here to read the entire op-ed.