Posted on 07/03/2015 2:52:53 PM PDT by marktwain
David Frum, in an article published in the Atlantic on 23 May, takes considerable liberties with the facts and truth. The article is under the "politics" section, so it should be a bit more concerned with facts than a typical opinion piece. But disarmists seldom let reality interfere with their fantasies. Frum makes a number of assertions as fact that are not true. He selectively ignores other facts that invalidate his thesis. Here are some of the more egregious errors.
He claims that mass killing with firearms is a distinctly American phenomena. That is simply false, an echoing of President Obama's sentiment. It is debunked here by politifact:
The data shows that it clearly happens in other countries, and in at least three of them, theres evidence that the rate of killings in mass-shooting events occurred at a higher per-capita rate than in the United States between 2000 and 2014. The only partial support for Obamas claim is that the per-capita gun-incident fatality rate in the United States does rank in the top one-third of the list of 11 countries studied. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly False.Then Frum compounds the error by selecting only certain countries to compare mass shootings, managing to exclude those who have had recent mass shootings and ignoring mass shootings in the countries that he mentions. Frum writes:
The fact that Americans are regularly gunned down in large numbers by lone gunmenand that Britons, Germans, French, Italians, Canadians, Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders, South Koreans, Danes, Swiss, Poles, and Spaniards are notis just one of those unfathomable mysteries, like the fate of the crew of the Mary Celeste.Frum conveniently ignores Norway, Finland, which Politifact notes had more mass shooting per capita than the United States in the last 15 years, and ignores the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, while including the Ft. Hood attack in the United States. In includes Switzerland, which has a higher rate per capita than the United States, as per Politifact. He may be forgiven for not including the mass shooting in Tunisia shortly after his article was written, where a single gunman, in a country with extremely strict gun control, killed 37 or more before he was stopped. Still, the incident serves to invalidate his "fact".
As guns proliferate (perhaps 270 million of them in the United States comparted to just 9.5 million in Canada)and as handguns displace hunting piecesso do gun accidents and suicides.It simply is not true. Fatal gun accidents have dropped to the lowest level in about a hundred years in the United States, while the number of guns per capita have at least tripled and the population tripled as well. Here is confirmation from politifact.com, hardly a conservative site:
According to council data, the total number of unintentional deaths from firearms sank to 554 in 2009 -- easily the lowest of any year back to 1903.Certainly, in the United States, people, particularly older white men, tend to commit suicide with guns. But as one of many methods available, it is unlikely to change with any of the modifications that Frum suggests. It is simply irrelevant. Countries with extremely restrictive gun control laws still manage to have suicide rates much higher than the United States.
In fact, it took from 1903 all the way until 1997 for the number of unintentional gunfire deaths to drop below 1,000. The all-time highs came in 1929 and 1930, when the number of such deaths reached 3,200 for two consecutive years.
This decline is all the more striking considering the increase in population over this period. In 1904, there were 3.4 unintentional firearm deaths per 100,000 people. By 2009, that rate had fallen to 0.2 deaths per 100,000 in people.
However, the data for unintentional gun deaths ticked up modestly in 2010, to 606, and then fell slightly to 600 in 2011.
By holding these rogue gun dealers to account, it might be possible to significantly diminish the flow of guns into criminal hands. Instead, Congress chose to protect rogue gun dealers from scrutiny and sanction. In 2003, Congress passed a law forbidding government agencies to disclose tracing data that might link a particular dealer to a criminal purchaser. Its hard to hold gun dealers responsible for selling to unlawful buyers if nobody is allowed to know where an unlawful buyer purchased his weapons.But, these are not "rogue gun dealers". These dealers just happen to be the ones at a the statistical conflation of two events. They are very large gun dealers who operate in close proximity to high crime areas. Consequently, they sell lots of guns, and a percentage ends up at crime scenes. Many are stolen from the people they sell to. If a stolen gun is recovered, it counts as a "gun at a crime scene". Some are bought by undetectable straw purchasers for sale to criminals. If the dealer refused to sell to likely criminals based on demographics (young, male, and black), they would be accused of racism and discrimination. Being a large dealer near a high crime area is what produces the statistical artefact. These dealers are repeatedly investigated by the ATF. They keep meticulous records. They have to, or they would be shut down.
A Congressional Research Service report published in 2013 counted 78 mass-shooting incidents over a thirty-year period in which 547 people were killed.
In other words, on average, 20 people a year die in mass shootings.
There are varying estimates from the CDC, FBI, Harvard and Northwestern studies that say there are between 300,000 and 3,000,000 defensive firearm uses every year, and no shot is fired in 99% of those instances of successful self-defense.
A lot more than 20 of those 300,000 to 3,000,000 people will wind up being murder or violent crime victims if you deny them the most effective tool for self-defense that there is, a firearm.
This version has some typos and grammer errors that have been corrected on the original.
Hey Dean. I guess we musta forgot that when you don’t actually live in reality, you CAN’T ignore it because for them, it doesn’t exist. Reality that is. Ignorance reigns supreme though. Have a great 4th!
Then please tell me (as a fellow Canadian) David and enlighten the rest of us while you are at it, how has the issuance of Firearms Acquisition Certificates (now Possession and Acquisition Licences) from 1979 onward made Canadian streets safer?
Do criminals bother with Restricted Weapons Permits or keep abreast of what firearms are prohibited in Canada so they are not using sawed off rifles or shotguns or silencers or smaller calibre handguns?
Canada must have been a really dangerous place before 1934 when handgun registration took effect or when anybody over 16 with a hunting licence could go into a decent sporting goods store and buy a standard hunting rifle or shotgun plus ammunition (before FACs were required in 1979). Have you ever visited Vermont or Maine or many other US states that border Canada that have casual gun control laws and murder rates that are just as low or lower than the neighbouring Canadian province?
Once worked in a prison where a part of my job was to read pre-sentence reports which detailed the crime committed. Based on these readings, it is my firm belief that anyone intent on murdering someone will do so regardless of what type of weapon is available. Restricting legal access to firearms never stopped a murder as I never read “John Doe stated he was going to use a gun but was unable to get one”. Criminals are creative - deny access to something and they will either find a way to get it or come up with an alternative suitable for the intended purpose.
All of Ted Bundy's many victims were killed by clubs or choking. Just imagine if some of those victims had been armed.
Same here. Talk about an insight into man's inhumanity towards his fellow man. And to deal with them in a prison environment you have to wonder if it was the same person. Many were committed under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, but many weren't, usually those involving DV.
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