San Diego Attorney Misleads Public in Editorial About Gun Accidents & Children

Ammoland ^ | 9 August, 2019 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

On 26 July 2019, progressive City Attorney of San Diego, Mara W. Elliott had an article published in SDNEWS.COM. The article was grossly misleading. Politicians lie regularly. City Attorneys should be held to a higher standard.  In this case, Mara W. Elliot is acting as a politician, as she proposed the Safe Storage Firearms Ordinance. Here is a quote from the article. From sdnews.com:

Firearms are a leading cause of injury-related deaths among children, second only to motor vehicle injury deaths. Most of the 7,000 children killed and injured each year are shot are in their own homes. Most of these deaths happen when a child is playing with a gun, mistakenly thinking it was a toy or was unloaded or locked.

Mara Elliot emphasizes child deaths, but the number she references is for children “killed and injured.”  The number of children killed in unintentional shootings is a very small number. The CDC reports it with confident accuracy. In 2017, it was 95. Such deaths are exceedingly rare at 1.3 per million (.13 per hundred thousand).

The gun culture has done a tremendous job in reducing fatal firearm accidents. The rate of fatal gun accidents has been reduced by 94% since 1932.

The CDC does not list a number for non-fatal unintentional firearms injuries of children because their sample is too small to be accurate.

What Mara Elliot has done is a classic example of how to lie with statistics.

[marktwain]

Mara W. Elliott should not be in public office. She has demonstrated her ability to lie to accomplish a political agenda, unconnected with facts.

[rktman]

Per nuzzlin’ joe, ‘they’ have chosen truth over facts. Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. IF ‘ they’ “redouble” their efforts to choose truth over facts, then I’ll be a little more concerned. Or not.

[billyboy15]

figures lie when liars figure

[FreedomPoster]

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

[antidemoncrat]

A Democrat that lies...how novel.

[HotHunt]

[Svartalfiar]

Mara Elliot emphasizes child deaths, but the number she references is for children “killed and injured.” The number of children killed in unintentional shootings is a very small number. The CDC reports it with confident accuracy. In 2017, it was 95. Such deaths are exceedingly rare at 1.3 per million (.13 per hundred thousand).

Um, also, I'd like to point out that 95is certainly not most of 7,000... She's not really referencing the wrong number, but she's certainly using it the wrong way.