More Medical Propaganda Disguised as a “Study” about Firearms and Risk

AmmoLand ^ | 24 August, 2020 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

The American Journal of Medicine recently published a paper about deaths associated with firearms. The paper misleads in the first sentence of the abstract. The lie is in the unstated, false assumption. It is a subtle but important shift in causation.

The first sentence in the abstract is:

News media and policy makers frequently discuss deaths from firearms, drug overdoses, and motor vehicle accidents.

The shift in causation is done when the author inserts the word from before firearms and associates firearms with drug overdoses and motor vehicle accidents. The correct word would be with.

The correct usage would differ for each statistic. A corrected sentence would read thus:

News media and policymakers frequently discuss deaths committed with firearms, from drug overdoses, and from motor vehicle accidents.

Firearms are objects. Drug overdoses and motor vehicle accidents are actions. The author repeats the error by listing firearms as a “cause of death”.

The Center for Disease Control  (CDC) does not list “Firearms” as a cause of death. They list homicide, suicide, and unintentional Injury.

Inserting the word “from” defines firearms as the cause. It comes with the assumption: if there were no firearms, none of the deaths listed would have occurred.

That is a false assumption.

The rate of total suicides is little affected by a reduction of firearms; similarly, a reduction of firearms has little, if any, effect on homicides.

There may be an effect on fatal accidents. The numbers are so small, it is difficult to know if reducing the number of firearms would reduce the total rate of accidental deaths. It might, or it might not.

[marktwain]

A prime way to lie is to assume the falsehood you are promoting is true, in the premise of your statements.

[bagster]

They should do a study about pianos falling on people's heads next.

That is a huge health problem.

If one life could be saved...

[Georgia Girl 2]

You'll shoot your eye out. 😉

[BitWielder1]

It's standard Liberal MO, start with a false premise and weave a long article in defense of said premise,
The more words, the stronger the argument, or so they believe.

And it does not matter what they say, guns and accidents are not medical problems and it's pointless to argue them as such in medical journals.

[marktwain]

The left has been successful in removing "public health" from Constitutional constraints.

So, they work hard to make every policy issue into a "public health" issue, so as to avoid Constitutional restraints.