U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Gun Ownership Rates Tied to Domestic Homicides, but Not Other Killings, Study Finds,” The New York Times claimed Monday in yet another attempt to justify citizen disarmament via lies, damned lies, and statistics. “’It is women, in particular, who are bearing the burden of this increased gun ownership,’ the lead author of the study said.”
A casual glance at the Google News feed shows the media has enthusiastically jumped on this and is now busy making sure everyone it can influence is exposed to the headlines, and to supportive and unquestioning “reporting” that dutifully repeats the narrative talking points. How convenient that the conclusion everyone is treated to without having to look further just so happens to agree with what Giffords and other gun-grab groups have been insinuating for years in order to make gun ownership unattractive and scary.
The “study” itself is published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, or as I like to call them, the usual suspects. We’ve run into these characters before in this column when we saw how the AJPH ‘Smart Gun Study’ was a transparent exercise in junk ‘science’ agenda propaganda, and they’re still exhibiting all signs of that classic M.O.
It would be easy to get lost in all the claims and numbers, and those behind this latest hit job on gun ownership are counting on that. It brings to mind a relevant quote from author Thomas Pynchon those entering the labyrinth would do well to keep in mind:
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
Before ceding legitimacy to the authors on any of their points, I’d ask a more basic question, one I don’t see an answer to: How do you determine “ownership”?
After all, it’s both a legal and a moral term. If you stole a gun, you’re its possessor, not its owner. If you’re a “prohibited person” (and the infringement implications of that are a legitimate discussion for another time) and you obtained your gun from criminal underworld sources, again, you’re not its legal owner.
This is more than semantics or splitting hairs. Without being able to establish that simple truth, it’s impossible to establish a correlation/causation nexus with gun ownership and renders any conclusions invalid. No matter how many degrees you may have or “authoritative”-looking charts you put together…
It matters because the impetus here is to discourage gun ownership among “law-abiding” Americans since by default the law-breakers have shown that “gun control” edicts don’t stop them. It matters because the gun-grabbers want the public to think the greater danger applies to them as opposed to the criminal population that exhibits significantly higher incidences and rates of domestic violence, substance abuse, criminal activities, suicides, relationships and encounters with dangerous people, and the like.
It matters because the citizen disarmament lobby particularly doesn’t want women, “the fastest-growing demographic of gun owners in America,” from being receptive to the idea of owning a gun for protection. And that goes double for “black women,” who have always voted overwhelmingly Democrat.
When you expose people to the truth, lies no longer work. And when someone has something, in this case, a gun, they become resistant to giving it up, much more so than someone whose only exposure has been media-induced fear. And that means gun-grabbing politicians properly get seen as the lying frauds and threats to safety that they are.
What the rights swindlers don’t want us to know is if you take that criminal population out of the equation, responsible citizens are quite capable of coexisting with firearms without a statistically significant increase in danger to household members.
You can intuitively prove things to yourself, and you don’t need foundation grants and egghead research teams to do it. Consider the membership of the NRA, arguably the most heavily-armed civilian population on the planet. Compare their domestic homicides committed with firearms to the rates presented in the “study.”
Can’t do it? Not even anecdotally? Don’t you think if it happened, especially often, that those interested in baffling us with b.s. would be exploiting it and bombarding us with hysterical retellings?
Does it look like the homicide numbers for NRA members are statistically insignificant and essentially non-existent? Does it occur to anyone at The New York Times or the AJPH that it might not be the guns? And if it does, what do their incentives tell them to do about that?
Besides scream about not letting the CDC aid in the scam with taxpayer dollars…?
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.