Somebody named Mansur Gidfar has posted a list of ten supposed facts (terrifying facts!) about guns in America at upworthy.com. In an upset, some of them actually have a bare kernel of truth to them, but all are so misleading as to constitute flat out lies. So let’s fix Mansur’s post, shall we? . . .

Fact #1: 31.5 Americans are killed with guns every day.

True dat. Of course this also means that 259,999,968.5 guns didn’t kill anyone that day. And 16.4 Americans are killed with something other than a gun each day. But when I read something stating that X number of Americans do this, that or the other thing, this it implies to me that all Americans are at equal risk for becoming a homicide victim which is simply untrue.

The fact of the matter is that criminals make up more than ⅔ of homicide victims. According to the Chicago PD’s 2011 Murder Analysis Report, 69.42% of homicide victims had at least one prior arrest. And in the decade preceding 2011, 87.89% of homicide offenders had at least one prior arrest. So if you avoid being a criminal and avoid hanging out with criminals you are much less likely to be murdered.

Fact #2: 46,000 Americans will be killed with guns during President Obama’s second term in office – unless Washington acts.

Maybe so, maybe no; as the number of concealed carry permit holders has risen over the last two decades the homicide rate has generally been dropping as you can see in this chart:

Fact #3: Due to a legal loophole approximately 40% of all U.S. guns are sold through private sellers who aren’t required to conduct a federal background check.

There are a couple of problems with this statement. The first is that private sales are not a “loophole”; when the law was written in 1993 giving private individuals access to NICS was discussed and rejected. Also there were more than a quarter of a million FFLs (up from about 150,000 in 1975) and the number had been trending upward for decades.

The bulk of these dealers were folks who came to be referred to disparagingly as “kitchen table” dealers; people who got their FFL mainly to get wholesale pricing for their own purchases. These dealers probably only sold a dozen or so weapons a year, mostly to friends, family and co-workers. If you look at the graph below, however, you will see that just as the Brady bill passed the number of dealers dropped precipitously:

So what caused the drop in the number of dealers? Would you believe it came from the same folks who are now agitating for more background checks? It was the Brady Campaign who started the push to, well, I’ll let them explain:

Federal laws and regulations in the early 1990s instituted real reform in the licensing requirements for retail firearms dealers, making it much tougher for individuals to obtain licenses and ensuring that those who were licensed were in fact bona fide businesses.

Hypocrisy much?

Next problem is that 40% number. I just sold a shotgun to someone in Pennsylvania, and as a private seller I didn’t conduct a background check. However, as required by law I shipped the weapon to a FFL who will perform a NICS check before allowing the purchaser to take possession, so despite the private nature of the sale the Brady checks were still performed.

In addition, CA and RI require checks on all sales, CT, HI, MD, NJ and PA require checks on all handgun sales, and CO, IL, NY and OR require checks on all sales performed at a gun show, private seller or no. So just because 40% of sales are between private individuals does not mean that 40% of sales are NICS check free.

Also implicit in this 40% figure is the idea that since there was no check it must be criminals buying the guns. I’ll address this point when I hit Myth Fact #5.

Fact #4: In an undercover investigation of online gun sales, 62% of private gun sellers on the internet agreed to sell a firearm to buyers who said the probably couldn’t pass a background check.

There was only one transcript given but I think we can assume it is representative:

INVESTIGATOR: Now, you’re not one of those licensed guys or anything right?

SELLER: No, no, no. [Laughs]

INVESTIGATOR: […] No background checks?

SELLER: [Laughs] No, I just take cash, and there you go. [Laughs].

INVESTIGATOR: Alright, no background checks – that’s good ‘cuz I probably couldn’t pass one of those things.

SELLER: [Laughs]

The fact that the seller is laughing indicates to me that he doesn’t believe the investigator’s claim and frankly I don’t think I would believe it either. If the claim were true then the buyer is essentially saying

INVESTIGATOR: Hi, I have no idea who you are but I am going to go ahead and confess some federal felonies to you.

Nope, I certainly wouldn’t believe it.

Fact #5: A national survey of inmates found that nearly 80% of those who used a handgun in a crime acquired it from an unlicensed secondary-market seller.

My grandfather was a writer and journalist for most of his adult life and had rather a way with words. One of my favorites was the phrase undulating lie. As far as I know he invented the term and I have never heard anyone outside our family use it, but it really is quite useful. An undulating lie is when someone tells you something that is factually true, but so misleading as to constitute a lie.

I think this statement falls into that category because of the use of the word acquired coupled with the phrase secondary-market seller. The combination certainly very strongly implies that a purchase was made, but without actually coming out and saying it. Of course if Mansur had used the word bought or purchased then that would have just been a flat-out lie ,something that you would never know if you didn’t go to the source and dig in a bit.

If you page down past the highlights (which also use the bullshit 80% number) you will come to Table 8:

So by using “acquired” they include all of those illicit sources which A) are illegal and 2) wouldn’t go through a background check anyway. Does Mansur seriously want us to believe that any of the “street sources” would go through NICS regardless of how many laws required it? Or that a family member or friend of a criminal is going to have them fill out a 4473 and run them through NICS?

Fact #6: The federal penalty for trafficking guns without brandishing or discharging them is the same as the penalty for trafficking livestock.

Or not quite: Trafficking in stolen livestock gets you 5 years, but you face 10 years for violating 18 USC § 922(g):

[It shall be unlawful for a prohibited person] to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.

Keep in mind that you face that much time per unit. In other words if you are caught trafficking 1 weapon and 100 rounds of ammunition you face more than one thousand years in prison.

Fact #7: There have been 61 mass shootings in the U.S. since 1982. The killer used a legally obtained weapon in 49 of them.

And 60 of those 61 mass murders have occurred in supposedly “gun-free” zones.

Fact #8: Among 23 high-income countries the U.S. accounted for 80% of all firearm deaths.

Unfortunately access to this study is restricted, so I can only guess which countries were counted, but I do have some relevant questions and points.

First, what are the relative populations? If the U.S. constituted 90% of the population then the fact we had 80% of gun deaths is meaningless. This is why you should always demand rates rather than mere numbers.

Second, what were non-firearm death rates? What were the overall death rates? If you look at the rate of gun suicides, the U.S. tops the list:

 

But if you look at the overall suicide rate, we are right near the middle:

Third, is our non-firearm homicide rate the same as other countries? Actually I know good and well that it isn’t, our national non-firearm homicides run about 4 times those in the UK, so if it is guns that are the problem, why aren’t the non-gun rates the same?

Fact #9: The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is 19.5 times higher than in other high-income countries.

Oops, jumped the gun there; but the fact remains, there are other factors, social, economic and cultural at work. Also ignored is the fact that vast swathes of the country have very low homicide rates; according to Larry Pratt in an interview with Pier Morgan, Fairfax County VA (home of Gun Owners of America) a locale that is awash with guns has a homicide rate that is one-tenth of the rate in Great Britain.

Furthermore, homicide is not the only violent crime in existence and the fact of the matter is that apart from homicide the violent crime rate in (to pick a country at relative random) Scotland is almost eleven times the rate in the U.S. According to the Scots’ own government website, there were “[a]pproximately 220,000 violent crimes of assault or robbery” committed in Scotland in 2011.

So given that the population of Scotland is about 5.2 million, that gives us a violent crime rate of 4230.8/100K. Then we look to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and find that in 2011 the US’ violent crime rate was 386.3/100K. This means that in “gun free” Scotland you are almost eleven times as likely to be the victim of a violent crime as you are in the lax-lawed US.

And this is not a new phenomenon; as pointed out in Fear in Britain[1]:

To the great consternation of British authorities concerned about tourism revenue, a June [2000] CBS News report proclaimed Great Britain “one of the most violent urban societies in the Western world.” Declared Dan Rather: “This summer, thousands of Americans will travel to Britain expecting a civilized island free from crime and ugliness…[But now] the U.K. has a crime problem….worse than ours.”

Finally, even if we ignore the fact that the freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional right — subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility[2] there remains the fact that twice as many lives are saved in DGUs[3] as are taken in CGUs[4].

According to a study performed in the early 1990s by Drs. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, there are between 2.1 and 2.5 million DGUs annually. Now there are a lot of people out there who deride this number as ludicrous. They’re unable or (more likely) unwilling to accept that Dr. Kleck is not a shill for the Eee-vil Gun Lobby™. This, despite the good doctor disclosing in his 1997 book Targeting Guns (quote from GunCite.com):

The author is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Independent Action, Democrats 2000, and Common Cause, among other politically liberal organizations He is a lifelong registered Democrat, as well as a contributor to liberal Democratic candidates. He is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of, or contributor to, the National Rifle Association, Handgun Control, Inc. nor any other advocacy organization, nor has he received funding for research from any such organization.

But skeptics will always be skeptical and antis will always prefer their own “reality” so let’s go ahead and throw the Kleck-Gertz study number out in favor of a more conservative one.

Let’s use the numbers from the study which was commissioned by the Clinton Department of Justice shortly after the K-G study came out[5]. That study, conducted by Drs. Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig (who bothhave a long record as very strong proponents of very strict gun control) concluded that there were 1.46 million DGUs per year.

I imagine that some may find even this lower number dubious, probably preferring to rely on the numbers from the National Crime Victimization Surveys which show between 50,000 and 100,000 DGUs per year. Unfortunately for those hopeful doubters, the way the NCVS is structured means that it seriously undercounts the number of DGUs. I’ll let Dr. Tom Smith, Senior Fellow and Director of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago explain:

First, it appears that the estimates of the NCVSs are too low. There are two chief reasons for this. First, only DGUs that are reported as part of a victim’s response to a specified crime are potentially covered. While most major felonies are covered by the NCVSs, a number of crimes such as trespassing, vandalism, and malicious mischief are not. DGUs in response to these and other events beyond the scope of the NCVSs are missed.

Second, the NCVSs do not directly inquire about DGUs. After a covered crime has been reported, the victim is asked if he or she “did or tried to do [anything] about the incident while it was going on.” Indirect questions that rely on a respondent volunteering a specific element as part of a broad and unfocused inquiry uniformly lead to undercounts of the particular of interest.

There’s another problem with the failure to directly inquire about DGUs: the DGU question is only triggered by someone saying they were the victim of a crime. If someone came towards me with a knife saying “Gimme your wallet,” and I put my hand on my weapon and replied “I don’t think so, Skippy,” causing the assailant to retreat, was I actually the victim of a crime?

Before I started researching these issues I would have told the NCVS interviewer that no, I hadn’t been the victim of a crime so they never would have learned of my DGU.

But now that we have a number for annual DGUs, we need to try to figure out how many lives were saved. I turn once again to Kleck and Gertz’s article Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun[6]. They found that 15.7% of people involved in a DGU believed that they “almost certainly” saved their life of someone else’s.

That might strike some people as an awfully large percentage, but if you take into account the fact that most locales regard the mere act of pulling a gun as using deadly force, and combine it with the fact that most places also require someone to be in “reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm” before he or she can lawfully use deadly force, the number seems more feasible.

In addition to the “almost certainly” pool, The K-G study also found that 14.6% of respondents believed that someone “probably would have” been killed if not for their DGU.

Because I want my numbers to be distinctly conservative let’s say that 9 out of 10 of the “almost certainly” folks were wrong, and let’s say that 99 out of 100 of the “probably” people were also incorrect. That means we can state with a fair degree of certainty that at least 1.716% of the 1.46 million DGUs saved a life.

Doing the math that translates to over 25,000 lives that are saved annually by guns.

So we’ve determined that at least 25,000 lives per year are saved by DGUs, and according to the CDC’s WISQARS website, between 1999 and 2010 there were an average of 11,740 gun-related homicides annually, which means that for every criminal homicide with a firearm there were more than two lives saved by DGUs.

Fact #10: 82% of gun owners (including 74% of NRA members) support requiring criminal background checks for anyone purchasing a gun.

Unfortunately Mansur doesn’t tell us where these numbers came from. The only recent poll I found specifically of gun owners was this one performed by Word Doctors at the behest of Mayors Against Illegal Guns but unfortunately there was no such question on that poll. The closest it came was asking about sellers specifically at gun shows and in answer to that question 82% of NRA members and 86% of non-NRA members support it. Strange.

Also strange is the fact that one result Mansur doesn’t mention is that 92% of Nms[7] and 83% of nNms[8] believe in Constitutional Carry; specifically that:

Law-abiding Americans should have the freedom to choose how to protect themselves, based on their personal situation. No local, state or federal government should dictate this decision.

Or that 83% of Nms and 71% of nNms believe that laws on gun sales should be kept the same or made less strict.

Or that 93% of Nms and 86% of nNms believe the Second Amendment should apply to state and local laws.

Or that 43% of Nms had a college or post-graduate degree, while only 30% of nNms did[9].

So not so much terrifying as merely tedious.

 

[1] Dr. Paul Gallant, Dr. Joanne Eisen and Dave Kopel 7/18/00

[2] L. Neil Smith: Letter to a Liberal Colleague

[3] Defensive Gun Uses

[4] Criminal Gun Uses

[5] Some cynical gunnies believe that the Administration was trying to refute the K-G numbers. If so, Oops!

[6] Northwestern University School of Law, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, issue 1, 1995

[7] NRA members

[8] Non- NRA members

[9] Okay, this one was just a bit of elitist snark, sorry.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

59 COMMENTS

  7. Love this counter-articles TTAG is posting that poke holes in all the statistical “evidence” that is getting spread around as reason for infringing on our 2A rights. Good stuff!

  8. Gun grabbers don’t like to consider the much more common violent crimes of rape, assault and armed robbery when they agitate against firearms based self-defense. It doesn’t make much of a case for gun control when it turns out the US is one of the least violent/most safe countries among high income nations.

    They also assume that murder is uniformly spread across the population and not concentrated in certain demographic groups who have large numbers of felons. With the exception of a subset of 10 percent of the population the US in no different than our neighbors to the north when it comes to violent crime. In fact, the Northern Virginia component of the DC metropolitan area is safer than Toronto which is the safest city in Canada.

    The Washingtonian Magazine recently did a comparison of Maryland, DC and Virginia. Guess what? When it came to violent crime, Northern Virginia was an order of magnitude safer than either DC or the Maryland suburbs despite the wide availability of guns, shall issue concealed carry and constitutional open carry.

  9. Nice response. Lets also respond by driving NRA membership, donating money to 2A advocacy groups and igniting grass roots efforts that get the vote out.

  11. It’s frustrating that the gun control supporters have innumerable spokespeople with soapboxes provided by so many media outlets that lots of people trust implicitly and that collectively reach so large and varied an audience, but gun rights supporters and their message is mostly insular to their own. People who might be undecided will see the gun control agitprop on Huffington Post or NY Times or the Atlantic and be swayed because these are established, reputable (yes, I know, but for the sake of argument…) sources of news and information, not knowing that it is just agitprop. And these people aren’t likely to check the sources or understand how statistics can be manipulated or cherry-picked so they support the presenter’s agenda. These same undecided people aren’t very likely to find their way here or to any similar websites to read the many well-written and forthright refutations of pro-gun control agitprop. What these undecided people will hear from the gun rights side is whichever points the NRA makes that get strung-up for derision or dismissed out-of-hand by other media outlets.
    Like so many aspects of the gun rights struggle, it’s a matter of perception: many people perceive the NRA to be the political version of the Death Star – an evil “other” that’s callously doing pure evil and most definitely not to be trusted – and not that it’s made up of their fellow Americans and might actually know what it’s talking about. This besmirching of the NRA unfortunately extends not just to pro-gun rights media, but even to the more centrist gun rights supporters who actually have the best chance of swaying the undecided. It’s been a brilliant campaign on the part of gun control supporters, because they know most people aren’t going to check their info, and because they leverage fear, possibly the most powerful influence over human decision-making, even when we think we are basing it on reason.

  13. Add Nebraska to the states that require background checks for private sales of handguns other than antiques. A person who plans to take possession of a handgun must get a certificate, showing that he is not forbidden to possess a handgun, from the local sheriff. The only exceptions are transfers between close relatives, licensed dealers, holders of concealed carry permits and LEOs.

    A local, retired police chief and his girl friend are in trouble because he loaned her a pistol without making sure she had a certificate. Dumb mistake on his part since, if you are not prohibited, the certificate costs $5 and takes only a few minutes at the sheriff’s office.

  14. MD also requires private sales of “regulated” long guns to go through an FFL or state police. So all handguns, AK, FAL, non-Hbar AR15s etc get a background check & 7 day wait no matter what. Anybody know what the US homicide rate would be if you removed hotspots like Chicago?

    • well .other than the fact your statistics are bltlnaaty false, I have to go with global issues. The consititution protects our rights to guns,but not global warming. I see the biggest threat, being people who go BERSERK over the issue. I notice you didn’t have all those specific accurate stats on the number of people who thwarted attacks,saved lives etc, from the bad guys because they possesed firearms..but then I guess those stats wouldn’t fit your agenda very well. Do me a favor, the word to work on is “research” do a little more before you start throwing out silly ideas that don’t hold water!! Some people aren’t as smart as you perhaps..they may actually believe what you’re saying! In this case, you’re throwing out such irresponsible stats is more damaging than either issue you asked about! peace.

  15. The issue of non-homicidal, violent crime rates in some of these wonderful countries where guns are strictly controlled needs to be emphasized and brought out in the debate much more. I know people from the UK and Europe who are flabbergasted that there are Americans anywhere in the US who sleep with their doors unlocked or windows open on their houses. Seriously.

    The rates of rape and assault in some of these cherished countries used for comparison are horrifically high. When I showed the rates of rape to one Scotsman who was constantly harping and whinging about the US rate of gun crime, he had nothing to say. After that, I took to pointing this out to everyone from the UK… and pointing to the FBI UCR rates for the US, and leaving it for them to figure out. When the few who would protest that “fewer guns make us safer overall,” I’d point out that for a woman being raped, I’m sure she’d like to have a gun, any gun, and if she did have a gun, she wouldn’t be a statistic.

    They never have a response for this point.

    • DG,
      Do you have a good source URL for the non-homicidal, violent crime rates of various countries please?

      Thanks

  16. I tried to think of some artful and eloquent response to this guy’s ramblings, but all I could come up with was “douche.”

  17. Thank you Mr. Krafft. I believe you just mopped the floor with Mr. Gindfar and his article. Unfortunately I think this humiliation will only make him more rabidly anti-gun.

  18. Amazing work on this article.

    This is getting bookmarked for referral to educate any anti’s that will take it.

  20. Most people killed by guns every year are gang bangers. We dont have a gun problem, we have a gang problem.

  21. Nicely done, and I was pleased to see a spirited defense without a single dodgy stat cited by our side.

    • Thank-you Alpha. I must say that is one of my favorite aspects of being a gun nut; since the stats are almost invariably in our favor we don’t need to fudge them.

  22. Is it just me or does every male grabber look like the insecure nerd who got his butt kicked in high school all of the time? It’s probably part of the reason they do this.

  23. Fact #7: There have been 61 mass shootings in the U.S. since 1982. The killer used a legally obtained weapon in 49 of them.

    And 60 of those 61 mass murders have occurred in supposedly “gun-free” zones.

    *************************************************************

    Are you saying only the Loughner shooting was not in a gun free zone? I haven’t checked, and I’ll bet you haven’t either. Off the top of my head, some of the school shootings had armed guards present. Are you still counting them as gun free?

      • In some of them yes. Look it up.

        The idea is this. Crazy spree shooters do not choose gun free zones for their attacks, not in most cases. They go where they have a beef of some kind.

        The other question of whether or not armed good guys could help is different. Here we’re talking about the minds of the shooters.

        • Mikeb302000
          The shooter in Aurora, CO didn’t have a beef with the theatre he went to, at least not that I’m aware of. He choose a theatre further from his home. There were others closer but the one he choose was the only one that displayed a “no guns” sign.

          The shooter at the Clackamas Country Mall in Oregon didn’t have a beef with the mall that I’m aware of. Two people were killed in that shooting. Malls are usually packed before Christmas. Why only 2 killed? There was a person there with a concealed handgun. The shooter saw the handgun and then shot himself.

          Interviews with criminals show that they choose their targets based on the likelyhood of them being disarmed.

          • Boloney. Sometimes they choose their targets because a little voice tells them to. But usually it’s because they have some kind of beef with the place, if only in their own disturbed minds.

              • I said that the Aurora shooter was not angry at the theatre. You said “baloney.” I’m just asking for proof for you to back up your baloney comment. As you’ve just said, you can’t prove it.

              • First, tell us how you KNOW Holmes was not angry at the theater. Otherwise, admit you’re just assuming that part and have no proof.

                The fact is, many times no one knows what’s in the minds of these nuts. Isn’t that right?

        • Mikeb,

          Which of these is not a “gun-free zone?” It’s hard to tell form the listings but most seem to be gun-free zones.

          Also, the February 12, 2007 shooting at the trolley square shooting was stopped by a man with a gun. The left-wing Mother Jones articles says he was shot dead by police. However, he was shot by an off-duty police officer who happened to be at the mall. All others besides the off duty officer and the criminal were banned from possessing arms in the mall.

          • You said it, “most seem to be gun free zones.” Most, but not all. And the ones that are happened to be the places that the shooters had some beef with. It’s rarely what you guys keep pushing, that the calculating mass murderer calmly chooses the gun free zone for its target right environment. That part, which is the big inference in all this talk about gun free zones, is bullshit.

    • Yes I am saying that only the Tucson (and please do not use that piece of filth’s name) shooting was not in a gun free zone. And yes, schools with armed guards are considered still gun free zones by virtue of the fact that if you aren’t a special person you’ll be arrested if you get caught with a gun. As for checking, well, see my earlier comment about how gunnies don’t have to distort or make $hit up:

      “Lott offers a final damning statistic: ‘With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.'” – John Fund The Facts about Mass Shootings National Review Online 16 Dec. 12 http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335739/facts-about-mass-shootings-john-fund

      Just off the top of my head: San Ysidro, CA McMassacre, GFZ
      Killeen TX, Luby’s Cafeteria, GFZ
      Columbine, GFZ
      VA Tech, , GFZ
      Civic Assn. Binghamton, NY, GFZ
      Fort Hood, GFZ
      Trolley Square Mall, GFZ
      Clackmas Mall, GFZ
      Sikh temple, GFZ
      Red Lake MN, GFZ
      Amish school in PA, GFZ
      Aurora CO movie theatre, GFZ
      San Antonio TX movie theatre . . . oh, wait, that one was stopped by an armed patron so only the shooter was killed.
      CO Springs, CO New Life Church . . . oh, wait, that one was stopped by an armed church-goer working security so only the shooter was killed.
      Pearl MS school shooting . . . oh, wait, that one was stopped by an armed asst. principal who had to run out to his vehicle parked off-campus because he couldn’t bring his weapon to school.

      So, Mike, can you come up with any (besides Tucson) that didn’t occur in a GFZ?

      • I already provided the Mother Jones link which contains quite a few which were not gun free zones, but you don’t care. You present some bogus exaggerated nonsense and then when called on it present a cherry picked list to support your claim. The Armed Intelligentsia will support you to a man because to them mutual support in these dangerous times is more important than honesty.

        GFZs with armed guards present should not count. Their presence belies both your supposed spree-shooter thinking and motivation in choosing that place as well as the ridiculous idea that armed good guys would make the difference.

        • Mike, so you don’t think that the shooter knowing that, at the very most, there will only be a couple of possibly armed people, would at least make him more confident? All the planning that most of these people put into these attacks, and you don’t think resistance crosses their mind? And you also think it ridiculous that people who choose to arm themselves, would have a good possibility of stopping a bad guy who opens fire on the crowd? Would they just hide or wait to be shot in you scenario?

          • I’ve made it very clear what I think.

            1. Most mass shooters go to the place of their grievance regardless of its gun free status.

            2. Armed good guys usually cannot help.

            If you look down the list, you’ll not only see several that were not gun-free zones, you’ll see that most of the others were chosen for my reason number 1. If you look harder you’ll see several that had armed good guys who turned out to be useless.

  24. The BS in all this was after my dad died in May of this year, since he lived in Hawaii , I could not get my own shotgun back without having it shipped through an FFL through UPS. In CA that required the DROS background check and 10 day waiting period, plus $145 dollars (for 2 shotguns and a 30-30). Had I bought an airline ticket, I could have packed them up in my check in lugage, claimed them, and no registration would have been required.

  27. According to (the CDC web site): http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf

    In 2011:
    • about 38,000 people died of suicide. Roughly half (19,766) used a firearm.
    • 11,101 homicides by firearm
    • 4,852 homicides by other means

    To put that in perspective in 2011:
    • 26,631 died in falls
    • 3,555 died in drowning
    • 2,621 died due to smoke / fire / flames
    • 33,554 died due to poisoning and exposure to noxious substances
    • 851 died due to accidental firearm discharge
    • 10,972 died of TB
    • 34,677 died in motor vehicle accidents

    You are about as likely to die from TB as from a firearm; twice as likely to die in a fall; and almost three times as likely to die from poisoning. (I exclude suicides; since those individuals were planning their own demise and about half used guns, and half used other means. If guns were not available, I suspect that most would accomplish their goal using some other method.)

    • Absolutely right. Don’t trust it — READ it. Judge for yourself. And if you find that it’s just mindless propaganda, not well-thought-out counterarguments, then you weren’t reading the same article I was.

    • He’s cited his claims. Yet you can’t cite anything counter to it.

      Yeah, we got it…you can’t, so you must deflect.

      Must be horrible, living with a fundamentalist liberal mindset like that.

      Liberal fundamentalists ignore the facts because the facts counter their beliefs.

  29. Ah yes…the ad-hominem…the Left’s only response when confronted with something they can’t refute.

  30. He’s cited his claims. Yet you can’t cite anything counter to it.

    Yeah, we got it…you can’t, so you must deflect.

    Must be horrible, living with a fundamentalist liberal mindset like that.

    Liberal fundamentalists ignore the facts because the facts counter their beliefs.

  31. With respect to #1, the 31.5 number also includes police and citizens shooting people in self-defense. I also believe that it includes U.S. military personnel killed in “war.” I’m not 100% sure of that because I can’t get an straight answer.

  32. From Mr. Mansur’s facebook page:

    There will come a day when Matt Damon fails to make me swoon, but it is not this day.

    Hmmm…. Well that’s interesting.

Comments are closed.