(courtesy thetrace.org)

I found this image above an article in Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agitprop media machine, thetrace.org: These 9 States Have the Most Abnormally High Gun Death Rates in America. I have a sneaking suspicion that the study upon which it’s based is the same contextless hokum that the antis create on a regular basis. But there’s too much stats and math and TTAG’s stat and math man Foghorn is teaching TTAG’s resident war hero Jon Wayne Taylor how to fly an airplane. (Two key employees in a small plane…how great is that?) So I’ll leave that and focus on something I’ve noticed about gun control advocates’ anti-gun “art” . . .

They’re pretty good at it!

While the antis think this kind of “gun art” highlights the need for civilian disarmament, a lot of it warms the Second Amendment absolutist cockles of my heart. That image may be photoshopped, but I’d be delighted to put that design in my backyard as a sculpture. By the same token, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership’s “flag guns” — guns painted with the American flag — are a symbol of pride for me. Had one made up exactly to their spec, in fact.

Gun control is a culture war. Hollywood’s pro-gun action hero western sic fi stuff is a bulwark against the antis’ incursions. And so, I believe, is this sort of stuff. Which makes it even better because gun control advocates’ are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. Yes?

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50 COMMENTS

  1. At a previous employer, we lost a group of engineers who were flying in a plane together. I knew all of them, and it sucked.

    On less of a Debbie Downer note, I agree. That gun map is awesome and I’d totally rock that if I had a wall large enough for it or an appropriate outdoor area, etc.

  2. I believe gun-control advocates are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot quite often, although not often enough.

    • When I meet such people, I advise them to lift their sights and aim somewhat higher.

  3. The moment you see a metric of violence specific to guns you can safely discount the entire article or study as propaganda. The amount of implement specific violence has nothing to do with the total violence or overall violence per capita.

    • “The amount of implement specific violence has nothing to do with the total violence or overall violence per capita.”

      But, guns!

    • In particular, the correlation between gun ownership and gun suicides. Well duh. Were there an interesting association between gun ownership and OVERALL suicide, you can bet they’d be shouting it from the rooftops. Instead, we get the breezy, “The lethality of guns means that people who attempt suicide with them are more likely to succeed than those using other means,” which we’re meant to take as self-evident, ergo more guns means more suicide deaths.

      Suicide “attempts” fall into two distinct categories: those meant to succeed and those meant to get attention in failing. The means chosen depends on the intent. My bet is that the number of serious attempts made with non-lethal means simply because a gun wasn’t close at hand is negligible, and the “lethality” argument is bunk. Were there evidence to the contrary articles like this would surely cite it.

  4. I don’t like it. There’s not enough pistols. I can see one where the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, and another on Maine’s rocky shore (Maine, you rock!), but these old eyes are seeing a ton of rifles and shotties and notalotta handguns.

    • The Florida and Michigan peninsulas are poorly represented. I want a refund.

        • I was going to say the same thing. For years The Weather Channel omitted the U.P. from most of their maps unless they had something specific to say about Marquette or Sault St. Marie. Lake Superior started at the border with Wisconsin. Same thing for the weather map posted in the WSJ.

          The only plus to the whole thing was if things got really crazy you got to hear someone try to say Escanaba or Ishpeming and one time I got a great laugh when they mentioned Toivola. Never got to hear them attempt Ontonagon.

    • I also see pistols in Idaho, New Mexico, Michigan, Oregon (if you count the Uzi), and South Dakota.

      ETA: Looks like New York has an Uzi too. Seems legit.

    • Im with you. I was disappointed Utah didn’t get a 1911. I mean hey guys it’s only our state gun, not to mention JMB spent some quality time here!

      • Nonsense. EVERY other site works perfectly. And you’re on every computer/phone perusing TTAG? That doesn’t make…sense.

        • Well, TTaG wasn’t slow or buggy for me.

          So, either it is your computer or your Internet carrier.

          Note: it is entirely possible for an Internet carrier to provide flawless performance to some websites and horribly slow performance to others. And this could be by mistake or design.

        • Once again -EVERY site-and that includes all the gunFB and other things I peruse works great. Obviously I get TTAG to work but it takes several tries quite often. And this computer is loaded up with anti-virus and adblack BS. That’s about the most “sense” I can convey.

  6. They should instead look at the violent crime rates before and after states pass concealed carry. It almost always goes down after, especially in Florida and Ohio. Florida passed it in 1981 and their murder rate went down while the national murder rate was still going up.

    • The trace.org link above notes that the firearm homicide rate is 15 per 100,000 for blacks while it is only 1 per 100,000 for whites.

      Rather than unilaterally disarming law abiding folks, government efforts should focus on disarming and educating proven violent groups and neighborhoods.

      • “…government efforts should focus on disarming and educating proven violent groups and neighborhoods.”

        Uh – “…shall not be infringed.”

  7. This is a good time to remind everyone to avoid falling for the statistics trap. There are two ginormous reasons to avoid statistics all together:
    (1) Most people have no ability to understand much less scrutinize/verify statistics.
    (2) The statistics don’t matter anyway.

    Before anyone dismisses my point that statistics are irrelevant, let me provide two parallels to illustrate why statistics are irrelevant when it comes to fundamental, unalienable rights:
    (a) Suppose scumbags falsely yell “Fire!” so often in crowded places that the resulting stampedes kill 100,000 people every year. Does that justify laws that force EVERYONE (except police of course) to wear muzzles in public?
    (b) Suppose there is absolute proof that men would never commit any assaults, murders, or suicides if they could have sex on demand with any woman they encountered. Does that justify laws that force ALL women (except police of course) to immediately comply with demands for sex from any man?

    These two examples should clearly illustrate that numbers just don’t matter when it comes to fundamental, unalienable rights. We have a right to speak without prior restraint no matter how many people abuse that right and no matter how many deaths result from abuse of that right. And women have a right to chastity without prior restraint no matter how many people will suffer harm as a result (no matter how direct or indirect) of women refusing to give up their right to chastity.

  8. The image is not a photoshop, it was an art piece on display in Grand Rapids MI during Art Prize 2015.

      • Okay, I don’t care WHO created it or WHAT their politics are, that was freakin’ cool (check link, above).

        SPOILER ALERT!

        It’s a 3D scuplture, with each individual piece hung from one or more wires, that looks like a map of the USA but only when it is viewed from one particular physical location. Otherwise, it just looks like a bunch of guns hanging from wires and a metal rack.

        New item for the Lottery List: if I ever get stupid rich, I’m going to have someone design a gun storage vault room with hanging racks that accomplishes something similar with my personal guns.

        Thanks to Nathan and peirsonb for the info and link!

  9. (Two key employees in a small plane…how great is that?)

    It could be worse.
    What if they were riding in a car together?

      • Small planes are almost as risky as cars (per 100k). Commercial air travel is much safer than both by a large margin.

        • The great danger in non-commercial civil aviation is the low-hour pilot. I’ve only flown choppers and sailplanes seriously, and consider both a trade-off of safety for fun. However, I wouldn’t fly with a low-hour fixed-wing pilot unless it was the only way out of hell.

          Come to think of it, rotary-wing school was the only thing that ever took me to Texas, Mineral Wells, class 72-39. Kiowas, not Hughes 55’s. Jeez I’ve grown old….

  10. Survie all those adventures in aloha snackbar land just to die in a fiery plane wreck. There is no justice.

    Or not.

    • All is well. I can not be killed. (horribly maimed appears to be a strong possibility though).
      Also, Foghorn is a good teacher.

  11. You could easily justify leaving Hawaii off that map, but not Alaska. Lots of guns up there.

    Once again, Alaska gets slighted.

  13. A gun map with every state’s locally manufactured or most owned firearm would be pretty cool.

  14. Ok, what this is TRYING to say is Guns=BAD because death by guns are “statistically higher in these 9 states!” If you click through and find the map of the leading causes of death in each state, gun deaths do not come close to making the top 5 causes of death. jeez. these people are sick.

  17. Nick *might* have a motive for JWT.

    Owning an aircraft gets a lot more affordable with a co-ownership arrangement.

    Texas oughtta have a Barrett .50 in it, all things in Texas being bigger and all.

    (Nick? An autogas STC will make it even cheaper…)

  19. The states with high suicide rates are generally rural, with a week mental health system and culture where going to a professional is considered unmanly. There is no substitute for multivariate analysis.

    • Confidential Federal Informant? Maybe. Good call. I’ll totally hide my weed from him.

    • I was wondering that too. If that’s the case, he’s defiantly speeding through his own training.

      • He’s at least instrument rated so he’s gotten farther than I ever did. My private pilot certificate has been gathering dust for quite a while. Damned expensive to fly planes on your own dime these days.

  21. This would make a great “weekend Photo Caption” contest – the person who names the most firearms in the picture correctly gets the prize.

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