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.
I seem to recall a question on background checks involving domestic abuse…..
Fifty women a month would be a big number to try to wrap your mind around. That would make women extinct in a few years. If there are no women, then the reproductive birth cycle stops. All I can say is that I call BS to this and anything else the NYt says. They are just trying to write anything that sensulizes so they can try to keep their sorry newspaper afloat.
problem is these women cannot get a firearm to defend themselves from domestic abusers because the anti-gun nuts demand background checks, waiting periods, concealed carry license, etc. if they were able to have someone give them a handgun immediately or go purchase one immediately i’m sure the number would go down dramatically. another reason is mindset, women and men think totally different.
Be sure You Teach Your Daughter to Shoot, A Divorce Decree and a Restraining Order is Just A Piece of Paper.
How many women are beaten to death, knifed, strangled, etc? Domestic Violence is usually an escalating crime that eventually evolves into serious injury or death. Mentioning a small part of Domestic Violence as though getting rid of guns will suddenly cause it to decrease or go away is a fallacy. Abuser’s don’t always start off with physical violence in many cases, many times they start with verbal abuse (that’s male or female abusers, I’ve seen both types) and escalate to physical violence as they gain power over the abused. I watched a 155 lb man being repeatedly abused by a… Read more »
We should all remember the name of Carol Bowne:
https://www.ammoland.com/2017/10/gun-control-activists-say-her-name-carol-bowne/
@MM1(SS), You have to write more words or we will not see your point. What is your point?
I’m looking at this from a different perspective. If the study is valid (and I don’t believe it is for one moment), then perhaps it’s more a behavior problem than a gun problem (which is always the case with mass shootings and just about all others). In this case, I would blame the rise and preponderance of radical feminism for the violence. If women acted more like women and the traditional marriage wasn’t being destroyed by Feminism, then these acts by males wouldn’t have taken place. See, I can make just as specious a case against feminism as the study… Read more »
“The latest Crime Prevention Research Center report showed between 2012 and 2018,
*concealed carry permits for women grew 111 percent faster than for men*.”
https://krcgtv.com/news/local/women-and-firearms-why-more-females-are-choosing-to-carry-guns
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3233904
Two more obvious questions in response:
How many women per month use firearms to protect themselves against ex’s?
How many ex’s are discouraged from attacking because they know or fear their victim might be armed?
Even if the “study” is accurate (fat chance), it’s meaningless without this context.
I doubt the veracity of the study, also, but if it were true, then even more would be getting beat to death with baseball bats and hammers, and drowned in swimming pools. Just more propaganda.
Even if true, it is not logical to jump to the conclusion that citizen disarmament or governmental taking without just compensation would solve the situation.
The mention of Thomas Pynchon indicates a well-read man, indeed. Kudos.
The “anti-gun” propaganda industry is a component of the global socialist movement, because how can you force socialism on a population who has the means to resist?
Those advocates of gun bans will never admit that the first item a socialist regime imposes on its’ subjects is a disarmament mandate.
Witness Venezuela. Chavez disarmed them a coule decades back.They swallowed that big hook. Now they swallow the rest of the package, and find it nauseating. But they cannot do a thing about it. They’ve already SWALLOWED the KoolAde. Too late.
But some will survive, and rebuild, hopefully somewhat the wiser for their trouble. Odds are, though, a different flavoured KoolAde will be in the next attractive pitcher.