At least it’s a hint

Joseph Farah on World Net Daily touches on something I have been wanting to address in depth for quite a while.  He doesn’t go into the depth I want to but he does give people a hint:

Banning guns in workplace

I marvel at the ability of people who don’t like America – at least the America envisioned by the Founding Fathers – to open up new fronts in their war on what makes our country uniquely free.

I had this thought again when I heard former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich say it’s time to ban guns in the workplace.

 “Listen to the evening news and you’re likely to hear a grisly story about a disaffected worker or estranged spouse or dissatisfied client arriving at a workplace and going ballistic,” said the diminutive Reich. “It’s all too common.”

Anytime someone says, “It’s all too common” I go on full alert.  What it means is they don’t have the numbers to back them up and they are appealing to some sort of subjective standard–their personal standard.

Reich cites as evidence for this crisis, a pseudo-scientific study conducted by Dana Loomis of the University of North Carolina and published in the American Journal of Public Health. Let me dissect, for those who care, the extremely questionable methodology of this study, which purports to show conclusively that homicide is five times more likely at a workplace where guns are permitted than in those where guns are banned.

The study compared 87 cases where employees were killed at work sites in North Carolina between 1994 and 1998 and 177 comparable work sites where there were no murders.

Now think for a moment about the kinds of places – the kinds of businesses that ban firearms. Do you think of them as high-risk businesses? Do you think of them as convenience stores open late at night in urban areas? Or do you think of them as big corporations based in suburban settings where crime is low?

So, can we assume that the places where guns are permitted are already much higher-risk settings than where they are banned? Of course.

And Loomis makes no distinction about the kind of homicides that take place in these working environments. In other words, in his study, a high-risk, late-night convenience store held up by an armed intruder is no different than an office setting in which an armed worker draws a gun and shoots a co-worker.

Drawing on this flimsy, shoddy and politically driven research, people like Reich would presumably ban firearms in all businesses – banks, all-night 7-Elevens, maybe even gun stores, though my assumption is that they would eventually be banned altogether by the people promoting such ideas.

I have said this before and I will say it again: The only people safe in these so-called “gun-free zones,” whether they are schools or businesses or churches, are armed criminals.

Criminals, by definition, do not care about laws. Only the law-abiding care about them. So, making more laws or rules and regulations that ban firearms in places only encourages violent criminals to do what they do – kill, rob, rape, maim.

There is nothing incorrect about what he says but if I had the time I would take it much further.  In almost all cases these sorts of “studies” fail to distinguish between justified and unjustified homicide.  Did Reich engage in this sort of bias as well?  What about other weapons?  Is there a high rate of injuries from people using other type of weapons in the same business that have high injury rates from people using firearms?  If so then there is at least one other factor in common with the high injury rate other than firearms.  And what about the percentage of attacks that were stopped before the police arrived in places that allowed firearms versus those that didn’t?  Shouldn’t that be true measure?  And I would ask Reich if he believe that policemen responding to an ‘event’ should leave their firearms behind.  After all, if the possession of a firearm by an employee is dangerous why isn’t it dangerous for the policeman to bring a firearm into the situation as well?

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One thought on “At least it’s a hint

  1. For one thing, what could a federal “Secretary of Labor” possibly be other than a socialist?

    For another thing, we can talk all day long about issues of crime and safety, statistics, and so on, and that’s fine. Reality supports Liberty every time. The point is though, we have a Master Rule Book called the Constitution, which specifically outlaws the writing of anti gun legislation.

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