The science is settled

I found this, from the CDC, interesting:

Unintentional fall deaths
  • Number of deaths: 31,959
  • Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.0
Motor vehicle traffic deaths
  • Number of deaths: 35,398
  • Deaths per 100,000 population: 11.1
Unintentional poisoning deaths
  • Number of deaths: 38,851
  • Deaths per 100,000 population: 12.3

And from another CDC page:

Firearm homicides
  • Number of deaths: 10,945
  • Deaths per 100,000 population: 3.4

So, the average resident of the United States is about three times more likely to die from an unintentional fall, motor vehicle traffic accident, or unintentional poisoning than to be killed, including JUSTIFIABLE homicide, by someone with a firearm.

Hence, the science is settled. If Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, and others were really interested in saving lives they would spend their money and political capital on banning ladders, stairs, cars, and household chemicals instead of guns. And since they are not their real objective is something other than saving lives.

So, what is the real reason they continue to advocate for infringing upon our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms? And what are we going to do about it?

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18 thoughts on “The science is settled

  1. Oh, but you use logic, and facts! And you have already taught us today that neither matters!

    I’ve been pointing this out for many years, gun banners don’t care about no stinking facts or logic!

    Look at the statistics for self inflicted death, like early death due to heart disease attributable to smoking. Gun deaths pale in comparison.

  2. As always, statistics are a bitch.

    I would argue that more people deal with fatal heights on a daily basis than deal with firearms on a daily basis, and given that a fall down a single flight of stairs can be fatal for even someone in peak condition, I’m probably not wrong.

    So, yes, total incidence is higher for common accidents. But incidence-per-exposure probably isn’t.

    Obviously there’s no easy way to examine the latter, just be careful how hard we harp on the former particular point.

  3. If you are using an OR or two in that statement, wouldn’t it be “… 10 times more likely …”?

    • Yes. I was deliberately ambiguous about that because I was in a hurry to get the post out and didn’t want to explain it even though I was thinking that. It is a little easier to see “is about three times more likely to die from any of…” and I couldn’t quite find the words to say that at the time.

      • This post screams for a meme; I wanna get the wording correct.

        Which one is it?

        a) 3x more likely
        b) 10x more likely

        Math’s not my forte. I leave that to the pros.

        Thanks for the clarification!

  4. OMG! We need a federal program to resolve altitude inequality. In just a few years, we can reduce this inequality to less than 3 meters. It will only cost a few trillion dollars.

  5. Remember – if current polls are correct, the people of America would rather elect a serial rapists clean-up crew who has lied constantly about everything, than someone who said something crude about women. And the man’s own party is selling him out so they can keep their lace on the gravy train, because they are so spineless they fear bad words more than destroying America. They’d rather elect someone who all but said her plans are to start a nuclear war in the ME (Russia is all in, AND you want to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria? WTF?) that someone who thinks we should have actual borders that actually allow us to control who enters the nation.
    So, compared to that, guns being the problem is a pretty small piece of mental gymnastics.

  6. Apparently no one noticed that INTENTIONAL deaths inflicted using firearms are being compared to ACCIDENTAL deaths from other causes.

    I researched this stuff back in the 1990s during the run-up to the election when Washington State’s Initiative 676 was on the ballot. Back then, the National Safety Council did list accidental deaths, of all those things including firearm-related accidental deaths only. Since then they have had to conflate the intentional with the accidental deaths involving firearms, so as to inflate the number many times over

    And you all fell for it.

    See how this works?

    So if we’re going to compare actual numbers, we’ll have to include intentional falls due to someone being pushed, intentional poisonings, vehicular homicides and so on and on and on, OR we’ll have to look only at accidental deaths involving firearms. The latter number is so low that it’s way, way down in the noise among other dangers.

    But still we miss the point in even addressing any of the above, other than to show how the deception game is being perpetrated.

    The bottom line is;
    1. All free citizens have the unalienable right to keep and bear arms, no matter how many other people abuse them, and,
    2. If someone intends to kill you, they don’t need a firearm, strictly speaking, anyway, and so you’re dead either way. Even if all guns were totally illegal, any criminal would be able to obtain one illegally as easily as anyone can now obtain banned recreational drugs illegally.

    As I pointed out back in the ’90s; Government and criminals will always have guns, and so the only issue is whether the good guys will have them.

    I’ve since added that the good guys of course pose the biggest threat to both criminals and (corrupt) government, and therefore there is a natural alliance between government and criminals. They represent different factions of the same cause (which is to lord over us and take our stuff).

    A law declaring something illegal does not, and cannot, prevent it from occurring. It only provides for a government response to it after the fact. This is what was once understood as “justice” but no one in this enlightened age remembers a bit of it. Yes; you’ll read this and agree with it at the moment, but then most of you will resort to some watered-down version of Progressive (incremental communist) thinking almost as soon as you look away.

    It is inevitable, being that no one alive today has ever seen a free society as envisioned by those who founded this country. At every turn we are forced to either defend what are our God-given rights, or forget about them, or otherwise succumb to anti-constitutional scrutiny, requirements, restrictions, and the like. It’s a part of our every-day lives and no one escapes it. Thus we will reflexively turn to statistics and similar arguments of the nature of outcomes to justify our “rights” when, if we truly believed them to be rights, we’d realize that we are not the ones to be held to account.

    Quite the opposite– It is the alliance of the enemies of liberty which must be held to account, and in that light our arguments become of a totally different nature. We would for example be pointing out the victims of anti-constitutional behavior, and the individual perpetrators, and calling for the justice system to do its job else we throw it off and replace it. So long as we’re busy defending ourselves (when we’ve done no harm to the rights of others) then we’re looking in all the wrong places.

    The mere act of defending ourselves is a de facto acknowledgement of the authority of the criminal perpetrators. In reality the perpetrators of course have no authority. They belong in prison for the federal crime of Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, and other crimes.

    To address the title of the post; Science per se did not create our rights, and thererfore it cannot either protect them or destroy them. It can probably help us to understand the machinery of how our emotions are being used against us though.

    • My point was this is proof the anti-gun people don’t care about saving lives.

      Intentional homicide with guns, in this context, is a valid comparison with accidents because both are something that “happens to you” without deliberate contribution on your part. Anti-gun people seldom “sound the alarm” about accidents with guns because they are so low and people can avoid nearly all of those by not owning a gun themselves. What anti-gun people scream about is when people deliberately kill innocent people.

      Exposure to risk of falls, motor vehicle accidents, and accidental poisoning is unavoidable for all practical purposes, just as some exposure to violent criminals with guns is impractical in a free society.

  7. That was very long. Maybe this will make the point better;

    In hearing of an unprovoked, violent attack against a tall white male computer software engineer in Cleveland, your response would NOT be to step in and defend the honor of tall white male computer software engineers in general, in an attempt to convince other criminals not to attack them. That would be dumb. And rather beside the point. The proper response would be; “Get the son of a bitch who did this, and bring him to justice” and it wouldn’t really have anything to do with tall people, or white people, or males, or computer software engineers, but rather it is about justice.

    That’s all.

  8. To put it into even simpler terms;

    We are pleading with the criminals, trying to convince them to please stop violating us because we’re nice people.

    That does nothing but demonstrate to them that they are in charge.

    Criminals don’t give a fuck whether you’re nice, except insofar as being nice makes you a higher priority target. Such is the way of the world, and we should be honored to be attacked for that reason. Jesus was very specific and very clear on this point, if the truth be known, but in this enlightened age hardly anyone remembers it.

    • My post wasn’t a plea to criminals. It was to point out they are deliberately deceptive, we need to do something about their criminal actions, and what is it we should do?

      • What is it we should do about their criminal actions?

        Tough question. Doing something about “criminal actions” implies legal action. That’s costly + almost always ineffective.

        A few ideas:

        1. Peaceful secession. Move to gun-friendly states/cities, where self-defense is socially acceptable. This takes time, money, planning. Not easy for all.

        2. If you can’t relocate right away, accept that you’ll be living in a place where looking after your community (protecting others from bad guys) will carry a greater weight, responsibility. Accept + adapt. And do an annual Boomershoot getaway to keep your spirits high.

        3. Be nice to gun newbs, online and offline. If you’ve provided factual stats and they respond in nastiness/anger, simply #GunCog them and move on.

        4. Be practical with your resources. What can you do with minimal effort to create maximum impact?

        5. Bring news reporters or big “influencers” to the gun range.

        6. Lead by example. Remember that people can change, especially if they are educated kindly + respectfully. Stats are important, but providing real-life examples are oftentimes more effective to get your point across. There is hope — after all, I’m a recovering liberal who once voted for Bill Clinton back in the day.

        7. Being part of online community is easy. Being part of real-life community takes more work, but is vital to your survival. So, befriend your neighbors. Do neighborly stuff that has nothing to do with guns.

        8. As you know, there are bad apples out there who can ruin it for the whole bunch of our respectful, polite community of gunfolk. Don’t let them ruin it. Avoid in-fighting. Easier: disassociate from rude, unsavory pro2A.

        8. This one’s easier said than done: Be at peace with knowing you might die, be targeted, terrorized, or tortured for your beliefs. Finding peace in this might come in the form of meditation, prayer, etc., or just knowing that you have an important part in history, advancing freedom for mankind.

        7. Make a concise, easy-to-understand message or meme.

        https://twitter.com/Voluptolux/status/786439203374505985

  9. I would propose that we shouldn’t ban ladders, cars or stairs, but merely teach people to be safer when using these things.

    Having said that, if gun-banners really cared about lives lost by gun violence, heck, violence in general, they would be seeking for ways to reduce gang violence and suicides. But they don’t care if gang bangers shoot people with illegal guns (or stab people with legal knives), nor do they care if you hang yourself instead of shoot yourself. They only care when you die by being shot by bullets, or *possibly* if you’re clubbed to death by a gun.

    So, yeah, gun-grabbers don’t care about lives.

    • No, they care about power. And grabbing power requires removing the means to resist. That’s what this is about.

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