Saul Cornell, who is a professor of history when he is not writing for Slate, is engaged in intellectual dishonesty. He claims, as I note below, that a 1964 study of firearms lethality says something that it does not say (and, indeed, that it could not say, given its date of publication) in the course of trying to make modern sporting rifles sound scary for cheap propaganda purposes. Saul Cornell knows that this is false, and I know that he knows this is false, because I have told him, and he has acknowledged the fact in emails to me. But the claim remains unretracted. Retracting the claim would mean admitting that the source he cites not only does not say what he says it says about AR-style rifles, but that it in fact does not say anything about those rifles at all.
Honest mistakes happen all the time in journalism. This is not one of those. This is a fabrication.
Kevin D. Williamson
May 25, 2022
A Little More Saul Cornell
[Gun control supporters lie. It is part of their culture. It has always been this way. It will always be that way. Without lies they have no hope of winning a public debate.
If you have the time to read it there is far more information and justification for the case of deliberate lies by Cornell.
Respond appropriately.—Joe]
Society would not be happy to know how much of this goes on. And for how long it’s been going on.
Remember being told oil comes from dinosaurs. And it was a finite resource?
The list of lies from “science for profit”, crowd is far to long for a blog comment.
When mom said believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.
I thought she was joking.
As long as the communist look like their winning. Expect a lot more of this sort of lies and obfuscations.
This article was expanded on well by David Kopel at Volokh Conspiracy this week.
Agreed. Follow the last link in this post.
Well, despite the study in question being founded in large quantities of male bovine excrement, and totally dependent upon same for effect, perhaps the basic concept deserves further consideration.
What is the “Lethality Index” for political parties as measured by a country’s economic performance and societal disintegration?
The left lies. It’s part of their culture. Gun grabbers are just a subset of the left.