Is the right to bear arms responsible for being the #1 cause of child gun deaths? Is it time to abolish the 2nd Amendment? |
Benjamin Disraeli, 19th Century Prime Minister of England, once opined, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." In this case, the number one cause of death in children requires some serious manipulation of the numbers and definition. If you look it up in most anti-gun websites, gun related deaths in children top motor vehicle accidents, other sorts of accidents and individually each other cause of death such as illness, poisoning, murder, and manslaughter. Here's how you do it.
Infants seldom die of gun violence, so they are not included in the child death rate by guns statistics to avoid bringing down the "numbers" of child gun deaths. |
These guys have inordinate numbers of gun deaths, so they are counted as children to inflate the child gun deaths numbers. |
And yet well-meaning people get all in a twitter because they believe that toddlers are shooting each other in droves based on this statistical picture being painted by the anti-gun lobby. This is the picture such statistical manipulation is supposed to create in your mind. It's the same with adult gun death statistics. When our progressive friends talk about "victims" of gun violence, they cite statistics that are deliberately skewed to make you believe these are people who died at the hands of criminals or in gun accidents. What they don't tell you is that whenever a cop shoots a criminal caught in the act, when a homeowner shoots a home invader in self-defense, when a citizen with a gun puts a stop to a mass shooter, or when a father shoots a farm hand who is raping his daughter in the barn (true story), it is recorded as a death by "gun violence." No one records statistics when a Florida grandmother chases off a pair of home invaders by waving her shotgun at them or when a young mother with toddlers fires a shot at thieves ransacking her home or when an 89 year old man is charged by a 20 year old thief intent on looting the house next door and cops are an hour away according to the 911 operator. In Texas, charges against the old guy are dismissed automatically based on the "he needed killin'" principle.
The thing is that half of the gun-violence-against-children gun death numbers are created by "kids" who look like the picture above on the right. It's not a true picture of those "gun deaths" but it certainly distracts Mom & Pop America from the true purpose of all the talk about massive gun confiscation going on in the halls of power and in the media these days.
It's important to note that every tyrannical government in history first finds an excuse to disarm the citizenry. The Nazis disarmed the Jews. The Communists disarmed the proletariat, the Chinese under Mao disarmed the peasants. Then they piled up the guns and burned them and came back the next day and piled up anyone who owned more than one ox and burned them.
I'm not mad at the people who believe the lies, though. They think they understand and are appalled, accepting the lies that the politicians and media spoon feed them. Who can blame them for trusting that they are being told the truth? The sad thing is that the political party that has long claimed to be the party of the people, the party of the working man, has made common cause with wealthy individuals and corporations and conspired to dump the rest of us into a heap they call the collective. And they want to make sure we won't be troublesome or able to resist when our betters decide they need to visit a "reeducation" facility because they disagree with the new order and won't shut up about it.
Someone I respect described these collectives or "unions" as bound up in bundles to be burned at the end of time. Statistics like the phony gun death statistics are the matches and make no mistake. They will not hesitate to light the pyres.
And the number one cause of death for children 0 through 17 is motor vehicle accidents by a good bit. Oddly, enough no one has called for private citizens not being licensed to drive cars an activity demonstrably more dangerous to actual children
As I'm wont to say, "I believe Jesus is loading up the bus to come get us from this crazy place and take us home."
© 2023 by Tom King