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The Gun Lobby's Myths
Facts yes, truth no.
You seem to confuse a fact with the truth. All a fact is is a piece of data. One must consider the nature of the data before one can proclaim it supports an underlying truth. Let us do so with your facts, even though I see not a single source for them.
"Each time a gun is used in a legally-justifiable shooting in a home, there are 22 unintentional, criminal, and suicide-related shootings."
In order to have this 'fact', such as it is, support the underlying truth that guns are bad, we must accept three things. The first is that a legally justified shooting is the valid measure to use when making a cost/benefit analysis of them. It is not, because of the simple fact that a law abiding citizen who brandishes his gun in self defense is much less likely to fire in the first place because his objective is to drive the aggressor off which many times will not require an actual discharge of the weapon. The second is that suicides are a valid statistic to include in this debate. As I noted earlier they really aren't. The third is that we must accept the fact's definition of legally-justified shooting. Given that in Chicago, if the shooting is done with the handgun it cannot be legally justifiable, we see that this is a very sloppy 'fact' indeed.
"Having a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold."
Just from reading this statistic I can with 99% certainty guarantee that the study that came up with it is neither scientifically valid or reliable. Firstly, the study certainly does not control for legal or illegal gun ownership. Secondly, the study does not control for illegal drug use on behalf of the suicide. Thirdly and finally, the statistic does not even control with whether the suicide was committed with the gun or not.
"Having a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home."
Again, this statistic certainly does not control for legal or illegal gun ownership. Neither does it control for method of homicide.
- ravenshrike
September 5, 2008 8:57AM
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