David Auerbacher has a piece where he argues that stats are on the side of freedom haters. He is right if you think having many studies of rigged studies by lying ideologues using false measures and ignoring confounding variables (ie. race) are ‘the stats’. But rather than addressing the usual idiocy that has been addressed to death elsewhere, I would like to comment on one specific phrase used by him and other freedom haters.
“Gun deaths”.
The use of the phrase ‘gun deaths’ is a sure sign that the person making the argument is arguing in bad faith (if not outright lying with statistics) and has absolutely nothing worthwhile to say on the topic of guns and violence.
What this phrase ignores, and what gun control advocates scramble to hide is that guns have substitute goods.
The large majority of gun deaths are suicides, another thing liberals try to hide with the phrase ‘gun deaths’ by trying to lump suicides in with murders and mass shootings. Substitute goods for guns in relation to suicide include: drugs, poison, rope, plastic bags, carbon monoxide, water, electricity, high places, and knives, to name some of the more common suicide goods. Guns have the advantage of being quick, relatively painless, and mostly effective, but the other suicide goods are all adequate substitutes.
Side note: Isn’t it odd that liberals, who support euthanasia and the right-to-die, suddenly hate the right-to-die if it bolsters the emotional case for gun control.
There are also many substitute goods for guns in relation to murder, including: knives, fists, feet, bats, hammers, carbon monoxide, matches, drugs, water, and explosives, to name of the most common.
By only measuring ‘gun deaths’ the deceptive liberal is ignoring that someone without a gun can easily obtain other methods of killing themselves or other people if they should choose. To say gun deaths rise or fall in relation to gun availability or gun control measures is to say nothing of any value at all. If the gun is not available, the gun death will likely become a knife death or an OD or a drowning, etc.
“Nearly 75% of the cases involving firearms are actually gang related.” Does anyone honestly think that gangs will stop murdering each other if law-abiding citizens are restricted from owning firearms? Leaving aside that what makes criminals criminals is that don’t follow laws, such as gun control laws, is there anyone that could possibly believe a gangbanger would say to himself, “I really wanna ice that bitch nigga, but I ain’t got no gat. It therefore behooves me to refrain from committing violence upon his person, however much distress his continued existence upon this mortal plane causes me.”
No, if a gangbanger wants to ice a bitch nigga, and he ain’t got a gat, he gonna get himself a knife and stab that bitch nigga.
Guns deaths is used specifically to hide the substitution effect for murder (and to conflate murder and suicide) so that deceitful freedom-haters can paint gun freedoms in a negative light.
There is nothing special about a gun death that separates it from a knife death, a hanging, a drowning, or an OD. A person is no less dead if they are killed with a knife than with a gun. There is no reason to make this distinction other than rhetorical or statistical manipulation.
If anybody uses the phrase ‘gun deaths’ you can ignore their arguments because they are, at best, full of shit and not worth listening to.
Liberals don’t believe in a right to die any more than believe in any other right: they support euthanasia only as an entitlement controlled by the government, with the underlying purpose being to reduce socialized healthcare costs. Of course they know that they can be murdered easily without the use of a firearm, the only tool that gives them a chance of defending their lives, but they prefer to rely on collective security, and therefore don’t want it to be possible to oppose government forces.
“Substitute goods for guns in relation to suicide include: drugs, poison, rope, plastic bags, carbon monoxide, water, electricity, high places, and knives, to name some of the more common suicide goods.”
“but the other suicide goods are all adequate substitutes.”
I will have to disagree with this. It may be nitpicking but there I’ve read some data on suicides in the past and it doesn’t corroborate with this. I wish I had the source handy but it was years ago. It was a book called “Suicide” and it tracked suicide patterns worldwide. The most obvious statistics were suicides are mostly failures. Two the most effective forms are firearms (shotguns being the most effective) and asphyxiation. Asphyxiation is a term with a large grouping ranging from shoving an object down your throat to suspension hanging and A LOT of things in between.
The book also pointed out how ineffective some forms of suicide are. Drugs were given an overwhelming amount of failure percentage even in large doses. Knives were also at the bottom. The myth is that cutting your wrist will kill you. It usually doesn’t. Of knives, severing the femoral artery in the leg and the jugular vein in the neck are generally effective.
What are the stats of all violent deaths combined, if you compare gun control and gun freedom countries?
“Side note: Isn’t it odd that liberals, who support euthanasia and the right-to-die, suddenly hate the right-to-die if it bolsters the emotional case for gun control.”
Not odd at all. The gun issue is a shibboleth in the culture war. Progressives want to take away guns because they want to destroy plainlanders’ tokens of identity. Plainlanders want to keep their guns – to the point of opposing measures that might be rational and beneficial if not administered by a regime that wants them dead and their women and children deracinated a la Jews in Assyria – because they are a token of identity.
You see the same thing with all other plainlander tokens of identity – the Confederate flag, Protestant Christian marriage, antipathy toward miscegeny, various facets of rural life, private schooling, etc. The main difference is that plainlanders have done a better job defending their guns than the rest of these things.
So any ‘inconsistency’ regarding guns and suicide, guns and murder, guns and free speech, guns and police profiling etc. etc. aren’t inconsistencies at all. Lies aren’t inconsistencies; they’re lies.
Gentleman, that reminds me…
Some years ago a work colleague sent out an email pointing to a website that advocated for gun control because of the number of young children accidentally killed by guns in the home — I believe that it was kidswithguns.org (no longer extant). After checking out the site, I did a “reply-all” and pointed out the following:
The site’s definition of a “kid” was anyone under 21. That is hardly a “kid”
The data made no distinction as to whether or not the shooting happened within the victim’s home.
The data made no distinction as to whether the shooter was a child or an adult.
The data made no distinction as to whether the shooting was accidental or deliberate.
In other words THE PREMISE WAS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DATA
The sender then complained about me (presumably because my data did not support her narrative). I claimed the Picard Defense: “The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth; lies should be challenged”, and asked her to tell me which part of my email was factually incorrect. Things got quiet real fast after that.
This was particularly poignant coming from a native of the UK, home of the most draconian gun-control laws in the world.
Switzerland is one of the most peaceful nations on Earth; perhaps in spite of the fact that every adult male keeps a military-issue firearm in their home — or perhaps because of it.
Looks like about 50 percent of gun deaths are suicide, another 20 percent accident. That’s why Im pro gun. Most of them appear to be rednecks teabaggers and their stupid offspring. So go guns , and don’t thed on me.
Why are suicide rates so high in Japan Korea etc. You forget hanging which is almost as effective as guns