This represents more debunking, if any was necessary at this point, of the all too common and irrational notion among some Democrats-In-Name-Only (DINOs) and most Republicans that more guns equal fewer gun deaths. This was a notion first promulgated by John Lott, an economics PhD who made his mark and his millions on the right wing political scene with his fabricated, and statistically challenged book from 1999 titled More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws now in its 3rd edition. This book is the source for most of the mistaken notions about gun ownership in America. But in what can only be seen as shades of Eugene McCarthy an earlier article and this book were based at least partly on a survey of 2,424 people that was lost in a 1997 hard drive crash and has never been substantiated beyond Lott's claims of its authenticity and other papers he claimed he abandoned when he moved from Yale to Chicago. I think his dog ate some of it too, but this hasn't been substantiated either. In short, Lott and those who quote him are using questionable statistics in nearly every case. This shyster, even posted a positive review of his own book using an alias at Amazon. But like far too many right wing myths, this one too is now part of the conservative DINO lexicon and its confused logic and questionable statistics have been absorbed as fact by too many intellectually challenged individuals on both the left and right. The evidence is exceedingly clear that more guns do not make us safer they result in more gun deaths. What this article from Sunday's New York Times shows is that the number of deaths of children from gun violence is underreported by about half. And that the very idea that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun is a foolish and ignorant mockery of common sense. But if true and we take it to its logical conclusion the only thing that stops a bad child with a gun is a good child with a gun so we must begin arming all children at the age of three and making sure that everyone of them can shoot straight. If this idea sounds ridiculous to you, and it should, then you might want to rethink all the NRA propaganda you have heard for the past year since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and reassess what it means to arm so many people and have guns laying around. We need to begin getting serious about restricting access to guns. The fewer guns there are the fewer gun deaths there will be. The more guns there are the more children will be killed with them. And more children will kill other children when they find them. And find them they will, to believe otherwise is moronic in the extreme. Indeed, since the tragedy of Sandy Hook at least 120 children have died in accidental gun shootings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0
