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Children safest population group around guns (Part 2)
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In the first part of this article, we examined claims by anti-rights groups like the Children’s Defense Fund, which manipulated selected data bits in order to create propaganda that children have become more at risk for firearms death since 1994. Part 2 finishes examining their claims.
Part of gun control propaganda is the claim that more guns equates with more violence. For example, in response to a proposed concealed handgun carry law in Wisconsin in 2005, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett said: “It is a recipe for disaster to have a proliferation of guns in the central city.” If this claim is true, then more guns should correlate with more violent crime, but this is a false premise. To validate the “for the children” gambit, there should especially be some link between gun prevalence and child murder. Examining the Centers for Disease Control fatal injury data reveals the truth.
Looking at total fatal injuries, between 1994 and 2005, the overall fatal injury rate for ages 15+ (non-children) rose 4.6%, but it fell 26.6% for children (ages 0-14).
Overall homicide rates (murdered by any means, e.g. firearms, strangulation, poison) for ages 15+ fell faster than for ages 0-14 (-35.6% to -28.2%), but firearms homicide rates fell faster for children: -53.0% to -38.0% for ages 15+. This variance shows that while non-children are relatively safer when looking at overall homicide, children became much safer from firearms homicide.
This variance is due to the following facts. The most disturbing trends occurred in other, non-firearms homicide categories: Children experienced a 51.1% increase in the intentional drowning rate, a 120.0% increase in the poisoning rate, and 90.3% increase in the “struck by/against” rate (e.g. beaten to organ failure, thrown against a wall, blunt force trauma to head). Non-children saw decreases of 45.1% in drowning and 53.1% in “struck by/against” homicides, but a 41.9% increase in poisoning homicides. These data show how easy it is to murder children, and might also prove that those most willing to kill children already find it more difficult to access a gun, due to existing laws.
Overall suicide rates for non-children fell 8.3%, but child suicide rates dropped 19.6%. Firearms suicide rates for non-children dropped 20.5%, but child suicide rates dropped 57.5%, a nearly three times faster rate! Children became far safer from suicide than non-children, even when firearms are available.
The overall accidental death rate for non-children increased 20.2%, but the rate for children fell 28.1%. Meanwhile, the non-child accidental firearms death rate fell 46.8% and the rate for children fell 61.4%. People in general, and children in particular, are safer from accidental shooting deaths.
Looking at some non-firearms causes of accidental death, the accidental falling death rate increased 71.7% for non-children, but it decreased 41.8% for children. Children saw a 34.5% increase in accidental suffocation, and non-children also saw a rate increase of 24.5%. The accidental poisoning death rate increased 131.2% for non-children, but it fell 18.2% for children. Apparently, it’s a more dangerous world, but firearms have nothing to do with it.
The final blow to the “guns equals violence” gambit is data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms: Over 60 million firearms were sold between 1994 and 2005, including over 25.5 million handguns.
The U.S. population, and most especially our children, has become safer from firearms-related death. Feel free to send a copy of this article along to your representatives (or email me for an attractively formatted PDF copy), with a polite cover letter telling them that our children are safer than ever from fatal firearms injuries, and if they want to do something positive about child safety or violent crime, more gun control laws are not the answer.
References
Fatal injury data compiled from: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, Centers for Disease Control. Email request for spreadsheet.
Firearms commerce data compiled from multiple Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms documents. Email request for spreadsheet.
Howard’s book, Four Hundred Years of Gun Control: Why Isn’t It Working?, deconstructs the gun control agenda and motivates people to support the civil right of self- defense.
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