By Craig M. Szwed
Anti-gun people, and their movement, rant and rave against firearms. They rant and rave about wanting to protect children. They spend millions upon millions of dollars to take firearms and constitutional Rights away from law-abiding citizens. Yet, they ignore criminals, and hope the police are sufficient. They deny how few children are hurt or killed as a result of firearms use, or ownership, by law-abiding citizens. They overlook the tens of thousands of children who are involved in close calls, or injured, or killed as the result of something to do with motor vehicles, or drawn into gang violence.
Anti-gunners do next to nothing to stop motor vehicle related incidents involving children, or to stop the flow of children into gangs. They think they are doing the right thing by attacking law-abiding citizens' Rights, as they attack guns, yet they ignore motor vehicles and gangs. They are illogical, intemperate, and ineffective in their self-proclaimed mission to protect children. They are ineffective because they keep blaming inanimate objects, like firearms, for the willful or accidental actions of human beings. They are so "politically correct" that they are blind to their own zealous failures. Yet, they feel good about their ignorant efforts that endanger and exacerbate the suffering of children across this nation. The anti-Rights, anti-gun people seem only able to see and believe what they want, irrespective of moral or constitutional truth, or scientific facts. Their arguments sound as if they are repeating a spiritual mantra.
Those elements of our society that foster the current anti-Rights, anti-firearms atmosphere, deny factual comparisons between what happens on our roadways and what happens with firearms owned and used by law-abiding citizens. They refuse to rationally segregate, in their minds, the very REAL differences between the use of arms by law-abiding citizens versus criminals or mentally unstable persons. In their justifications of their anti-gun crusades, too many politicians (and other grief-ridden, fear-driven, or well-meaning citizens) ignorantly overlook our nation's primary causes of death and injury among children.
Most citizens can’t tell the difference between statistical information about 15, 18, 20, and 24 year old people, and even the CDC lumps all that information into one statistical pot, between 15-24. With improperly processed data like that being disseminated by our government, is it any wonder that anti-gun people errantly spend their efforts and millions of dollars demonizing and railing against firearms and the firearms rights of law-abiding citizens. Most citizens are too busy or awed by government information to bother researching the issues beyond what is spoon-fed to them, or maybe they are ruled too much by their emotions and prejudices, keeping themselves from searching for truth.
Another issue is that if we do an internet search for “gun deaths vs motor vehicle deaths” we get results that include all the gang and other criminal activity… which are illegal activities already, fraught with violent potential.
In doing my research of these topics, I found that there is so much mishandled data out there that it is difficult to find sound and truthful discussion of the facts. I had to go through several of Google’s search pages, that had returned mostly anti-gun propaganda and skewed statistical data, before finding this truthful discussion of the causes of deaths among children. You can find scientifically sound information IF you want to spend the time and energy looking for it. But, a lot of people don’t care enough to do their own searches, and therefore, they get led into the lies and misrepresentations of the anti-gun elements of society.
Here’s another obscure but fairly accurate piece of government related info from the National Institutes of Health that just barely mentions comparisons regarding youth injuries and deaths, but, at least in this report there is some minimal acknowledgement that gang activity has a lot to do with how kids get hurt or killed. With the number of gun and motor vehicle related suicides being reported as about equal in some states, some websites are also raging with misapplied information about how gun deaths are exceeding motor vehicle deaths. However, many, if not most, of the sites fail to note that under careful scrutiny much of the reported gun related death data appears to be tied to criminal activity, particularly in states with large cities that have relatively poorer inner-city residents and a lot of gang and drug activity.
Any rational person knows that criminal activity is NOT the fault of law-abiding citizens, nor the fault of the firearms owned by law-abiding citizens, to any degree. About the only guilt that law-abiding citizens bear is our reluctance to get involved in actively supporting and defending our Constitution, its laws, and personally participating in the constitutional processes of government.
The anti-gun movement has proven, repeatedly, that it and its constituents have no clue what they are talking about. Though they wail woefully about how they want to protect children, yet they ignore the largest mechanisms that contribute to the death and injury of minors, from the unborn up to 18 years old. Anti-gunners are NOT effective in their alleged mission to protect children, because they aren't tackling the top issues that impinge on children (including gangs and motor vehicle related incidents, which are involved in far more deaths and injuries of minors than all the firearms related incidents of law-abiding citizens in this whole nation).
Even when using anti-gunners own illogic, the anti-gun crowd does NOT prove its supposed concern for the welfare of children. Their “save the children” proves to be little more than buzzwords to frighten and excite emotion-driven people. That is why it is easier for the anti-gun politicians and their minion to attack low risk law-abiding citizens’ arms and Rights instead of trying to prevent the much higher risk gangs or the number of motor vehicle related incidents that kill or harm children. IF they did care about children, as they claim, they'd be called anti-gangsters or anti-vehicle people, and they'd be spending their time and money trying to stop the causes of gang activity, or they’d be illogically ban motor vehicles and stop people from getting drivers licenses. Instead, their present infringements and attacks against the low risk arms and Rights of law-abiding citizens have absolutely nothing realistic to do with trying to protect children.
I must digress for a moment to make a significant point about how people handle information. Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels said a couple of things that resonate strongly with what the anti-gun movement, our government, and the popular press are all saying and doing these days. I never thought I’d ever be doing this, but, I find it essential to quote Goebbels, that we understand the current nature of our public information system, that dishes out politicized propaganda that is supposed to pass for “news”:
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
In mindless adherence to Goebbels principles of propaganda success, the popular press, government officials pursuing unconstitutional aims and ends, and anti-gunners, all dish up faulty, repetitive, self-serving statistical manipulations and the promulgation of disinformation that have corrupted the public mind to make it seem, in politics and the media, as if guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are the biggest problem since Chicken Little’s falling sky in the fairy tales. With Nazi-sanctioned propaganda techniques like that is it any wonder that the public has been so duped by the anti-gun movement, instead of being encouraged to go after the criminals and mentally unstable people who abuse firearms for evil purposes?
Do the research for yourself and see that the popular media are ignoring the different uses of firearms, failing to discriminate among criminals, the insane, or law-abiding citizens. The media also ignores accurate discussion of what drives the numbers. Too often, reporters and anti-gunners lump the relatively few injuries and deaths of children that resulted from firearms owned/used by law-abiding citizens, in with the injuries and deaths that result from criminal and other illegal firearms activities. Anti-gun people also often lump adult criminal actions and firearms injuries or deaths in with those of minors, which skews their results, further, in favor of their arguments, not toward truth.
WorldLifeExpectancy.com ranks homicide as the 15th highest cause of death in the USA. Here is a summary of the FBI Uniform Crime stats on violent crime, including all methods of homicide. The FBI data MUST BE understood within the nationwide context that gang related violence accounts for 80% or more of all firearms related homicides. As one writer has commented, “America Doesn’t Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Gang Problem”. Whether one finds fault with society or the gangs, for gang existence and activity, anyone with common sense and moral foundation knows that violent gangs stem from a host of social ills that neglect the Great Commandments of God. Across our Nation, we have lost a lot of our children to gang related activity, as well as to motor vehicle related injuries and deaths. It is the motives and decisions of the people in gangs and vehicles that determine what happens to our children. Guns do NOT think or feel or have motives or desires. Guns do NOT act or move on their own, and are more like lumps of stone, than they are like motor vehicles. On the other hand, when potential criminals know that law-abiding citizens are, or may be, legally armed at any given moment, then gangs and other criminals are less likely to commit violent crimes against persons. That converts into our children being less likely to be drawn into gangs, due to the overall reduced incentive for criminal activity.
The loss of any child is sad, but, statistically speaking, the bottom line is that very few children are ever injured or killed by firearms owned and used by law-abiding citizens, compared to our losses of children to gang and other criminal activity. All law-abiding gun owners know THAT, because we are NOT the ones out there shooting all those dead and injured children! …and yet, there is still tremendous prejudice against us, even among Law Enforcement Officers.Yes, on a statistical per capita, or per 100,000, basis, sometimes good citizens or their kids mess up with firearms. BUT, by comparison to what is going on the the rest of society, the vast majority of firearms related deaths and injuries of minors is virtually always related to the ILLEGAL ownership and ILLEGAL use of firearms by persons who should NOT have had access to firearms in the first place. Only four years ago, USAToday reported the significant truth that, “Large metropolitan areas suffer about two-thirds of all firearm homicides in the United States, with inner cities most affected, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”. That report is a HUGE concession from a liberal news medium!!
IF the anti-gun crowd REALLY wants to help and protect children, their efforts need to be changed and redirected to work in anti-crime, anti-gang, anti-violence, anti-insanity, anti-poverty, anti-power-mongering directions. But, positive changes like those are not likely to happen, as long as the anti-gun propaganda is swallowed and willful ignorance prevails in public venues and anti-firearms circles, or as long as power-brokers and politicians can milk the fear and ignorance motivated anti-gun movement, stroking carefully, with Nazi-like propagandist fingers, to repetitively play the right mantra that numbs the public mind and crushes our Constitution.
IF those, who have ignored all realistic moral, constitutional, and practical firearms-related distinctions between law-abiding citizens and criminals, were REALLY concerned about the welfare of children, then, with their own zealous twisted logic of blaming objects for human failures, crimes, and sin, they would be rabidly trying to ban motor vehicles instead of guns, because, outside of the large cities, away from all the gang-related activity and death, motor vehicle related deaths and injuries of minors are drastically higher than damage to minors from the firearms of law-abiding citizens. Keep searching. You’ll eventually find that truth tucked away in some dusty government closet in Area 51, probably after the current administration is long gone.
For those who are serious about understanding the comparison between motor vehicle related death or injury to minors versus damage to kids from weapons of law-abiding citizens, the following search and NHTSB download, will broaden your understanding of the vast disparity between the claims of the anti-gun crowd and the reality that they are out for their own emotional or political interests. Compare the numbers for yourself:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=children+injured+killed+by+motor+vehicles+annual
National Highway Traffic Safety Board report about motor vehicle injuries and deaths of children:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov%2FPubs%2F809762.pdf&ei=3AIkVfuUD4mcsAWopYDIAw&usg=AFQjCNEEy_28lznU2dMcl8m8W5EUjDM4uA&sig2=72m4_MWBzXY_PnS7xAAzgQ
We must NOT stoop to the fear, willful ignorance, propaganda, emotionalism, or dishonesty of the anti-firearms crowd, BUT, we MUST adhere to and defend the language and truth of our Constitution, in active, personal defense of our natural Civil Rights.
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