There is an old joke:
God contacts a reporter from the New York Time to tell him that God is going to bring about the apocalypse and to spread the word using the newspaper of record. The next day, the NYT publishes the headline “World to End, Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.”
Moms Demand Action posted this over at their Facebook Page.
First, never mind that according to the FBI, 77.4% of homicide victims are men.
According to Paula Mays Gap, it’s women who the NRA are sacrificing for their cause… which doesn’t make any sense. The NRA has been trying to engage more women in shooting sports for years, and has created a number of programs to attract women to shooting. Women are the fastest growing demographic of new shooters and are gaining ground in CCW with more and more ranges offering women’s only CCW courses.
So exactly what cause does the NRA have the requires sacrificing women? This is an insane proposition.
And speaking of insane… when it comes our “peer nations” their stats don’t impress me much. Our peer nations in Europe are facing a rape epidemic that boggles the mind. European women are experiencing rape at a rate higher than the South Side of Chicago is experiencing shootings. Yes, it’s that bad. When Europe women defend themselves with aerosol hot-sauce, they get arrested for it.
Of course domestic violence is terrible. Of course domestic abusers should be prohibited persons. The Lautenberg Amendment makes convicted abusers prohibited persons. I don’t want to come across as victim blaming, but perhaps the first step to saving more lives is to convince battered intimate partners to press charges and carry through with prosecution. It is shown that up to 85% of abused women return to their abuser for financial reasons. Perhaps the issue isn’t so much gun control as the need for other social programs so abused women can walk away and press charges, making these men prohibited persons.
But when it comes to comparing us to our peer nations, at least America doesn’t have an ongoing rape epidemic… yet.
Isn’t this the classic misrepresentation where you show a rate like 16x when the numbers are small or if they did not correct for per capita rates? Basically, this is one of those throw away statistics that tell you nothing because there are so many means of obfuscating, ignoring the pertinent details, and out right lying.
Let’s see, about 8,000 murders annually by firearms. Most involve people with criminal records, usually black and hispanic males and in the cities and related to gangs and/or the illicit drug trade. That would be the baseline.
For the sake of an example let’s say 1,600 victims are female. In our “peer nations” (not defined, so cherry picking likely and they may have substantially lower populations) have 100 dead females and the ration is 16:1. Voila!
Unless we know the denominators and other critical information about crime rates including murder you cannot make good comparisons. For instance, Japan has virtually no private gun ownership and yet has an astronomical suicide rate due to cultural differences. Trying to compare firearm suicide rates between Japan and the US would be fraught with confounders. That’s what they are likely doing here…comparing apples and oranges.