(Reuters Health) – – More than one in four U.S. children are exposed to weapon violence before their eighteenth birthday, either as victims or witnesses, a large study suggests. About one in 33 kids are directly assaulted during incidents involving guns or knives, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics. “Millions of children are being exposed to violence involving weapons, and many of them are victimized by guns and knives, with an elevated risk of trauma and serious injury,” said lead study author Kimberly Mitchell, a scientist at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
Source: More than one in four U.S. kids exposed to weapon violence
If you just breathe through the initial paragraph, you come out with the idea that weapon violence is basically gun violence affecting more than 25% of the kids. And I bet they hope you pretty much stop reading by throwing a bunch of other data and the collection method so that is the message you take. But to cover their butts, they reveal the rest of the info midway through the article:
Much of the violence involved objects such as sticks, rocks, bottles, but about 3 percent of children reported exposure to guns and knives.
That means that according to their study, 97% of kids are not exposed to gun and knife violence. If that number is bad, I want you to think about this: They had to bundle both guns and knives to come up with the three percent. That should make you wonder how low the gun numbers were to begin with that they needed a little help from your friendly statistician.
I am not saying that the Crimes Against Children Research Center is an Anti Gun organization, in fact I did a quick check and could not find anything gun control related and they do seem to be doing good work for kids, but I guess they fell to the allure of sensationalize their study for whatever reason, probably funding.
Pity they may get to lose money that way.
There are two realities in the U.S. today, the truth and political correctness, that being fantasies base on a tiny molecule of reality as a jumping off point to an agenda. PC demands that in any social interaction it be followed less the information being presented be ignored in the cascade of personal attacks on the presentor. This portion of society that is living in the p c world expects to see the gun demonized to the fullest in any communication regardless of the reality of the situation or how small a part the gun plays in the events reported on. An example is moms demand and the 90+ school shootings in their press release, even if the shooting was a drug deal four blocks away from the school. There is little chance that they will return to a mental statis closer to reality without extensive treatment.
All of that PC bullshit is going to be the death of this country. I was raised in the 50’s and 60’s and we called a spade a spade. Mom was the disciplinarian for the most part. My one major screw up, she let my Dad take care of. I was 12. I still remember that ass whoopin and I’ve never done anything that stupid since. By the 70’s, the liberals took over and you didn’t dare touch your little snowflake, that was considered child abuse. What it is, is bullshit. A little belt leather applied to a ass never killed anyone. But then there are those that cross the line and turn discipline into child abuse. There should be a special jail for those people.
“Much of the violence involved objects such as sticks, rocks, bottles”
We’d switch from squirt guns and water balloons, to acorns, to crab apples, to snowballs, to (when we were older) bottle rockets depending on the season in my suburban neighborhood. Brothers John and Brian had knock down fist fights once a year or so over something stupid. Dave broke my nose, I gave him a black eye. We celebrated my 14th birthday two days later. We also played baseball and hockey in the street, and tackle football in a side yard.
None of us were traumatized, and we all graduated and went on to normal lives.