Whomever signed me up to get email notifications from Voices for A Safer Tennessee, I owe you a big thank you. This is the last oen I got from them.
I moseyed over the CDC’s WONDER database and extracted some numbers for the State. Causes of death from zero to 19 years of age (which is their preferred scale) all races, all regions for 2021.
Total deaths.
Total deaths by Firearms, which should be more than half, so it matches their message, right? Nope, about 10% and that would be including suicides and accidents with firearms.
Motor Vehicle deaths? 136
And how about illnesses?
In reality, more than half of child deaths in Tennessee come from illnesses and not firearms as they desperately try to suggest. And motor deaths are indeed a bit lower than firearms’ deaths, but as far as I know there have been no ban on the purchasing and usage of vehicles by civilians that would indicate a drop in deceased kids. Maybe it has to be with teaching safe driving techniques and proper use of the vehicle, you know, education and training.
Maybe the good folks at Voices For A Safter Tennessee would like to help us bring back Firearms Safety Training to schools, or at least support the Eddie Eagle program.
I know, fat chance. Stop laughing.
And once more, with feeling: If your cause is righteous, why lie?
Every time I hear one of these morons goin off about the gun death epidemic I ask them if they know someone who’s died in a car wreck… they always say yes, and yet they drive a car…. It leaves them baffled..
Point of fact: “Death by firearm” doesn’t have to be more than half to be #1; it just has to be more than anything else. It could be 30%, and as long as everything else is less than 30% (but adds up to 100%), guns are #1.
.
That is plainly not the case.
.
Their “#1 killer of children in Tennessee” claim might be true only if they qualify it by saying “#1 cause of intentional death in children”.
.
IOW, guns are used in intentional homicide of children more than anything else … which really isn’t a revelation; guns are used in intentional homicides more than anything else across ALL age groups.
.
But that bit of honesty would require removing all the accidental and medical deaths, which really lowers their numbers, which in turn lessens the “crisis” they depend on.
.
They cannot have a lessened crisis, and the numbers don’t support their agenda. So instead of switching causes to something that would actually save more lives, they just lie.
.
[Edit: I suppose it’s also possible if they include in “children” people up to age 26, or whatever age when gang and drug activities drop off. But it’s still dishonest, not just because someone in their mid-20s is not a “child”, but also because gang hits would still happen if guns suddenly and magically disappeared; they’d just use knives, clubs, machetes, or whatever else. And such attacks would likely be much less survivable, leading to more deaths.]