The Observer's Dannye Romine-Powell (God save us from another hyphenated named liberal) gets all amush over the "unruffled thinking" of her gun hating husband and tries her hand at citing statistics to such poor effect... poor once some perspective and reality is brought to bear on the issue, that is.
Romine-Powell blathers on how her husband told her they didn't need a gun because they wanted to save the lives of their grandchildren who might be unlucky enough to find it in their grandparent's home where they might play with it, accidentally injuring or killing themselves. Of course, one wonders why these supposedly intelligent, caring grandparents would leave such a thing laying around where a child could so easily get to it, so with that it makes one glad they have decided not to get one.
Now to her absurd use of statistics.
About 200 people in the United States kill someone each year in self-defense.But how many die each year -- innocently -- from guns?
Let me tell you.
In the 10 years ending in 2006, 486 children under age 18 in North Carolina, alone, died from gun-related injuries.
First of all, it is misleading to make it seem like the "200 people" each year who use their firearms in self-defense is such a low number when compared with the supposed "486 children under 18" who died from "gun-related injuries." After all, Romine-Powell uses one year of pro-gun statistics and matches that up with 10 years of anti-gun statistics. Not a very fair comparison there. By simple extension, her stats for 10 years of guns being used to save a life would be somewhere near 2,000 compared to only 486 instance of misused firearms. Suddenly the numbers don't seem as far out of whack when looked at it that way.
But, even that academic exercise pales when more numbers are reviewed.
According to the CDC between 2000 and 2002, there were only 542 accidental gun deaths in the USA. Naturally, we mourn the accidental loss of each and every one of those children and, should such an accident have happened to your own child, that loss is 100%. Compassion makes each and every one of us feel bad about these accidents.
...but they ARE accidents.
Let's look at the CDC's stats on some more accidents:
- Car accidents- 23,487
- Drowning- 3,653
- Run over by cars- 2,987
- House fires- 1,736
- Poisoning- 1,530
- Falling- 567
- Accidental gun deaths- 542
- Machinery- 107
- Cut/pierced- 22
See how low on that list accidental gun deaths are?
Now, one of the arguments that anti-gun propagandists make is that guns deaths are "preventable," and shouldn't we, they ask, try to prevent them? Well, yes, of course we should is the sensible answer. But the logical follow up to that overly simplistic thinking would be to also eliminate swimming pools and to do so with far more urgency than we would to eliminate guns. After all, many thousands more children die a year by drowning than die by gun misuse. For that matter, many, many thousands more die by misuse of automobiles. Or, shouldn't we eliminate houses since the CDC shows us that well over one thousand more children died from accidental house fires than accidental gunfire?
Looking the REAL statistics over certainly makes the brainless "compassion" of an anti-gun nut seem... well... rather brainless, doesn't it? One last quibble. Our Mrs. Romine-Powell fancies herself a poet with a few Poetic tomes having been published here and there. The style of this piece seems the result of that predilection all too much. With short, single lines, she seems to have been going for some sort of lyrical style that completely fails here.
Let's just say this:
I didn't like it.
The sentences were too short.
And I don't want my grandchildren exposed to such simple-minded writing.
In my house, we'll remain free of Romine-Powell's work.
Free of her work is better than discovering someone I love dead because they listened to her.
