Tag Archives: gun deaths

Gun Deaths and Religion

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I once joked that San Francisco was “spiritually horny.” It is true, being the birthplace of the Church of Satan, home of Jim Jones, and containing the largest concentration of upper-middle-class white Buddhists on the planet. And a lot of Catholics. Between the Spanish missions and a flood of Irish, you often can tell how many miles you have driven in California by how many Catholic churches you have passed. It also explains California’s low “gun death” rate. Takeaways Religious affiliation changes suicide statistics Places with higher percentages of Catholic and non-Christian congregants have fewer suicides. Since guns are a favored American means of suicide, this ripples into lower gun suicide rates and thus lower “gun death” rates. The Culture Clues Culture is the major determinant variable for violence, including violence upon oneself. In our book “Guns and Control”, we made the following cultural comparison: Last time I checked, the … Continue reading →

Crossing Trends

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While spelunking some data on the modes of gun deaths, I decided to have a look at some smaller instances, namely how often people die accidentally from gunshots, and the number of justifiable (perhaps even meritorious) homicides. Most readers already know that accidental gun deaths have been in sharp decline for several decades, despite the number of firearms in circulation skyrocketing. This is a curious situation, and one that goes directly against claims by the gun control industry. With concealed carry a fact of daily life in 42 states, one might also think justifiable homicides have gone up. They have, but only slightly. But this too also goes against the claims of gun control advocates, who maintain that concealed carry does not prevent crime (we’ll ignore the whole deterrence effect issue, which is likely contributory to the multi-decade drop in violent crime in America). Though the number of incidents for … Continue reading →

Gun Deaths: Meaningless Metric

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You can get an average citizen to cross their eyes in brain damaging confusion by telling them that “gun deaths” is a meaningless statistic. And it is, though members of the gun control industry continue to use the hollow phrase, and some members of the media never question its meaning or validity. It doesn’t stand up to domestic or international scrutiny. Since it is the job of the Gun Facts project to eradicate bad information, let’s spend a few electrons today killing off the “gun deaths” charade. What in the heck is a “gun death”? This is not a caustic question. In the realm of people dying by catching bullets, there are a number of categories concerning such deaths. And many of these categories are made up of sub categories. And for each of the categories, there are ways of achieving the same result (a dead person) without a using … Continue reading →

Child Gun Deaths

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When the gun control industry mentions children, it’s time to hunt for bunk. Our species would not have survived for long had we not acquired a knee-jerk response to keep kids safe. Politicos know this, which is why they hoist kids a high for everything from gun control to Head Start. Our communal desire to protect kids is used by the gun control industry to create fear that children are endangered by guns on every street corner. As with most gun control industry pronouncements, it is far from the truth. Age is the first thing First off, over time the gun control industry has modified their public utterance. They used to claim 13 children die each day from firearms, but that statistic included active gang members up to age 24 … not what you think of a “children”. In adult conversations, a “child” is one who has not yet reached … Continue reading →