Tag Archives: suicides

California Con

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There must be an election coming. The current California governor is making presidential maneuvers and the New York Times appears to be propping up his (inaccurate) statements about guns. I lived in that politician’s home turf for 22 years, during his political rise, so I have a deeper than average interest – and knowledge – of what the reality is, and in which alternate reality the politician resides. Main Take-aways California’s gun homicide rate is exactly the national average. Their overall suicide rate is rising, but is 29% lower that national averages, which bends the curve on gun suicide rates. For mass public shootings, California has 17% more incidents and 60% more deaths than the national average. The New York Times agitprop In a rather choice bit of partisan hackery, the New York Times (NYT) makes the following assertions about California and guns.

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Suicide, Survival and Guns

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“Guns are inherently more lethal in committing suicides!” Yet when we looked at W.H.O global suicide data, we discovered that the most suicidal country at the time (Lithuania) had about three times the rate of suicides, 1% as many guns per capita, and nearly everyone killing themselves used rope. In the USA, where guns are abundant, the data skewed in odds ways. We think we know why, but with a lack of absolute data, it is a little speculative. The Quick Take-aways Suicide “deaths” are those regardless of medical attention. Successful suicide victims receive no EMT or hospital treatment. EMT/hospitalization is effective for some modes of suicide and not others. The big clue We at the Gun Facts project have routinely noted the international disconnect between firearm ownership and suicide rates. In short, the availability of a gun did not affect the probability of a successful suicide. Looking at just … Continue reading →

Missouri Compromised

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If your doctor is a member of the American Medical Association, get another doctor. QUICKLY! A new low in gun research by doctors may have been reached in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This now disreputable rag is allegedly “peer reviewed,” but that claim is credible only if the peers are refugees from the local sanitarium. In their fresh assault on logic, the sundry docs and quacks concluded that changes in pistol purchase and concealed carry laws in Missouri (MO) caused suicides in younger people to rise. They did this by creating synthetic models that invented suicide statistics by incorporating erratic source data. They had to take this approach because the real numbers were not exactly in their favor. The Big Scary … Not JAMA launched into their artless misdirection by saying “suicide was the second leading cause of death for children and … Continue reading →

Cali Suicide Calumny

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“Bury the lede” is an old newspaper trade term for not disclosing the interesting part of the story until so late in the article that few people read it. Paragraph #1, Senator Bedfellow gave money to a shelter for battered women; paragraph 48, Senator Bedfellow was charged with wife beating in 2006. It is a propaganda tactic, and it is used too often in gun policy research. In this case concerning suicides in California, the stunt was aided and abetted by the California government. Woe, thy name is Wintemute Long ago, a doctor with zero criminology credentials started publishing on gun control topics. His early research was, in a word, hilarious. One chunk of his intellectual effluvium used “observational evidence” about people at gun shows in two states. Generalized, the assumption the doctor made was that if Bill asked his friend Ted about a firearm for sale at the gun … Continue reading →

Red Flags

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Are red flag laws effective, or should politicians be flagged for being offsides? Take-aways Too few data points for statistical robustness Largely irrelevant to homicides Barely effective on suicides For suicides, “studies” thus far count only “firearm deaths” instead of all forms of suicides, which is a grave methodology error Trade-off between a few lives saved and significant due process questions is out of balance Wave Your Flag “Red Flag Laws” (RFL herein) are all the rage these days, with many states enacting or considering them. However, the relative newness of RFLs makes analyzing their effectiveness a little tricky. Before 2016, only two states – Connecticut and Indiana – had RFLs. To see before-and-after effects of any law, you need a little runway (we at the Gun Facts project think ±5 years is sufficient). Most states with RFLs have less than three years of experience with these laws. So, with … Continue reading →

High Gun Death Perspectives

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Whenever you see breathless reporting of the same core story across multiple media outlets, odds are there is more to the tale. In this case, the recently recirculating headlines noting that “Gun deaths at highest level in 40 years, CDC says” and “More than 100 people killed every day in the US as gun deaths spiral to highest level in 40 years.” Naturally, we at the Gun Facts project had to dig below the headlines to see what the heck was going on. The big take-aways Firearm suicides are up, but in the key group, the rate of suffocation suicides is growing fastest Homicides are up, but astoundingly so for young blacks The upward trends started at different times and for different reasons First, let’s take the long view As is well known – because this has been rehashed more often than the corned beef at the local diner – … Continue reading →

Tracing Suicides

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The Lie of Fear: Creating a false sense of fear in order to motivate people to action while easing them past critical thinking. This entry, from the book Shooting The Bull, was the very first items in the “Catalog of Canards”, a list of most common propaganda techniques of the modern era. That organizations favoring gun control too often employ the Lie of Fear is regrettably understandable. Which brings us to The Trace and their artless attempt to scare people about suicides: Take-aways Firearm suicides growing much more slowly than overall suicides. Trace chose to start trend analysis during a low-point in firearm suicides. The interesting angle Depending on the year you examine, firearm suicides constitute about 60-66% of firearm deaths in the United States. For decades gun control advocacy groups (which, charitably stated, The Trace is one, given the legendary activist donors on their disclosure page and that Michael … 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 →

Suicides and Propaganda

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It is no secret that when a member of the gun control industry speaks of “gun deaths” they are purposefully including suicides by gun. By not disclosing that suicides are about 65% of all guns deaths, they create dread in the public by making “gun deaths” appear to be a growing menace. But this got me to wondering if there is a hidden agenda to them broadcasting this canard more frequently. There is. Because over the last seven years of records, more people have been killing themselves. Since in the U.S. guns are a preferred means of suicide (where as in Canada poison is more popular), any upward change in suicide rates makes it look like guns are a growing problem. Firearm homicides have remained rather static in recent years, as the chart shows. However, suicides started rising sharply along with the Great Recession. This is a common occurrence — hard times cause some people to escape their … Continue reading →

Suicides and Guns

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Gun control groups love to say that there are “30,000 deaths from gun violence every year.” What they don’t say is that 62% of those are suicides, almost all of which are committed with legally acquired handguns (no assault weapons or extra capacity magazines required). The common retort is that if America had fewer guns, there would be fewer suicides. Yet a brief examination of international data shows this to be utter buncombe. The World Health Organization (WHO) tallied suicides around the globe, and the Small Arms Survey estimated private gun ownership rates. WHO also noted how people exit this life when it gets too rough for them. The chart to the right pretty well debunks that guns are the determinant variable for suicides. The United States has way more guns than anyone else, yet their suicide rate is not terribly higher than international averages (11.1 suicides for every 100,000 … Continue reading →