by The cult of personality known as Giffords sent out a fundraising email this afternoon. They called attention to the NRA Annual Meeting in Dallas and, in particular, to a seminar put on by Dr. John Lott regarding the false and misleading claims made by the gun control industry.
This weekend, the NRA gathers for its annual convention in Dallas, Texas.
And on Sunday morning, at 11 am, one of the most important events happens in two combined meeting rooms, D163 and D165, on the ground floor of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Conference Center. It’s titled:
“The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against the False Claims That Will be Made Against Guns During the Election”
Here’s the truth: the American people are wise to the game. They know that if more guns made America safer, we would be the safest nation on the planet.
But change will never happen until candidates and elected officials understand there is more to fear from all of us than what’s happening in Dallas this weekend.
They are correct about two things: the NRA gathers this weekend in Dallas and John Lott’s message is important. If Dr. Lott’s message, facts, and figures were not valid and not important, they would not have brought attention to it. If they didn’t consider it a threat, then they wouldn’t have attacked it.
Notice their sleight of hand in saying “if more guns made America safer, we would be the safest nation”. The former is comparative while the latter is superlative. Thus, in their false comparison used to attack gun ownership, one more firearm would make the US the safest country in the world. No one in the gun rights community has makes that argument.
Jonathan Sullivan aka Linoge at the blog Graphical Represention and its predecessor Walls of the City looked the gun control argument of more guns equal more deaths. He found a negative correlation between the two. Moreover, he has replicated this study for a number of years as new data has become available. Using both firearms/death per capita and total firearms/deaths, he found a negative correlation. While it can’t prove that more guns equal less deaths, it can be used to show that more guns does not more deaths.
Read Sullivan’s work and read Dr. Lott’s work. Both have delved into the numbers and found the arguments of the gun prohibitionists and their gun control industry lacking.
They know that if more guns made America safer, we would be the safest nation on the planet.
We kinda are. When you correct for per capita numbers of murders so that it's easy to directly compare big and small countries, subtract suicides and lawful self defense shootings, subtract the worst cities for murder (which all have their gun control dreams as law), take out drug gang wars and we end up being pretty darned safe.
But you knew that.