commentary

Billy Johnson is one of the newer commentators for NRA News and I think he is one of the best. In a commentary released last week, he examined how communities respond to the accidental death of children. On the one hand you have accidental drownings and on the other you have accidental deaths involving firearms. Which do you think is responsible for more deaths of children under the age of 15? If you answered drownings you would be correct. A child is 12 times more likely to drown than to die from an accident involving a firearm according to CDC statistics.

Billy noted in his small community in Michigan they had an accidental drowning last year. The community responded with programs for better education and more water safety measures. They didn’t ban water sports, they didn’t move to close the Great Lakes, and they didn’t want to create Swim Free Zones. The community devoted time, money, and education to help handle the problem of water safety. They believe it is a community’s responsibility to make sure all kids know how to swim.

The question Billy asks is why is the response to accidental gun deaths not the same as for drownings.

In his latest commentary for NRA News, Billy Johnson takes apart the argument propagated by the New York Times and the gun prohibitionists that a so-called declining gun ownership rate in America is grounds for imposing more gun control. The New York Times is basing its argument that gun ownership has declined from 49% to 34% over the past 30 years on a survey conducted by the University of Chicago.

This decline in self-reported gun ownership comes in the face of all-time high gun sales. The University of Chicago’s 2012 General Social Survey results are contradicted by other surveys. As Billy points out, many gun owners are not going to tell a survey taker that they own guns and will lie about it if asked.

Even if the survey results accurately reflect the level of gun ownership in America it is irrelevant: constitutional rights do not come with usage requirements.

NRA News has added a new face to their stable of commentators. Joining Colion Noir, Dom Raso, and Natalie Foster is Billy Johnson. His goal is to get people to start looking at things and events in a different way. He has a YouTube channel called AmidsTheNoise.

In his first video for NRA News, Billy argues that policymakers have a mistaken focus on the tools of violence rather than the logic of violence. An example of this would be gang leaders. They got to be gang leaders by using violence to show that they were the meanest and baddest. Whether they used a Glock, a switchblade, or their fists to kill or maim their rivals is not the issue. The issue is that they were willing to use violence to achieve their aims.

Likewise rewarding social outcasts with instant celebrity or infamy after incidents like Aurora or Tucson has the effect of rewarding violence – even in mainstream society.

I look forward to more of Billy’s commentaries. I have embedded his first one below.