JMAvery
JMAvery
Aug 28, 2017 · 4 min read

Oh dear, another gun-control zealot repeating the usual ignorance-based rhetoric. Where to start?

While many gun rights advocates would have you believe an individual’s right to bear arms has always been enshrined in the constitution by the 2nd Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has only recently affirmed this right in 2008 in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller…

Actually, anyone with a shred of honesty and a room temperature IQ on the history of this topic knows that the 2nd Amendment has always protected an individual right. D.C. v. Heller simply nailed the coffin shut on the “collective right” theories with respect to the 2nd Amendment and if you had actually read all of the Heller decision you’d know that it was unanimous in the idea that the 2nd Amendment is a right enforced by individuals. Sorry kid, you’re going to have to stop repeating that lie that v. Heller somehow changed the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment away from a collectively exercised right.

The Center for Disease Control has not engaged in research funding on firearms and public health since 1996 when congress threatened to strip funding from the agency after it was accused of promoting gun control.

Accused and guilty really.

Seriously, gun-control-biased-research has no trouble with funding from the private sector. The problem is that these “studies” are junk and known to be junk by those honest enough to examine and critique the methodologies and conclusions.

The implication is that by increasing the price of firearms, either directly through a tax and or by increasing the cost of manufacturing will reduce the number of new firearms entering circulation.

Yeah, it’s well known that gun-control loons have tried to backdoor-ban firearms by increasing their cost over the years. That’s part of why the PLCAA was passed after all. Problem for you is that you all aren’t quiet as clever as you imagine and the biggest proof of that is the very Seattle experiment you cited. I know you are doing your best to put a high-gloss polish on that turd but the numbers don’t lie and the fact that there is a good chance the tax won’t survive the lawsuit it’s facing (because state preemption is a thing) will be enough to dissuade most jurisdictions from copying such a scheme. Will your Ph.D. arrive in a Cracker Jack box?

While owning a handgun provides the illusion of security, research informs us otherwise. According to Kellerman et al.(1998), handguns are more likely to be involved in an unintentional shooting, criminal assault or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense. Eliminating the need to own a handgun is important to reducing gun injuries and violence in households. Therefore, a cheaper substitute is needed which can provide an equal or greater sense of protection. Home security systems are designed to do just that: protect your home and its inhabitants. There are a wide range of security systems and services available to deter intruders whether you are home or not, which a gun cannot do.

Well the CDC seems to find merit in that “illusion” and unfortunately for your argument, Kellerman is a rather lousy citation:

A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun-wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004). Effectiveness of defensive tactics, however, is likely to vary across types of victims, types of offenders, and circumstances of the crime, so further research is needed both to explore these contingencies and to confirm or discount earlier findings.

Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public — concealed or open carry — may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration.

Kellermann is almost as much of a fraud as David Hemenway when it comes to academic honesty in gun-control research. Probably why he’s still a popular citation for gun-control advocates.

http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kellerman-schaffer.html

Really, you’re not original here nor do you seem to have a firm grasp of the realities facing the gun-control advocacy cult. Maybe you weren’t paying attention but the post-Sandy Hook masturbatory frenzy by gun-control activists did have the effect of raising the prices of firearms, ammo, and accessories dramatically and demand still outstripped supply for months. You can’t seem to grasp the fact that gun-control advocacy is the single biggest driver of demand for firearms. The more you and your ilk agitate and threaten, the more firearms are sold. The only thing your policies do is disenfranchise the poor from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. Driving up the costs of firearms would obviously disproportionately impact the poor but you, like the majority of LW’ers, only use them as talking points and expedient political fodder anyway.

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    JMAvery

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    JMAvery

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