Subject: Regarding the Editorial: Every three hours, more tragedy

In The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 06/15/08 http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2008/06/13/gunsed_0615.html Maureen, you ask, “Who dies in greater numbers from firearms, police in the line of duty or preschoolers?...In 2005, the most recent year for which data are available, guns killed 69 preschoolers, compared with 53 law enforcement officers.” To answer, it’s sort of a tie but only to the minds of innumerate editorial staff and it’s the wrong question incorrectly posed. You also neglected mentioning the homicide factor in questioning this gun violence. By using the word “violence”, you also imply intent and we’ll get to that. But first, let’s use your figures keeping in mind that numbers cited in the editorial represent all firearm deaths of children up to four years of age. The law enforcement deaths, on the other hand, were felonious, that is, they were homicides. Facts: Firearm deaths of children four and under as reported by the Centers for Disease Control: 2005: Firearms Deaths 69; Firearm Homicide 43; All Homicide 681; All Injury 3601 2004: Firearms Deaths 58; Firearm Homicide 42; All Homicide 702; All Injury 3546 2003: Firearms Deaths 56; Firearm Homicide 48; All Homicide 717; All Injury 3485 Note the numbers are generally decreasing for firearm homicides and homicides in general. The 2005 population in that age group was 20,315,137. This implies an increase in accidental firearms deaths. Some of these could have been avoided by implementing proven child gun safety programs offered by the “gun lobby” you carefully disparage. There were 90 deaths due to poisoning in that population in 2005. That’s 30 percent more than by firearms. Twenty four of the poisonings were homicides or, mimicking your nomenclature, poison violence. There were also 48 homicides among 978 suffocation deaths in that age group. Drownings accounted for 592 preschooler deaths, twenty of those were homicides. If you’re doing the arithmetic, you can probably tell by now that there are more common means of death and violence than by gunfire among preschoolers. In 2005, 55 law enforcement officers were “feloniously killed” in the line of duty in 53 separate incidents. Fifty were by killed by firearms. There were somewhere around 676,000 sworn officers at the time (2004 FBI figure, feel free to correct the number, it will bolster my point). Facts in Context OK, let’s evaluate your comparison in context.

The 2005 firearm death rate overall is 0.34 per 100,000 population. That’s one (too many) in 294,117. The 2005 Firearm homicide rate among children four or under is 0.21 per 100,000 population. Simply put, that’s one (too many) in 476,190 preschoolers. Law enforcement firearm homicide victims are over 35 times more frequent at 7.41 per 100,000 population, one (too many) in about 13,495. These facts in context toll a louder alarm bell for law enforcement officers than for preschoolers, don’t you think?. If you had been looking for facts, that’s what you would have found but it is not what you wrote, is it.

Violence Issues "Protect Children, Not Guns," you quote and then invoke the term “Gun Violence.” The word violence implies intent to injure by force. Is poisoning violent? Suffocating? Stabbing? Drowning? Are victims deader based on the means of violence? Non firearm “violence” murdering preschoolers in 2005 occurred over nine times more frequently than firearm violence: 638 vs 69. If protecting children and teens (never mind the rest of us) is the goal, there are far more dangerous means you could have focused on to greater effect. In fact, if violence is the issue, the means of violence is surely less significant than the intent and will to do violence. Given the emotional nature of your editorial argument, I see no cogent use of the "data" conflated to demonize firearms rather than those who do the violence, but humor me. Take the suffocation homicides of preschoolers for example, are pillows the problem or is it the person holding the pillow. Similarly, is water the problem or is it the person submerging the child? Is poison the problem or is it the person administering it? Are guns the problem or is it the person pulling the trigger? By this time, it should be apparent that to blame guns is as intellectually dishonest as to blame pillows for child homicides. The fallacious basis and structure of the editorial argument skips across contextual omissions in order to leap to conclusions that also fail in context; some just fail numerically. For a snapshot example, the black male population 30 and under in 2005 was 10,003,790. The number of firearm deaths was 4610. That’s one in 2170, not one in 72. Of those deaths, 4098 (one in 2,441) were homicides. According to the Bureau of Justice, 94 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders. For whites, it’s about 86 percent white on white. Again, remember violence is caused by intent and will, not by means. Guns comprise 56 percent of homicide weapons used by blacks and 42 percent by whites. The suicide statistic you use is a red herring. Here's why. First, there are more whites than blacks. Second, more whites, absolutely and proportionately, own firearms. Additionally, more whites commit suicide and at a higher rate: 10 per 100,000 whites as opposed to 6.61 per 100,000 blacks. So, in context, more whites than blacks use guns to kill themselves and more blacks than whites use guns to kill other people. But guns don’t cause suicides or homicides, but you realize that by now, don't you? When it comes to homicides, blacks commit murder at a rate more than seven times that of whites and are more than six times more likely to be homicide victims. There were 16,692 homicides cited in the 2005 FBI Uniform Crime Report. About half the victims and more than half the offenders were black. Conclusions "Outlaw guns and only... " oh, never mind, you’ve heard it before and it’s still true. Scotland and England, after effectively banning self defense, have been targeting edged and even toy weapons and pointed fingers in new bans while violent crime, including gun crime, has vigorously increased to the point that London's violent crime rate is long since higher than New York City's and is still rising. Bans don’t work. Take a look at Washington DC, the banningest area in the country consistently has among the highest, if not the highest, firearm and violent crime rates in the country.

Murderers murder with whatever available weapon best suits their purposes. Sooner or later, if our civilization is going to be civil, we’re just going to have to accept the fact that some human beings, a small minority, are not very nice. They are willing to use force to impose their will on us and are willing to injure or kill us in the process. Fight back or die but don’t expect to win a gunfight with a gun ban. And, please, don't promulgate disarming the honest, law abiding, safety conscious majority of us just to make you think you're safer or to make us think you actually care about child safety. You aren't and you won't be and you don't. You're effectively lobbying for a bigger victim pool. If you doubt this, put yourself in a criminal's mind. Honestly, who would you victimize, someone who might be armed or someone to whom arms are forbidden? Criminals may be dumb but they're not stupid. How about the AJC Editorial Board?

Ultimately, firearms are minimally 26 times more likely to be used in self defense than to cause accidental or intentional deaths. The CDC total firearms deaths for 2005 was 30,694 (down 30 percent from 1990). The lowest annual number of "Defensive Gun Uses" (DGU) reported among thirteen national surveys was 800,000 in the 1980s. In the vast majority of these DGU, the firearm was not discharged.

To the point at hand, since firearms are used in defense of life far more often more effectively than in taking lives. Does the AJC Editorial Board seriously want to deny this defense to American citizens? Etcetera The editorial’s lurid examples of schools full of dead teens and children (the difference?) beg the influence among teens and children of gang related gun violence, drugs, money, and turf, not to mention terrorism. Far from being lovable tykes, some of these children and teens are stone killers. How do you count them?

The editorial also mischaracterizes the gun lobby in its effort to keep weapons—meaning guns, of course—away from children. There are proven effective programs to do just that and there is no silence involved at all. Open your mind enough to read up on the NRA's Eddie Eagle Program. Your editorial omission doesn't change the reality you misrepresent or deny.

The Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois, events cited in the editorial could have been stopped by one or more armed good guys. That is self evident. But like virtually all multiple victim shootings, those killing grounds were “Gun Free Zones” assuring the presence of defenseless victims for the criminals who didn't honor the zone. Does the AJC find that surprising?

Fortunately, armed good guys and gals were at the Appalachian Law School, the Colorado’s New Life Church, and in Memphis, and in the Salt Lake City Mall, to mention a few mitigated murder sites. Had armed citizens not been in those places, there undeniably could have been higher death counts.

2005 shows the first increase in gun deaths among children since 1994, you say. What you don’t say is that deaths that year represent a decrease of 40 percent since 1990. This is consistent with a long term decline in deaths independent of any laws or bans you care to cite. Variations happen. This is easily confirmed by CDC data and reports as well as by findings of the National Academies of Science. CDC data, by the way, doesn’t go back to 1979, so, although I challenge your citation, I do so in full confidence that the decline in firearms deaths has been going on for quite a long time before my meager 1990 benchmark year.

All in all, the logic in the editorial is tortured and desperate. The Assault Weapons Ban did nothing. It didn't even deal with assault weapons, it dealt with cosmetics. There is no credible study showing the ban to have had any effect on gun crimes. In fact, assault weapons are seldom used in gun crimes (see Firearms Use By Offenders tables from the Bureau of Justice site). However, there are credible studies by the CDC and the National Academies of Science finding no discernible correlation between any kind of gun legislation, prohibitions, and consequent reduction in crime. The opposite, as in the case of Washington D.C., is much more directly obvious, high restriction seems to lead to increased violent crime, including gun crime.

This is important stuff. No one wants to perpetuate murders of preschoolers, schoolers, post schoolers, or non schoolers by any means, including by firearms. The AJC Editorial Board, under your name has made a mockery of a serious situation by contaminating mortal issues with hysterical judgements. If guns caused crime, we’d all be dead or dying by now. There have been more guns in this country every year and fewer gun deaths every year at least since the 1930s.

By deliberately picking "facts" and spinning them to appear to lend credible support to otherwise unfounded statements, the editorial displays guilty knowledge of its own irrationality. Usual and accepted argument just doesn't do the job you want it to. If you and the AJC Board can’t make the separation between the intent and the means of violence, you will not be part of any effort toward a successful solution to criminal or negligent use of firearms. You are part of the problem. Stop it. Grow up. Bob Frost Portsmouth NH