Originally posted by m1gunner:
Make no mistake, it is a total anti-gun hit piece.
I just saw an ad for it and it shows "what happens when you leave a gun unattended in your home". They plant a gun in a house with kids and hidden cameras, you can imagine the footage they were looking for.
NRA did a similar thing in conjunction with their Eddie Eagle Program. The children who had not been exposed to the program fooled around with the gun, pointing it and so on. The Eddie Eagle kids did what they were taught:
"STOP!
Don't Touch.
Leave the Area.
Tell an Adult."
The Eddie Eagle program seems to work as well as any other program adequately tested under controlled group conditions.
The main trick the antis have is in the reporting of the number of "children" killed each year by firearms.
What constitutes a child?
What are the "Intents" of the deaths? (accidental, homicide, suicide, and so on.)
The Brady Campaign says "In 2005, almost eight young people aged 19 and under were killed a day in gun homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings in the United States. Many more were wounded. Clearly, our gun laws are not doing enough to protect children." without bothering to recognize that the age of adulthood us usually 17 or over and that a good many of these "children are gang bangers" and a very large proportion of the deaths are the consequence of someone's
intent to use a firearm as the
means to murder or to commit suicide. Already Brady, by its age 19 and under range has about 2900 "children" as opposed to 1490 17 and under reported by the
Centers for Disease Control, a freebie gain of 600, 40% overstated.
The chart below compares several different
intents and
means through age 17: Notice how all the firearm rates grow cumulatively with age except the accidental deaths by firearms. The other "accidental means" reverse that shape and tail down with increasing age. It's also interesting to note that deaths in that age group from
all firearm intents combined was 1,490, just above
accidental suffocations!
Now take a look at what the
Bureau of Justice has to say about homicides, notice why 2005 is a good year for Brady subterfuge:
<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>Black males 18-24 years old have the highest homicide offending rates. Their rates are more than 3 times the rates of black males 14-17 years old and almost 5 times the rates of black males age 25 and older.
<LI>
Young adults (18-24 years old) have the highest offending rates in each racial and gender group.
<LI>For black males 18-24 years old, offending rates declined after 1993 reaching a low in 2004.
The rate increased in 2005.
<LI>For black male teens (14-17 years old), offending rates have increased since 2002 but remain relatively low compared to earlier periods.
<LI>For white male young adults (18-24 years old), offending rates fell to an all time low in 2005.
<LI>For black females of all age groups, offending rates declined since the early 1990's.
<LI>White females of all age groups experience the lowest offending rates.[/list]
These facts are what allow the Brady Campaign and other antis to skew the perception of actual data because they don't acknowledge the exaggerated contribution to their statement attributable to 18 and 19 year old offenders. To make matters worse, Brady's deliberately obscuring factors of race and age in these appalling Bureau of Justice data, where even one death is too many, is a direct barrier and assault on any serious potential social effort to address real problems generated, not by firearms in various social contexts, but by criminal behavior.
In order to contest the veracity and appropriateness of the Brady statement, an honest person has to bring up the subject of race as well as age. A very neatly devised trap in today's politically correct world.
I'll be most interested to see how the show presents info keeping these facts in mind for comparison. Anyone who is willing to take notes or record the show and make comments, that would be great. I may not be able to do either.
