Join the Falls Church Speaks live stream starting at 8 p.m. TONIGHT (7/29) to discuss the firearms ordinance that the City Council of the City of Falls Church is considering and add your voice to the conversation real time in the comments box.
Our speakers will be Falls Church City Mayor, David Tartar, local resident Alison Kutchma and Philip Van Cleave (President of VCDL).
Join Us Live! => https://www.facebook.com/FallsChurchVAGOP/videos/592018325013820/
Thanks to the Falls Church GOP for hosting the live meeting last night. Our pro 2A citizen, Alison Kutchma, did a great job! Did I hear the mayor correctly? He said that we can send in petitions and letters but that the Council will ultimately decide to vote on this ordinance based on their opinion on what is safest for the citizens. What? Are we no longer a democracy? Have the elite taken over because they know what’s best for us despite having a Constitution that is pretty clear? Tyranny.
Next steps:
1. Vote these elitists out of office
2. Continue to fight for our rights – sue, demonstrate, buycott Falls Church City
3. Continue to send in letters demanding they provide evidence on HOW this will make us SAFER. The mayor never answered that question.
Lyn:
I never would have thought that I would consider myself a 2nd amendment “supporter” but the operative word for me in that sentence is that I never really thought about it.
Since this march to restrict firearms was coming to my neighborhood, I decided to take my preconceived notions to someone who really knows about this topic. I didn’t have to go very far as I turned to my own son David who has been studying this issue for a long time including college course work, research and writing papers about it. He shared actual facts for every preconceived notion I presented. When I went to a council members’ public facebook page, he directed me to multiple balanced sources to show me how those facebook stats were biased and muddied. Anyone who has taken a research methods course knows one has to be careful where one finds their numbers because they can be manipulated or biased.
What I quickly found is that the manipulation and the spin associated with this topic is really stunning and I am actually offended that those in a leadership position would try this on such an educated community. For a community that prides itself on supporting a high school curriculum that pushes a pillar for critical thinking this pushes the outer limits of stunning. I am so appreciative of the council members that have asked thoughtful questions but the community still expects more and I will not side idly by and see my constitutional rights trampled.
This law will not magically make us safer. Criminals will not heed to yard signs.
The only people affected by this law are law abiding citizens in our community and they could face a year in jail. This law is anti-women, setting women’s rights back decades by removing the right of women to legally defend themselves. One council member said, “we don’t want guns around children.” So what about the police officers? I mean if guns around children are in fact the bad thing, how is it ok if they see a gun on a police officer? The gun carried by a conceal permit holder is a gun they won’t see at all so I am just lost on the logic there of removing unseen firearms. Real data, if anyone is interested in that, will show you that concealed carry permit holders are even less likely to commit a crime than a police officer. However, I suspect this has nothing to do with real data.
Keep an eye on each council member’s website, particularly Ms. Hardi who is quite active with posts, and push back with comments. I really can’t comment on Mayor Tarter, but I know Ms. Hardi has a very liberal agenda on social program spending, reviewing police practices, re-directing monies from other services to social program spending, and probably gun control measures as well. Of course, comment on Falls Church News Press’ website and how they cover all of this and their spin on behalf of city council members.
I was very concerned to read that a council member would state and disseminate that 80% of the letters received were from out of town. Where did she get this information? This unsubstantiated statement has since been circulated and used as a scare tactic to get people to write in as if the views of people from outside the city are somehow bad, wrong or irrelevant. Some business owners live outside the city (and they have reached out to me with their concerns for both the process and the content of this proposal,) as do others that we welcome here that both work and shop in Falls Church. I am disappointed to see how quickly this turns into an us versus them when I think we all need to work together to take actions that will in fact make us safer while at the same time defending our rights protected by the constitution
Gun facts post 1:
Did you know school shooting are incredibly rare. An average of 17 people are killed every year in school shootings from the last 5 years. There are 50.76 million secondary to post-secondary school age children. That is about a 0.000033% chance, or 1 in 2.99 million of any given child being killed in any given year in a school shooting.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j…
Mind you The odds of becoming a lightning victim in the U.S. in any one year is 1 in 700,000
That’s why there’s a number of studies and opinion pieces on active shooter drills are actually doing more harm than good.
Again facts….
Gun facts 2:
Conceal Carry permits
This law would unfairly impact law abiding concealed carry permit holders in our city. Seems that those conceal carriers are hardly the problem. In fact a recent study shows conceal carry weapon (CCW) permit holders are LESS unlawful than even police officers. “Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. Among permit holders in Florida and Texas (scope of the study), the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000.” https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-concealed-carry-permit-holders-are-most-law-aaron-bandler
Conceal carry permit holders are issued a state license in the state of Virginia. There are over 600,000 active VA CCW permit holders. As of 2017, there are over 14,500,000 CCW holders in the United States http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/concealed-carry/ and we want them to feel welcome here to eat and shop in our city.
Gun facts 3: Criminals, disgruntled employees and mentally unwell individuals do not obey gun laws when they have made a decision to do evil. Virginia Beach, Virginia was a gun free zone. The City of Virginia Beach prohibits employees from carrying “any weapon” while working or on city property, unless authorized by a supervisor. As you may recall Kate Nixon lost her life, despite having discussed with her husband about bringing a gun to work for her own self-defense. The local ban in Virginia Beach took that right from her. She lost her life on May 31, 2019 in a gun free zone. Don’t let that happen here! https://www.foxnews.com/us/gun-free-zone-law-disarmed-virginia-beach-shooting-victim-attorney-says
Gun facts 4: There is 0 that is “zero” or “no” data provided by the city’s presentation that supports banning concealed carry holders.
The crime rate is this city is incredible low.
Look at the chart
Gun facts 5: A woman’s right to defend herself. Gun rights are women’s rights.
Guns rights are women’s rights. In the year 2008, across the U.S., courts issued an estimated 1.7 million domestic-violence restraining orders. This proposed ordinance is also very anti-women’s rights as there are women in our city who have active restraining orders against unwell individuals. The number of protective orders and other restraining order statistics websites estimate that two to three million initial restraining orders are issued per. Many of these restraining orders are renewed every year. https://www.acrosswalls.org/statistics/restraining-orders/ This ordinance will effectively disarm law abiding women in our city. Despite whatever your personal views are on guns and anyone’s right to carry them, a gun is the one thing that levels the playing field for a woman when being threatened by a man twice her size. If you support women’s rights, the right to protect herself is certainly one of them!
A vote for this ordinance IS a vote against all law abiding citizens that have this right.
Gun facts 6: Some questions some people have been asking.
How safe is a handgun? How do they work? Check out the 3 safeties that this glock has built into it. Remember your holster covers the trigger would be a 4th level of safety. Your finger off the trigger is a 5th level.
The safeties part starts at 1:25
Remember conceal carry firearms typically have multiple levels of safeties. Thats why 10’s of millions of people carry every day for their entire lives without an issue. Think about all Police officers who carry a firearm every day with out issues. Firearms are designed with common sense and are safe.
https://youtu.be/V2RDitgCaD0
Gun facts 7: NOTED CRIMINOLOGIST JOHN LOTT FOUND THAT,
as a group, concealed carry permit holders are some of
the most law-abiding people in the United States. The rate
at which they commit crimes generally and firearm crimes
specifically is between one-sixth and one-tenth of that
recorded for police officers, who are themselves committing
crimes at a fraction of the rate of the general population.
Between 2007 and 2015, murder rates dropped 16 percent
and violent crime rates dropped 18 percent, even though the percentage of adults with concealed carry permits rose by 190 percent. Regression estimates show a significant association between increased permit ownership and a drop in murder and violent crime rates. Each percentage point increase in rates of permit-holding is associated with a roughly 2.5 percent drop in the murder rate. PS:#Maskssavelives
Gun facts answer on myths 8:
Myth: Police and prosecutors are against concealed carrying by citizens
Fact: In a survey of 15,000 officers, 91% said concealed carry should be permitted citizens “without question and without further restrictions.” 41
Fact: 66% of police chiefs believe that citizens carrying concealed firearms reduce rates of violent crime. 42
Fact: “All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn’t happen …I think it’s worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I’m a convert.” 43
Fact: “I … [felt] that such legislation present[ed] a clear and present danger to law-abiding citizens by placing more handguns on our streets. Boy was I wrong. Our experience in Harris County, and indeed statewide, has proven my fears absolutely groundless.” 44
Fact: “Virginia has not turned into Dodge City. We have not seen a problem.” 45
Fact: “The concerns I had – with more guns on the street, folks may be more apt to square off against one another with weapons – we haven’t experienced that.” 46
Fact: “… to the best of my knowledge, we have not had an issue. I had expected there would be a lot more problems … But it has actually worked out.” 47
Fact: “Coming from California [where he was on the Los Angeles police force for 28 years], where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of carrying concealed weapon permits, and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation. I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.” 48
Fact: Explain this to the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, Second Amendment Police Department, and Law Enforcement for the Preservation of the Second Amendment, all of whom support shall-issue concealed carry laws.
(41)Gun Policy & Law Enforcement, PoliceOne, arch 2013
(42)National Association of Chiefs of Police, 17th Annual National Survey of Police Chiefs & Sheriffs, 2005
(43)Glenn White, president, Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997
(44)John B. Holmes, Harris County Texas district attorney, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997
(45)Jerry Kilgore, Virginia Public Safety Secretary, Fredricksburg Freelance Star, February 2, 1996
(46)Chief Dennis Nowicki, Charlotte-Mecklenburg North Carolina Police, News and Observer, November 24, 1997
(47)Lt. William Burgess of the Calhoun County (Michigan) Sheriff Department, Battle Creek Enquirer, January 28, 2005
(48)Detroit Police Chief James Craig, Detroit police chief: Legal gun owners can deter crime, The Detroit News, January 3, 2014
Gun facts answer on myths 9:
Fact: The results for the first 30 states that passed “shall-issue” laws for concealed carry licenses are similar.
Fact: In Texas, citizens with concealed carry licenses are 14 times less likely to commit a crime. They are also five times less likely to commit a violent crime. 22
Fact: People with concealed carry licenses are: 23 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public 13.5 times less likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses than the general public
Fact: Even gun control organizations agree it is a non-problem. One said about Texas, “because there haven’t been Wild West shootouts in the streets”. 24
Fact: Of 14,000 CCW licensees in Oregon, only 4 (0.03%) were convicted of the criminal (not necessarily violent) use or possession of a firearm.
Fact: “I’m detecting that I’m eating a lot of crow on this issue … I think that says something, that we’ve gotten to this point in the year and in the third largest city in America there has not been a single charge against anyone that had anything to do with a concealed handgun.” 25
Fact: In Florida, a state that has allowed concealed carry since late 1987, you are twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator as by a person with a concealed carry permit. 26
(22) Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000
(22)An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population, William E. Sturdevant, September 11, 1999
(23)Nina Butts, Texans Against Gun Violence, Dallas Morning News, August 10, 2000
(24)John Holmes, Harris County [Houston, TX] District Attorney, In Session: Handgun Law’s First Year Belies Fears of ‘Blood in the Streets,” Texas Lawyer, December 9, 1996
(25)Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report, Florida Department of State, 1998 – Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, December 1998
Gun facts answer on myths 10: Myth: Concealed carry doesn’t prevent crimes:
Fact: News reports tell many stories of armed civilians preventing mass murder in public. A few selected at random include:
A citizen with a gun stopped a knife-wielding man as he began stabbing people in a Salt Lake City store.
Two men retrieved firearms from their cars and stopped a mass murder at the Appalachian School of Law.
Citizen takes out shooter while police were pinned down in Early, Texas.
Citizen stops apartment shoot-up in Oklahoma City.
Fact: The FBI documents 1 that 3.2% of active shooter events were stopped by CCW holders. However, other researchers claim the FBI undercounts the number of incidents (e.g. excluding events that were precipitated by a grudge) and the on the high end the number is 16.5% 2.
(1)Active Shooter Incidents in the United States (2014-2014 and 2016-2017), FBI
(2)The Problem With the FBI’s ‘Active Shooter’ Data, Lott, Real Clear Politics, October 2018
Gun facts answer on myths 11: Myth: Concealed carry doesn’t prevent crimes:
Myth: Concealed guns in bars will cause violence
Fact: In Virginia, in the first year where CCW holders were allowed to carry in bars, the number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2% The crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor.
(28) Gun Crimes Drop at Virginia Bars And Restaurants, Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 14, 2011, reporting data from the Virginia State Police
Gun facts answer on myths 12:
Myth: Schoolyard shootings are an epidemic
Fact: “Compared to other types of violence and crime children face, both in and outside of school, school-based attacks are rare. While the Department of Education reports 60 million children attend the nation’s 119,000 schools, available statistics indicate that few of these students will fall prey to violent situations in school settings.” 12
Fact: Over an eight year period, in states without “right to carry” laws, there were 15 school shootings; however, in states that allow citizens to carry guns, there was only one. 13
Fact: The five school shootings that occurred during the ’97-98 school year took place after the 1995 Gun-Free School Zones law was enacted, which banned guns within 1,000 feet of a school. 14
CHILDREN AND GUNS – Prevent Sandy Hook Style Mass ShootingsFact: Schoolyard shooting deaths are not rising, rather; they have been falling through most of the 1990s: 15
Fact: Only 10% of public schools reported one or more serious violent crimes during the 1996-97 school year. 16
Fact: In Pearl, Mississippi, the assistant principal carried a firearm to the school until the 1995 “Gun-Free School Zones” law passed. Afterwards he began locking his firearm in his car and parking at least a quarter-mile away from the school. In 1997, when a student began a shooting rampage, the assistant principal ran to his car, got his gun, ran back, disarmed the shooter, and held him on the ground until the police arrived. Had the law not been passed, the assistant principal might have prevented the two deaths and seven shooting-related injuries.
Fact: Similar prevention occurred at a school dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, the Appalachian School of Law and during classes in Santee, California.
(12)Threat Assessment in Schools, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education, May 2002
(13)Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement, Lott J, Landes W; University of Chicago – (covers years 1977 to 1995)
(14)Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement, Lott J, Landes W; University of Chicago – (covers years 1977 to 1995)
(15)Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools, National Center for Education Statistics,1996-97
(16)Principal/School Disciplinarian Survey on School Violence, Department of Education, March 2000
Gun facts answer on myths 13:
Myth: Trigger locks will keep children from accidentally shooting themselves
Fact: 31 of 32 models of gun locks tested by the government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission could be opened without the key. According to their spokesperson, “We found you could open locks with paper clips, a pair of scissors or tweezers, or you could whack them on the table and they would open.” 17
Fact: 85% of all communities in America recorded no juvenile homicides in 1995, and 93.4% of communities recorded one or no juvenile arrests (not convictions) for murder. 18
Fact: In 1996, before laws requiring trigger locks and when there were around 80 million people who owned a firearm, there were only 44 accidental gun deaths for children under age 10, or about 0.0001%. 19
Fact: California has a trigger lock law and saw a 12% increase in fatal firearm accidents in 1994. Texas didn’t have one and experienced a 28% decrease in the same year. 20
Fact: Children as young as seven (7) years old have demonstrated that they can pick or break a trigger lock; or that they can operate a gun with a trigger lock in place. 21 Over half of non-criminal firearm deaths for children over age seven are suicides, so trigger locks are unlikely to reduce these deaths.
Fact: If criminals are deterred from attacking victims because of the fear that people might be able to defend themselves, gun locks may in turn reduce the danger to criminals committing crime, and thus increase crime. This problem is exacerbated because many mechanical locks (such as barrel or trigger locks) also require that the gun be stored unloaded.
(17)Washington Post, Feb 7, 2001, Page A01
(18)Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1996
(19)CBS News web site, Prof. John Lott, March 20, 2000
(20)National Center for Health Statistics, 1995
(21)Accidental Shootings: many deaths and injuries caused by firearms could be prevented, United States General Accounting Office, March 1991
Gun facts answer on myths 14:
————–Assault Weapons Part 1————–
Assault weapon” is an invented term. In the firearm lexicon, there is no such thing as an “assault weapon.” 1 The closest relative is the “assault rifle,” which is a machine gun or “select fire” rifle that shoots rifle cartridges. 2 In most cases, “assault weapons” are functionally identical though less powerful than hunting rifles, but they are cosmetically similar to military guns.
Myth: Assault weapons are a serious problem in the U.S.
Fact: In 1994, before the Federal “assault weapons ban,” you were eleven (11) times more likely to be beaten to death than to be killed by an “assault weapon.” 3
Fact: In the first 7 years since the ban was lifted, murders declined 43%, violent crime 43%, rapes 27% and robberies 49%. 4
Fact: Nationally, “assault weapons” were used in 1.4% of crimes involving firearms and 0.25% of all violent crime before the enactment of any national or state “assault weapons” ban. In many major urban areas (San Antonio, Mobile, Nashville, etc.) and some entire states (Maryland, New Jersey, etc.) the rate is less than 0.1%. 5
Fact: Even weapons misclassified as “assault weapons” (common in the former Federal and California “assault weapons” confiscations) are used in less than 1% of all homicides. 6
Fact: Police reports show that “assault weapons” are a non-problem:
For California:
Los Angeles: In 1998, of 538 documented gun incidents, only one (0.2%) involved an “assault weapon.”
San Francisco: In 1998, only 2.2% of confiscated weapons were “assault weapons.”
San Diego: Between 1988 and 1990, only 0.3% of confiscated weapons were “assault weapons.”
“I surveyed the firearms used in violent crimes…assault-type firearms were the least of our worries.” 7
For the rest of the nation:
Between 1980 and 1994, only 2% of confiscated guns were “assault weapons.” 8
Fewer than 2% of criminals that commit violent crimes used “assault weapons.” 9
Fact: Only 1.4% of recovered crime weapons are models covered under the 1994 “assault weapons” ban. 10
Fact: In Virginia, no surveyed inmates had carried an “assault weapon” during the commission of their last crime, despite 20% admitting that they had previously owned such weapons. 11
Fact: Most “assault weapons” have no more firepower or killing capacity than the average hunting rifle and “play a small role in overall violent crime.” 12
Fact: Even the government agrees. “… the weapons banned by this legislation [1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban – since repealed] were used only rarely in gun crimes … There has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury.” 13
(1) It is worth noting that there are numerous different ‘legal’ definitions of “assault weapons”. A report from the Legal Community Against Violence showed no fewer than eight jurisdictions, anywhere from 19 to 75 banned firearms, six differing generic classification schemes and several legal systems for banning more firearms without specific legislative action. In other words, an “assault weapon” is whatever a politician deems it to be.
(2)Small Arms Identification and Operations Guide, U.S. Department of Defense. The exact statement from their manual is “short, compact, select-fire weapons that fires a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges.”
(3)Based on death rates reported by CDC and FBI Uniform Crime Statistics and estimating from state-level reporting on the percent of crimes involving types of firearms
(4)FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics – UCR Data Online, 1995-2012 ↩
(5)Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, compilation of 48 metropolitan police departments from 1980-1994 ↩
(6)Based on state-level reporting from various states in 1993 during debates concerning the bill. ↩
(7)S.C. Helsley, Assistant Director DOJ Investigation and Enforcement Branch, California, October 31, 1988 ↩
(8)Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, compilation of 48 metropolitan police departments from 1980-1994 ↩
(9)Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, calculated from Bureau of Justice Statistics, assault weapon recovery rates ↩
(10)From statewide recovery report from Connecticut (1988-1993) and Pennsylvania (1989-1994) ↩
(11)Criminal Justice Research Center, Department of Criminal Justice Services, 1994 ↩
(12)House Panel Issue: Can Gun Ban Work, New York Times. April 7, 1989. P. A-15, quoting Philip McGuire, Handgun Control, Inc., ↩
(13)Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999
————–Gun facts answer on myths 15: Assault Weapons Part 2————–
Myth: Assault weapons are favored by criminals
Fact: Only 6% of criminals use anything that is classified (even incorrectly) as an “assault weapon,” 21 and fewer than 2.5% of criminal claimed to use these firearms when committing crimes. 22
Fact: Criminals are over five times more likely to carry single shot handguns as they are to carry “assault weapons.” 23
Fact: “Assault rifles have never been an issue in law enforcement. I have been on this job for 25 years and I haven’t seen a drug dealer carry one. They are not used in crimes, they are not used against police officers.” 24
Fact: “Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that ‘assault weapons’ are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to confront an escaped tiger from the local zoo than to confront an assault rifle in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets.” 25
Thoughts: “Assault weapons” are large and unwieldy. Even misclassified handguns tend to be bigger than practical for concealed carry. Criminals (who, incidentally, disregard concealed carry laws) are unlikely to carry “assault weapons” and instead carry handguns, which are more easily concealed.
(21)Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 ↩
(22)Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 ↩
(23)Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 ↩
(24)Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Constance, Trenton, NJ, testimony – Senate Judiciary Committee in Aug 1993 ↩
(25)Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Constance, Trenton, NJ, testimony – Senate Judiciary Committee in Aug 1993 ↩
————–Gun facts answer on myths 16: Assault Weapons Part 3————–
Myth: The 1994 (former) Federal Assault Weapons Ban was effective
Fact: Murder rates were 19.3% higher when the Federal assault weapons ban was in force. 29
Fact: ” … we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.” 30
Fact: The ban covered only 1.39% of the models of firearms on the market, so the ban’s effectiveness is automatically limited.
Fact: “The ban has failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims.” 31
Fact: “The public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated.” 32
Fact: “The ban triggered speculative price increases and ramped-up production of the banned firearms … prior to the law’s implementation,” 33 and thus increased the total supply over the following decade.
Fact: The Brady Campaign claims that “After the 1994 ban, there were 18% fewer ‘assault weapons’ traced to crime in the first eight months of 1995 than were traced in the same period in 1994.” However, they failed to note (and these are mentioned in the NIJ study) that:
“Assault weapons” traces were minimal before the ban (due to their infrequent use in crimes), so an 18% change enters the realm of statistical irrelevancy.
Fewer “assault weapons” were available to criminals because collectors bought-up the available supply before the ban.
(29) An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates, Applied Economics Letters, Vol 21, No. 4
(30) An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, National Institute of Justice, June 2004
(31)Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999
(32)Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999
(33) Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999
Gun facts answer on myths 17:
Myth: Accidental gun fatalities are a serious problem
Fact: Firearm misuse causes only a small number of accidental deaths in the U.S. 1 For example, compared to being accidentally killed by a firearm, you are:
—Five times more likely to burn to death
—Five times more likely to drown
—17 times more likely to be poisoned
—17 times more likely to fall to your death
—And 68 times more likely to die in an automobile accident
Fact: In 2007, there were only 54 accidental gun deaths for children under age 13. About 12 times as many children died from drowning during the same period. 2
Fact: In 2007, there were 999 drowning victims and 137 firearm-related accidental deaths in age groups 1 through 19. This despite the fact that firearms outnumber pools by a factor of more than 30:1. Thus, the risk ratio of drowning in an available pool is nearly 100 times higher than dying from a firearm-related accident for all ages, and nearly 500 times for children ages 0-5. 3
Fact: Medical mistakes kill 400,000 people per year – the equivalent of almost three fully loaded Boeing 747 jet crashes per day – or about 286 times the rate of all accidental firearm deaths. 4 This translates into 1 in 6 doctors causing an accidental death, and 1 in 56,666 gun owners doing the same.
Fact: Only 2% of gun deaths are from accidents, and some insurance investigations indicate that many of these may not be accidents after all. 5
Fact: Around 2,000 patients each year — six per day — are accidentally killed or injured in hospitals by registered nurses. 6
Myth: Handguns are unsafe and cause accidents
Fact: Most fatal firearm accidents involve long guns, which are more deadly. These are typically hunting accidents. 7
Fact: Handguns have triggers that are difficult for small (child) hands to operate, and are rarely the cause of accidents. 8
Myth: Innocent bystanders are often killed by guns
Fact: Less than 1% of all gun homicides involve innocent bystanders. 9
Myth: Citizens are too incompetent to use guns for protection
Fact: About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person — about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000 10 despite American citizens using guns to prevent crimes almost 2,500,000 times every year.
Fact: Most firearm accidents are caused by people with various forms of poor self-control. These include alcoholics, people with previous criminal records, people with multiple driving accidents, and people who engage in other risky behaviors. 11
Myth: Gun accidents are flooding emergency rooms
Fact: The rate of gun accidents is so low that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t even mention them in their annual safety reports.
Myth: “Junk” guns are dangerous and should be banned
Fact: In the history of the state of California, not one lawsuit against a gun maker had been filed (until 2003) based on a weapon being defective or poorly designed. 12
Myth: Guns should be made to conform to product liability laws
Fact: Guns are already covered under product liability laws. If you have a defective gun that does not operate properly, you can sue the gun maker.
(1)WISQARS Injury Mortality Report, Center for Disease Control, 2007
(2)WISQARS Injury Mortality Report, Center for Disease Control, 2007
(3)National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Spa and Pool Institute
(4)Medical death statistics, Gun deaths, Dr. David Lawrence, CEO Kaiser Permanente, CDC report 1993
(5)Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997 at 293-324
(6)Chicago Tribune report, Sept 10, 2000
(7)Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997, at 293-324
(8)Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997, at 293-324
(9)Stray bullets and ‘mushrooms’, Sherman, Steele, Laufersweiler, Hoffer and Julian, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 1989
(10)Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, C. Cramer, and D. Kopel, Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994
(11)Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, at 307, 312
(12)California Trial Lawyers Association, 1998
Gun facts post 18:
In response to a council members who uses this article quote “in contrast to the data that actually shows guns may give a false sense of security. They are rarely used successfully in self defense and may actually increase a victim’s injury or lead to unintentional accidents.” : https://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/guns-in-public/concealed-carry/
That quotes”The most comprehensive and rigorous study of concealed carry laws found that in states with weak permitting laws, violent crime rates were 13% to 15% higher than predicted had such laws not been in place. by (John J. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, and Kyle D. Weber, “Right‐to‐Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State‐Level Synthetic Control Analysis,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 16, no. 2 (2019): 198–247. )
Fact: This rather miserable working paper is a wellspring of bad methodology, which might explain why it was not (as of July 2017) published in a peer reviewed journal.
PUBLICATION: Working paper
DATE: July 2017
AUTHORS: John J. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, and Kyle D. Weber
OVERVIEW:
Claims Right To carry (RTC) laws increase violent crime from 13-15%.
CRITIQUE:
Uses mathematical modeling to “predict” what crime rates might have been without RTC.
Uses limited pairing of non-RTC states (2-4 states) with study states.
Control states often have no cultural, population or geographical similarity. For example, Texas was studies by comparing it with California, Nebraska and Wisconsin.
Studied only aggregate violent crime, despite RTC being a public function and certain forms of violence are not generally public (i.e., rape).
Quote from https://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/guns-in-public/concealed-carry/ “Seven states require CCW permit applicants to demonstrate good cause or a justifiable need to carry a concealed weapon.”
Fact:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a concealed carry permit in a “may issue” state and was denied. Was that Common Sense? Do I need to explain more? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I guess did not have or “demonstrate good cause or a justifiable need to carry a concealed weapon”
There are many many things wrong with the https://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/guns-in-public/concealed-carry/ ”
It is not worth my time to go through it all. People who actually know anything about firearms , know how bad that is. For the uneducated about firearms and non-gun owners who read that it sure makes “common sense.” For those who are like me who have a over decade of knowledge about firearms, this is the blind is leading the blind.
So you all understand:
This would be the equivalent of going to the Flat Earth website for science facts.
This would be the equivalent of going to the Trump website for immigration reform facts.
QUESTION!? Did you ever think? Why all the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America videos on youtube have their “Comments turned off”
It wouldn’t be to censor out all the facts? It wouldn’t be to stop people pointing out the fallacies in the arguments? It wouldn’t be to
stop people pointing how wrong and the outright lies that some of these videos have? Some may claim “toxicity, or fanning the flames of racism, misogyny, and targeted personal attacks” However we know the truth. This week peoples eyes are being opened to the truth. WE THE PEOPLE are watching. WE THE PEOPLE are listening. WE THE PEOPLE are talking. The spot light has been turned on. The stage curtain has been raised. The lights are now on. The type writers are typing. The pens are writing.
Please, think about your legacy as you push forward and cast your vote.
Every single one of them I checked has their “Comments turned off” (Thank you macro for grabbing all of these)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbvsZ7hwj74
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