I’m not going to say that guns aren’t dangerous, because they definitely are. That said, so is everything else on the planet ranging from a feather pillow, to a bucket of water if used in the wrong way.
It is the job of the people and organizations that are against guns to manipulate the numbers and the way they are reported in order to villanize guns.
Matthew M emailed me a few days ago with an interesting find:
He was browsing through one of the Concealed Carry Killers PDFs on the Violence Policy Center‘s homepage; the Total People Killed By Concealed Handgun Permit Holders and noticed something fishy. See if you can spot what I mean in the summary he made of the data:
- 86 – Actual Murder Victims (Including murder-suicides)
- Victims where the shooter was convicted of a lesser charge:
13 – Accidental deaths (involuntary manslaughter)
6 – Acted in self-defense (excessive force or discharging a firearm in residence)
3 – Voluntary manslaughter
- 75 – Suicides
- 16 – Acquitted charges, dropped charges, not filed, and a shootout where both people involved were CCW holders and both died
- 89 – Pending
Gives their grand total of:
288
Seriously Violence Policy Center? You can actually report 288 with a straight face?
Here’s a breakdown of what I think the make-up of the total should be:
86 – This first number I agree with… and ill even give them the suicide count included in that even though it is self inflicted
0 – The next three sub points on accidental deaths, self defense, and voluntary manslaughter shouldn’t count for obvious reasons.
0 – Suicides? Are you kidding me.. why does that have anything to do with the fact they had CCW permits? If they only took their own life I see no reason to include this in the count.
0 – If the case was thrown out, dropped, or no charges were filed then how can this be included either?
0 – Pending? Uh… so if 89 are pending then why is that included in the current total
Grand total by my count: 86
This is one of the reasons people need to look to see where the numbers are coming from and make their own judgments. There are no repercussions for being sneaky with the data, so if you take what you’re given at face value you are often going to get burned. Thanks again for taking the time to go through the data Matt.
Anyone else want to weigh in on this?
