U.S.A. –(Ammoland.com)- In a puff piece with much emotion and very little fact, the author of the People article, Michelle Tauber, promotes public relations expert Shannon Watts as just a “stay at home mom” who saw something that needed doing.
The article in People.com has almost nothing of substance in it. It ignores the funding of the organization by anti-gun zealot Michael Bloomberg. It ignores the law. It ignores the Constitution. It ignores just about all facts involving firearms.
Here is one of the very few “facts” put forward in the puff piece:
As for the idea that reducing gun violence, which disproportionately affects Americans — the United States is home to 82% of gun deaths worldwide — is too difficult and complex to tackle, Watts says she “can’t fathom” the idea of giving up.
The number put forward, that the United States is home to 82% of “gun deaths” worldwide, is false, by any reasonable measure.
Counting all deaths which have any link to firearms in the United States, there were 39,000 “gun deaths” in the United States in 2016. One source puts the worldwide total number of “gun deaths” at 251,000 for 2016. The United States has less than 16% of the total, not 82%.
“Gun deaths” is a propaganda term; an Orwellian way of linking all deaths that are related to guns, even though the causes are completely different and unrelated. Suicide mechanisms and causes are very different from homicide causes, which are quite different from accidents.
Restrictions on guns have had virtually no effect on suicides. There are too many easily substituted methods.
In Brazil, in 2016, over 61,283 people were murdered. About 40,000 of them are committed with firearms. By itself, Brazil has more people murdered with guns than the United States has homicides (about 13,000) and suicides (about 26,000). Brazil has extremely strict gun control laws.
Newly elected President Bolsonaro of Brazil is loosening gun regulation in that country to save lives. In the first three months of his presidency, the murder rate dropped 25%. It is too soon to tell if the effect will continue as his reforms of gun regulation are implemented.
There are many other countries with much higher murder rates than the United States. There are many other countries with much higher suicide rates than the United States.
By using the term “gun violence” Shannon Watts attempts to sell a simple but fundamentally false solution: get rid of guns, and there will be no “gun violence”.
We could easily get rid of all “hospital deaths” by eliminating hospitals.
But none of the legal “solutions” called for by Everytown would prevent any significant number of suicides or homicides.
They could easily precipitate more homicides by making more vulnerable people less able to defend themselves.
Several surveys show defensive uses of guns in the United States far outstrip criminal uses of guns. Defensive uses number somewhere between 500,000 and 3 million per year, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The numbers are imprecise because they are hard to measure. A homicide results in a body. A defensive gun results in a live person or a crime prevented. It is much harder to measure a crime that did not happen.
No one has reported exactly how much Shannon Watts is compensated, or how. It takes money to fund full time armed security. It takes money to jet around the country. It takes money to fund wardrobes, makeup artists, and organizational efforts.
How this money is directed to Shannon Watts is unknown. She claims she does not get a salary. That does not mean she does not receive an expense account or other compensation.
In another article, I explained how people who are voluntarily unarmed do not care about facts. They simply want fewer people with guns and fewer guns.
The People article is aimed at them. It is all emotion.
The article shows Shannon Watts and most of the anti-Second Amendment group are not only ignorant, but proud of their ignorance. The claim the sanctity of “good intentions”.
History is rife with bloody examples of the cost of emotional driven “good intentions”. The proverbial road to hell is paved with them.
The best defense against this sort of attack is the education of unarmed people. Take an unarmed person shooting. Use a .22. Have them wear hearing protection. One experience shooting is worth fifty articles they will not read. Be sure to make the experience pleasant as well as educational. Don’t worry about the a political conversion. Worry about them having a good time.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.