Asbury Park Press
Most victims of gun violence in 2010 were not on a battlefield or
remote hillside in the Middle East fighting in a war. They were, like
6-year-old Brandon Holt, children and teenagers in America, according to
the Children’s Defense Fund.
Holt was shot in the head by his friend and neighbor, an unidentified 4-year-old boy, on Monday night. He is now also a statistic of gun violence.
In
2010, 15,576 children and teenagers were injured by firearms — three
times more than the number of U.S. soldiers injured in the war in
Afghanistan, according to the defense fund.
And while the number of gun injuries has steadily dropped nationwide, firearm deaths among youths in New Jersey
increased between 2000 and 2010, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Still, New Jersey has the sixth-lowest rates for
gun deaths among children, according to the defense fund.
Nationally,
guns still kill twice as many children and young people than cancer,
five times as many than heart disease and 15 times more than infection,
according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
“We
see guns as much of a threat in their life as we used to see bacteria
and viruses,” said Dr. Judith S. Palfrey, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics
and the co-author of the New England journal report. “If you look at
what’s actually killing children and disabling children, guns is one of
the major things.”
Since this report makes claims without linking directly to the data, I'll refrain from giving over immediate acceptance--o.k.?
ReplyDeleteFor example, "children" frequently includes anyone up to age twenty-four. There's no indication as to how many of these "children" were involved in criminal activity. This kind of conflation is the modus operandi of the gun control freaks. It's for the children, after all.
How about that swimming pool epidemic? How many more kids drown than are injured by a firearm? Your attention should be focused on 'water control'
ReplyDeleteif you truly are concerned 'for the children'. Obviously you don't give a shit about kids.
orlin sellers
Orlin's comment brings us to a good point: These folks need to stick to studying true epidemics--they're trained in watching, studying, and combating the spread of disease. Trying to treat other causes of death as diseases, whether guns or swimming pools, is ridiculous.
DeleteYou may come back with a Dog Gone type comment about studies of seat belt use leading to laws that lowered deaths, etc. but that is merely using logic and reason to address an issue.
Your solutions to gun violence have failed because not enough people have been convinced that your proposals would solve the problem. And so, rather than keep trying to persuade people and use argumentation and logic, you have opted for an easier route--call violence an epidemic and toss the research (and, you hope, subsequent rule making) over to an executive agency that you can use to mandate more controls "to stem the epidemic."
This is a dishonest attempt to make an end run around the legislative politics where you've failed to win. It's every bit as shameful as every end run by a Republican that you've decried.