Dear Mom and Dad.

Simple proposition: the presence of a firearm means there is a risk of a firearm accident.

Now, watch people do everything they can do deny that fact. I've noticed most of the "pro-gun" arguments try to refute that proposition.



Despite the studies which point out that a gun in the home poses more of a danger than a benefit, people will deny that.

Do you REALLY want to protect your family and keep them safe?

Or is that just bullshit and you would bring the menace into your home for some insane ideological point?

Yeah, really makes your family safer...

Just remember:

In 1993, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published an article by Arthur Kellerman and colleagues, “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home,” which presented the results of research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The study found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide. The article concluded that rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance. Kellerman was affiliated at the time with the department of internal medicine at the University of Tennessee. He went on to positions at Emory University, and he currently holds the Paul O’Neill Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis at the RAND Corporation.

The 1993 NEJM article received considerable media attention, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) responded by campaigning for the elimination of the center that had funded the study, the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention. The center itself survived, but Congress included language in the 1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill (PDF, 2.4MB) for Fiscal Year 1997 that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”  Referred to as the Dickey amendment after its author, former U.S. House Representative Jay Dickey (R-AR), this language did not explicitly ban research on gun violence. However, Congress also took $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget — the amount the CDC had invested in firearm injury research the previous year — and earmarked the funds for prevention of traumatic brain injury. Dr. Kellerman stated in a December 2012 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out. Extramural support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up.”

Why cut the research if the facts actually did show that guns in the home made your family safer?

The monster is real

The reality is that a gun in the home is more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. It was that type of finding that caused the freeze on gun violence research since it "may be used to advocate or promote gun control".

 
Of course, if you really believe that something which is a potential hazard to your family is somehow "the best method of self-defence", then you are quite welcome to it.

Collect your Darwin award.

PLEASE!

Children Most At Risk from US Gun Violence

They didn't like this one too much over on TTAG.

Children's Defense Fund Report - Guns Do More Harm than Good

Local news reports

Mississippi ranks fourth in the nation for child and teen gun deaths, according to a report released today by the Children's Defense Fund, a 40-year-old child advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

The purpose of the report, "Protect Children Not Guns 2013," is to show gun violence is the reason for high death and injury rates for children and teens, CDF leaders said.  

Click here to read the full report.

The report also claims that the National Rifle Association is shielding the truth about gun violence. 

"For years the NRA has blocked the truth, and actively fought against the passage and enforcement of gun safety laws," said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund. "Together we can -- and must -- raise our individual and collective voices and demand our political leaders do better right now to protect children, not guns." 

Mississippi ranks fourth in the nation for child and teen gun deaths. The states with the highest death rates include:

1. Alaska

2. Louisiana

3. New Mexico

4. Mississippi

5. Montana

6. Missouri

7. Maryland

8. Arizona

9. Alabama

10. Wyoming

Louisiana had the highest number of gun homicides, and Alaska ranked first in suicides.

The article points out that the NRA is to blame for its successful efforts in blocking gun control laws which would affect these dubious statistics.  I extend that blame to the gun-rights fanatics who support the NRA or who are sympathetic with its cause.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.