DECONSTRUCTING N.Y. TIMES' ANTI-FIREARMS BLATHER

The New York Times might contain “all the news fit to print,” but it also contains bias, distortion and outright lies supporting failed policies and irrational fears.

On Black Friday, as Americans were setting another record in single-day firearm purchases, the Times editorial board was decrying the lack of action in Congress on gun control and calling for President Obama to keep his promises to pursue gun-control legislation. In typical, disingenuous Times fashion, they denigrated gun owners for taking Obama’s “tepid remark” about gun control during the presidential debates as a threat, and then characterized these same remarks from Obama as “promises” to pursue a new “assault weapons” ban and to go after “cheap handguns.”

So which is it, Times? Are Americans crazy to think that Obama might impose restrictions on the firearms they want to own, or did Obama “promise” to do just that?

I think it’s very important that we pay attention to Colorado right now, as an indicator of the leftist-liberal agenda they want to push at the national level.

That is, Colorado’s governor and senate are Democrat controlled, and in the election, control of their house has shifted to the Democrats. And even before the new legislature is convened, several anti-gun organizations, including Bloomberg’s group, are “working with the governor’s office” to generate several gun-control laws.

They started with a list of 20 possible gun laws, and have settled for 4, almost as soon as their new state government gets into office.

This should strongly indicate that gun control has now become a top priority for the leftist-liberal agenda, so that the next four years are going to be harsh.

What might short circuit this agenda is if the pro-gun organizations are able to stimulate the people of Colorado to so squeeze their state legislators that they don’t dare pass gun control laws. For if gun control fails in Colorado, it will send a strong message nationwide.

What the teacher was referring to was the Kellerman study.

Here is a link to an article (one of many) that debunks Kellerman. In fact IIRC Kellerman himself had to admit that his study was too flawed to be valid and backed off of his own comments.

Here is the link.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinionperspectives/946639-263/christmas-shooting-certain-to-whip-up-anti-gun.html

Here is the part that debunks Kellerman. Share this with the teacher. It might make his/her head explode.

Gun-control advocates always point to the 1986 study by doctors Arthur Kellermann and Don Reay that established the guns-are-evil conviction. It’s titled, “Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the Home.”

It claimed the ratio of gun-related deaths (murder, suicide, accidental death) compared to justifiable homicides was 43 to 1. From this came the claim that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a household member than to kill a criminal in self-defense.

That’s certainly disturbing. This finding probably discouraged many firearm purchases. No one questioned it until Dave Kopel wrote “The Fallacy of ‘43 to 1’” (http://old.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel013101.shtml).

Now for the rest of the story.

When the study’s methodology is applied to nonfirearm deaths, the flaw upon which it’s based becomes apparent. The ratio of nonfirearm deaths (murder, suicide, accidental death) compared to justifiable homicides is 99 to 1. That means a nonfirearm assault is 99 times more likely to kill a household member than to kill a criminal in self-defense. See the problem?

This is more than twice the rate of gun-related deaths. Yet the study’s authors ignored the more significant 99:1 ratio. They focused instead on the lower 43:1 ratio that vilified firearms and fed anti-gun hysteria.

It is only an armed citizenry that effectively thwarts the thirst of a collectivist government, its clients and apologists for complete power over all.

No other Constitutional guarantee except the right to keep and bear arms can stand against the tyranny of a rogue state; certainly not freedom of the press, whose members increasingly identify not with the people, but with the government elites who seek to rule them.

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