Baldr Odinson of Cease Fire Oregon had a hard time updating his blog more than once a month with half-assed anti-rights talking points. Even his twitter feed doesn’t see much action. But he’s decided to add to his efforts with a new anti-rights blog “Kid Shootings”.
Overall he’s just aggregating stories where kids get shot with guns. Essentially the reverse of the “Gun Death?” Files, only Baldr wants the blog to be the “Kids getting shot Blog” and I made a point to limit the number of ‘Gun Death?” stories I publish every day so my blog simply isn’t the “Gun death?” blog (but I have that above link, and the tab in the side bar to the right that will allow you to just view this category). We’re not exactly playing on the same field as I publish one “Gun Death?” story per day except for major holidays and days of remembrance where I think the time is better used, and any incidentals that come up in the usual blog-fodder. Baldr is just posting whenever.
Also in “Gun Death?” I attempt to explain why I’m using this story, and why its significant. My big points are:
– “Gun Death” is a made-up metric, and really shouldn’t be relevant to anybody who’s concerns include public safety. ie: If “Gun Death” went down by 40%, but murder went up by 80% any rational person would see that as a decline in public safety…while people who focus on that metric would actually declare more murder as “Better”.
– People kill people, not tools. A variation on the bumper-sticker slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people do”, where you can see murder and violence at the hands of people who DON’T have guns. This also shows exactly what would happen if guns never existed or magically disappeared.
– When everybody is disarmed the strong prey on the weak. I like to point out that if the victim had been armed, quite possibly the bad events could have been avoided.
Baldr’s new blog doesn’t make many comments, just spreads blood on the dance floor. Of course he does supply “Resources” that all stay within his Joyce Foundation family.
Pages like this:
Thirty-three percent of U.S. households contain a gun (Pew 2009), and half of gun-owning households don’t lock up their guns, including 40 percent of households with kids under age 18 (Johnson, p. 175).
Take away: Lots of households own guns (and I suspect Dr. Johnson’s results were LOWER than actual) yet underage unintentional “Gun Death” is a VERY small number.
A gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide, criminal assault or homicide, or unintentional shooting death or injury than to be used in a self-defense shooting (Kellermann, p. 263).
Yep, Arthur Kellerman the “Researcher” known for cooking his numbers to make the report add up in the way his grant writers want…and when those numbers suck, simply making them up.
In 2007, 138 children and teens ages 0-19 were killed in unintentional shootings
First up 18 and 19 aren’t “Children”, and second even with the skewed numbers 138 in one year is statistical noise. I guess all those unsecured guns aren’t a problem.
In 2009, 3,588 children and teens ages 0-19 were treated in emergency rooms for unintentional gunshot wounds
again 18-19 are not children. Also I wonder if gang activity is screened out by these numbers.
For the time being the comment section is open. I dropped a few valid points for Baldr to look at. Maybe you have something to add.
This is the best they can do.
