HCI Conceals Data to Mislead President, Press and Public on Child Deaths,
Says Gun Advocacy Group

U.S.Newswire, 3/6/2000 10:32
To: National Desk
Contact: Aaron Zelman of the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership, Inc., 800-869-1884;
E-mail: jpfo(At)execpc.com;
Web site: http://www.jpfo.org
HANFORD, Wis., March 6 /U.S. Newswire/ — The following was released today by
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc.:

President Clinton, using Handgun Control Inc. (HCI) figures, recently
asserted that ”13 kids” are killed by guns each day in America.
”That statement is fraudulent,” according to civil rights activist Aaron
Zelman. ”Americans should demand full disclosure. We’re getting half-truths
and lies.”
Documents obtained from HCI reveal the deception: the ”13 kids” figure
includes people ”ages 19 and under.” Using that category, legal adults ages
18 and 19 are misleadingly counted as ”kids.” Zelman noted ”if a salesman
sold you a home or car by giving you doctored information, then you could sue
him for fraud. HCI is steering Clinton to defraud Americans using trick
data.”
Using the deceptive HCI figures, the Clinton administration claims that more
victim disarmament laws (euphemistically called ”gun control”) will save
young children’s lives. Actual data from the National Center for Health
Statistics (NCSH) prove otherwise. Less than 0.3 percent of all victims of
lethal misuse of firearms were children under 5 years of age. Less than .07
percent of the total deaths from firearms misuse were accident victims under
age 5.
”Saying that toddlers are shooting one another with guns is an outright
lie,” Zelman stated. ”Americans prevent crimes about 5,500 times per day
using firearms. HCI is concealing that fact.”
NCSH reported firearms-related deaths in America for 1997 totaling 32,436.
There were 9 victims under one year of age, 75 victims between one and four
years of age, and 546 victims between five and fourteen years of age. These
figures correspond to 0.03 percent, 0.23 percent, and 1.6 percent,
respectively. ”The true figures show that over 98 percent of people killed
by firearms misuse are not young children,” Zelman observed.
So-called ”gun safety devices” can have little or no effect on firearms
misuse. Linda Gorman, a researcher at the Independence Institute, recently
concluded that ”most of the proposed ‘safe storage’ measures can be defeated
by 15-year-olds.” Devices such as mandatory trigger locks would not ”have
much effect on suicides or homicides in older age groups,” Gorman noted.
Darrell Huff, author of How to Lie With Statistics, wrote that ”a
well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s ‘big lie’; it misleads, yet it
cannot be pinned on you.” Zelman vowed his organization would ”pin these
false stats on the people who try to fool the American public.”
——