FRIDAY
FEBRUARY 4
2000
Deaths by firearm rank low in U.S.

? 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

To hear Handgun Control, Inc. tell it, guns —
specifically handguns — are the worst killers of both children and adults since the birth of the modern American nation-state.
But the reality of the issue is this: Guns, in all applications and under all conditions and circumstances, routinely kill far fewer Americans annually than a number of other unrelated causes.
In fact, as Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck has regularly proven, guns actually save about 2.5
million lives a year.

Yes, I know — what can we expect? After all, this is
Handgun Control, Inc. and they have no compunction against telling the truth as they want it to be, instead of using documented facts — all of them — to present their case to their constituents and the American people in general. The establishment media has a large hand in perpetuating these lies and distortions of truth. Well, after becoming nauseated from reading so much illogical and incorrect hype regarding the “big scare” over guns, I decided to do what Handgun Control and a bunch of other liberal anti-gunners ought to do themselves —
I did research.
Imagine that. What I discovered was what I expected
to find — and more. And it was easy; all it took was a little
time. So, hopefully the next time an anti-gunner gets in your
face about that Glock you’re packing underneath your coat,
you’ll be able to halt him with facts and, with a little luck, even
change his mind.

According to the National Safety Council, in 1996
alone, 120,000 deaths resulted not from guns but from
accidental medical errors. In 1998, around 41,200 people were
killed in automobile accidents; falls claimed 16,600;
poisonings killed 8,400; about 4,100 people drowned; and some 3,700
were killed in fires or from burns.
These figures ought to be enough to get the
litigation vultures on Lawyer Row in a tizzy thinking about what color of
Jaguar to order next — or how many.
To continue: Rather than guns being the leading cause of death in the home — accidental or otherwise — falls
have that dubious honor. In 1998, home accidents in general
accounted for about 28,200 fatalities, and about 6.1 million
debilitating injuries. Of that figure, falls numbered 10,700. Most
people who fell — more than 86 percent — were aged 65 or
older. Falls are followed by deadly solid and liquid poisonings,
fires and burns, and suffocation by ingested object as the
leading killers in the home.
Of “Deaths and Injuries in the Community,” the NSC
said, “the five leading fatal causes are falls, drowning,
water, air and railroad transportation.”

From 1994-96, there were 129,536 deaths from
automobile accidents and approximately 350,000 accidental medical
deaths. This compares with 47,115 shooting deaths in
the same period of time. Obviously we need to outlaw cars, hospitals and doctors as well as guns, eh?

As for kids — the favorite
“pull-on-their-heartstrings” line used by liberal anti-gunners — firearms are a
child’s (or a parent’s) least serious worry.
In 1998, motor vehicle accident deaths claimed the
lives of 2,600 children aged 0 to 14; 200 suffocated to death;
570 were killed by fire or burns; 850 drowned; 70 were
poisoned, 160 died from falls; and 40 died from carbon monoxide inhalation. During the same period, guns “principally
in recreational activities or on home premises”
accidentally killed 110 kids aged 1 to 14 years. Other methods,
including “medical and surgical complications and misadventures, machinery, air transport, water transport (except
drowning), mechanical suffocation, and excessive cold,” killed an additional 500 children.

So, as you can see, guns are not our biggest health problem in this country. As I measure it, liberal anti-gunners, who either lie outright or use only smidgens of fact to “justify” their anti-gun hysteria, are far more dangerous.
For the record, yes — I agree that one child killed
is too many when it comes to death by firearms.

But I’ll tell you something as a parent: I have
nearly lost children to common household accidents, and my kids
would have been just as dead as if they’d shot themselves
with a pistol by accident. Their loss would have been
extremely painful, no matter the cause. I can take every single
gun out of my house and out of my neighborhood, but as the
statistics above show I am more likely to lose a child to
another kind of accident in the first place.

So what is the point?
For parents who lose children to other “normal”
everyday causes, their deaths are just as painful, as tragic
and as unpreventable as any other cause. And we should
grieve for them. If you’re a committed liberal anti-gunner, if
you think banning every gun is a do-able task and will
guarantee that your kids will survive their childhood — even in
your own home — you’re deluded beyond help.

Because the reality is, we cannot ban everything
dangerous to our children or our society. If we do that, we’ll all end up living in empty rooms, in empty houses, and probably killing each other out of desperate boredom.

Then we’ll have to ban ourselves from existence —
which will include lawyers, judges and juries, so who will take,
hear and decide our cases

Jon E. Dougherty is a staff writer for WorldNetDaily.