Factoid Life Support
Equivocation and Anachronism Keep Disproved Prediction Alive
by dischord
(distribution permitted and encouraged)

Do a quick web search of the words “firearm” and “motor vehicle,” and you’ll come up with numerous anti-gun site that make various claims about guns surpassing cars in number of deaths. As I showed in my earlier essay “CDC’s Hoax Health Alert,” this is hogwash. Not only have car deaths remained above gun deaths, starting in the mid 1990s, car deaths hit a plateau while gun deaths plummeted from 5% lower than car deaths in 1993 to 30% lower by 1998.

Nonetheless, grabbers have kept this factoid on life support through equivocation and anachronism.

Equivocation is the art of blurring distinctions. Even though the original 1994 Centers for Disease Control prediction compared guns and cars, the grabbers since have started equivocating by comparing gun deaths and traffic deaths. This ignores thousands of car-related deaths each year, simply because they occurred on private property. Flip your Bronco on the back 40, run over a toddler in your driveway, or commit suicide in the garage, and these deaths are not counted in the car/gun comparison.

Run a comparison over the years of motor vehicle deaths vs. motor vehicle *traffic* deaths on CDCs death rate calculator (www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars), and you will find that there?s a difference of as much as 3% between car deaths and traffic deaths. Is 3% significant?

Yes, especially given a related factoid about the number of states in which ?guns have surpassed cars.? In 1996, counting all motor vehicle deaths, there were 3 states (Louisiana, Maryland,
Virginia) where guns surpassed cars in number of deaths. Count only ?traffic deaths? and you can add 2 more states (California and Arizona).

Unfortunately for the gun grabbers’ agenda, firearm deaths are falling so rapidly, that when looking at 1998 figures, only Maryland can be counted, no matter which comparison they make ? and Maryland was on track to have changed by 1999 (we?ll see when the 1999 data come out).

But that doesn?t stop them from still making the claim. They simply make anachronistic statements. Anachronisms involve placing events out of time. Thus we get the following ?fact of the day? that popped up the other day when I was on the Million Mom March Foundation?s searchable database page:

?More Californians die from gun injuries than from car crashes. In 1996, there were 4,045 gun-
related deaths and 4,022 motor-vehicle-related deaths?
(http://www.bellcampaign.org/iupdate/searchfacts.asp)

Incidentally, their claim about 1996 is accurate by counting only traffic deaths (see below). But get what they are doing? It happened in 1996. Therefore it is always the case. Their claim is no more accurate than: ?The U.S. *is* at war with Japan. In 1941, Congress declared war after the attack on Pearl Harbor.? By speaking of past circumstances in the present tense, they ignore trends.

They have no understanding that the crisis that made them activists has changed for the better. We obviously have found solutions to the violence problem (not just the gun violence problem), and those solutions didn?t require gun control. Nor do they require more gun control.

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California in 1996: According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, there were 4,242 motor vehicle deaths vs. 4,008 firearm deaths. According to the California Department of Health Statisitics (MMM?s source), there were 4,142 motor vehicle deaths vs. 4,049 firearm deaths (MMM?s 4,045 must be a typo). The difference between CDC numbers and CDHS numbers is due California counting only resident deaths. Out-of-staters who crash or are shot in California don?t show up.