Yes, this again . . . Gun Violence Should Be Treated As A Public Health Crisis, Study Says – “Every year in the U.S., more than 30,000 people die from things related to guns. That puts guns ahead of HIV, Parkinson’s disease, malnutrition, hypertension, intestinal infection, peptic ulcer, anemia, viral hepatitis, biliary tract disease, atherosclerosis and fires. Yet, the funding for research on gun violence lags far behind other leading causes of death, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers evaluated the leading causes of death in the U.S. and plotted them against the funding and publication of research dedicated to to them.”

Your daily dose of idiocy from The Trace . . . Chicago’s Murder Rate Is Typical for a Major Metropolis — Until Fatal Shootings Are Factored In – “The prevalence of fatal shootings in Chicago as compared to New York and other major cities is one of the starkest findings of a new report due to be released later this month by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, an academic research center that aims to help cities find ways to control violence.” That’s like saying Michael Moore eats the same amount of food as any other normal American male…until he sits down to dinner.

Standing by their man . . . NRA’s LaPierre: Trump’s ‘strongest ally,’ declares war on ‘elites’ – “In an aggressive move to back up its support for President-elect Trump, the National Rifle Association on Tuesday vowed to take out Democrats and others trying to ‘sabotage his administration.’ Taking credit for pushing Trump over the finish line, NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre said that his group would do what it takes to fight gun control advocates such as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and those trying to thwart the incoming president.”

Eagle Imports, Inc., the exclusive distributor of Metro Arms, SPS, Bersa, Comanche, Grand Power, Llama and Avidity Arms firearms products, is pleased to announce the debut of the Avidity Arms PD10 at booth #2610 at the SHOT Show 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Designed by renowned defensive shooting instructor, Rob Pincus, this Made-in-America pistol offers a high capacity, slim, single stack, lightweight, striker-fired pistol with concave sights that can be used for one-handed reloads. It’s ideal for concealed carry and personal defense and retails at a price that’s easy on the wallet.

Warning labels on guns, armed school security among bills Va. lawmakers to consider – “A bill introduced by Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, would require any guns sold by licensed manufacturers, importers or dealers that do not come with a lock to have a warning label stating that the gun should be locked and kept away from children.” When was the last time you bought a gun that didn’t come with a lock?

When seconds count . . . More than 18,000 calls to 911 slip through cracks last year, report finds – “Whenever a 911 call is disconnected, operators with Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications are supposed to call the number back to make sure the caller is OK. But at least 18,482 people never got that call last year, according to a city report released Wednesday. That amounts to roughly 50 ignored calls each day, some of them potentially serious. The report also said it’s been happening for more than a decade.”

Music video takes dangerous turn; rappers mistaken for armed robbers – “A music video ended with officers pointing guns at local rappers after mistaking them for robbers. The incident was reported about 1:45 p.m. in the 1000 block of FM 2004. Police responded to reports from onlookers about four men dressed in black attire and holding huge guns. An Angleton rap singer, Tru and his crew, a group that sings about trying to go out and get it — almost got it — big time from the police on New Year’s Day. ‘It was a bad idea with a good reason,’ Tru said.” Tru dat.

Granny surprises armed robber with gun of her own – “Rebbie Roberson is a grandma you don’t want to mess with. The 74-year-old woman from Bowie County, Texas came face-to-face with an armed man who broke into her home on Sunday night, according to Shreveport, Louisiana-based KSLA. Roberson took the would-be robber by surprise by pulling her own .38-caliber pistol off a nearby table. ‘I reached over there and grabbed this gun,’ she told KSLA. ‘And when I swerved around, I pointed it at him and he ran.'” Is there anything tougher than a Texas granny?

Tucker Carlson vs. Josh Sugarmann. Pop some popcorn and enjoy:

https://youtu.be/4WtenrYFtnM

OMG! Thumbhole stocks! OMG!

75 COMMENTS

  1. “funding for research on gun violence lags far behind other leading causes of death, according to . . . the Journal of the American Medical Association.”

    Odd how the chart fails to list the number of deaths caused by “medical mistakes.” I wonder why that is. Could it be that the AMA doesn’t want people to know that doctors and hospitals kill more people every year guns kill in ten years?

    No. They wouldn’t do that. Would they?

    • Why does the AMA subject their most _inexperienced_ (residents) through over 30 hours of continuous duty… and often times over 3x the hours of a standard work week? And why is it that the AMA accredits so few doctors, especially specialists? Could it be because they’re a self-serving government backed monopoly? Any lawyer with half a brain should make a killing off of them (figuratively speaking)…

    • “Odd how the chart fails to list the number of deaths caused by “medical mistakes.” ”

      Probably a lot would be found in the sepsis statistic.

  2. So they don’t include suicide on the list. But they include suicide in their 30,000 gun deaths number. Definitely trying to manipulate American citizens.

    • That wouldn’t further the agenda. Take the guns out of suicides, and you have about 40,000 per year, versus 12,000 deaths caused by someone shooting someone else. And “gun violence” would drop out of the list of “major causes of death.” Since suicides are almost 4x more likely that a gangland slaying, shouldn’t funding be devoted to that? (Actually, a lot of money is devoted to the issue by the pharmaceuticals industry, but again, that wouldn’t support the agenda.)

      • Unfortunately antidepressants can sometimes have the opposite effect of what’s stated on the label.

  3. I’m with you Wayne. Take the bastards out-oh and include the republican fudds. Go granny!

  4. My favorite part of the video is when Carson confronts him on “assault rifles” being on the top of his naughty list and he denies it’s on his site. Then asks him how many of the 700+ murders in Chicago were committed with “assault rifles” and they guy can’t answer the question. Probably because none of them used a any type of rifle.

    This anti 2nd character also wants semiauto rifles with detachable magazines to be on the NFA registry with other class 3 weapons like machine guns! The guys a commi.

    • Obviously, you’ve been told that.
      One really good answer: “If your car (TV, fridge, whatever) did what it is designed to do as seldom as AR-15s (“assault weapons”) kill people (what they are “designed to do”), you’d be really pissed.”

  5. As a 911 call taker let me just say that these these calls increase every year and with the new text to 911 system it isn’t likely to stop. There are far too few operators and what few there are basically come and go due to the increasing workload and seriously bad pay rate (especially when thinking about their responsibility). Not helping any of this is the number of 911 calls from those who “need an adult” because they can’t handle a problem that 10 years ago most people would solve themselves.

    • Indeed. Like people calling 911 to report that their mcChicken is undercooked. Repetativley. I don’t know how all jurisdictions do it, but I had the privilege once of working with one dispatch unit while they were dealing with someone like that. This person had called so often, so much, for such BS reasons, they were preparing to put her on a do not answer list. I shit you not, they had a system for these types, and it was fully legal, where the local LE no longer has any responsibility to a see if your that much of a pain. I asked “so, if her house is burning down, she just has to deal with it?” They said “yep.” And I asked, “and the city isn’t liable?” They said “nope.” I’m still thrilled by the fact that’s possible. They said it had something to do with “abuse of 911 system” and the court can take your right to that system away.

      • Throw in the fact that the SCOTUS has ruled that emergency services (fire, LE, EMTs) are not mandated to respond, and are not liable if they choose not to respond, this just further demonstrates why people should strive for self reliance to the greatest extent that they can. “When seconds count, the police are minutes away. If they feel like showing up.”

    • I couldn’t help but notice the Avidity PD10’s similarity to the much underrated/rarely mentioned Bersa BP9cc. Kinda looks like a slightly larger version of the Bersa, and is distributed by the same company – coincidence?

  6. Going to have to give credit where it is due to Tru: He didn’t cry about oppression and admitted what he did was stupid. That better than 99% of “rappers” would have reacted I think.

  7. Regarding “military style assault weapons”
    ‘you can keep your muzzle on the target round after round after round’

    And those are bad traits for the target shooting 99% of guns are used for because… No, I can’t come up with any reasons either.

  8. The clown with the sign needs a remedial spelling class. Apparently he wants to keep Portland weird and stupid.

  9. Carlson did just ok. Sugarmann came off smooth and Carlson let him slide a few times. Carlson did not correct Sugarmann on MO permit to purchase law, which was a failure (just add more data), and not well supported by Websters “research” aka Bloomberg funded propaganda. MO law was so great they just went constitutional carry, totally opposite direction. Trouble is, Sugarmann plays on peoples ignorance of gun laws.

    • Carlson also was wrong about gun registration in Chicago, and he was very quick to shut down Sugarmann when started to describe what the actual law was. Here is the truth. ANYONE who can buy a gun from a FFL can get a FOID card online and it costs $10 for 10 years. ANYONE from the state (no matter your address) can go to just about any FFL (including Cabela’s in COOK COUNTY) and buy a unneutered AR-15. They can also buy one from any bordering state with no 24 hour waiting period. There are NO restrictions at all on handguns other than an 72 hour waiting period. Most murders are committed with handguns. There is no real laws in Illinois that will do anything more than keep someone from going out a buying a gun to shoot someone that same day (need to wait 3 days for that of until your FOID card shows up). There is NO gun registration, so even if someone has a FOID, the State of Illinois has no idea what they have, if any. I have friends with a FOID and no guns. Makes it easier to take them to the range.

      • You seem to be bragging about how much better IL is than CA. Sorry, bad attitude. TEXAS is far from good enough, it won’t be “good enough” ANYWHERE until the RKBA is no longer infringed, and we can buy suppressed automatic weapons at Target. Sitting back and engaging anyone who criticizes your state’s violations of 2A because some other state is worse, is just not helpful.

  10. Horowitz kept saying “we believe” instead of citing facts.
    And a .30-30 is more powerful than a .30-06? Puhleeze.

    • I think that was genuine confusion on his part, where in his mind all .30 caliber rounds are essentially the same. Carlson probably would have pressed it if he had more time, but the guy had already exposed his ignorance to the vast majority of viewers who shoot.

  11. One look at that chart reveals that we shouldn’t waste our time funding ‘gun violence’ research, it’s falls that needs more taxpayer loot.

    Oh look, another plastic striker pistol! We should make a drinking game out of this.

    • And by the same reasoning, of course, AIDS research is quite overfunded.

      Re pistols, I concur, and am anxiously awaiting the import of the FK Brno 7.5.

        • Gravity. Gravity kills. Done.

          Seriously, however, going purely by the metric of vertical offset between a point and the trend line – which I think is the argument being made – one would conclude that AIDS research is overfunded by ~1.5 orders of magnitude, the same amount by which gun death research is claimed to be underfunded.

          I do not believe, personally, that AIDS research should be cut by a factor of 30. But I see the point of turning the argument on its head like that, as opposed to merely saying something else is more underfunded. It points out more clearly, I think, it’s simply not a great metric to use.

        • It isn’t the fall or Gravity that kills.
          It’s the sudden stop….

          Research provided by ACME Labs, Field Division

      • AIDS research is over-funded. So is breast cancer research. More women die of lung cancer than breast cancer. That money would be better spent elsewhere.

  12. What I want is a refund for the “gun locks” I might have been forced to purchase if I was to potentially buy a new firearm/s. The DNC repay that? Stupid and useless POS.

    • I feel your pain. I have no kids at home and no grandchildren or other minors who come to visit, yet I “need” gun locks by law in California. I bought a stripped lower (AR 15) from a LGS; they wouldn’t let me out the door without buying a new gun lock. (What the hell am I supposed to lock up?)

      • (What the hell am I supposed to lock up?)

        Well, we could start with dems and antigunners. Given their typical knowledge of guns in general, much less operation, they might think the gun locks can never be tampered with and could also act as a set of handcuffs. Which they would unlikely figure out how to get out of.

      • Not really. I’ve never had one that stood up to a set of picks for more than about 20 seconds. Somewhat counter-intuitively the cheaper ones are harder to pick because they’re so poorly built.

  13. Well, these leftist really love to recycle. I’ll give them that much.

    Lie. Rinse. Repeat. Cash Bloomberg’s check.

  14. “Every year in the U.S., more than 30,000 people die from things related to guns. That puts guns ahead of HIV, Parkinson’s disease, malnutrition, hypertension, intestinal infection, peptic ulcer, anemia, viral hepatitis, biliary tract disease, atherosclerosis and fires. Yet, the funding for research on gun violence lags far behind other leading causes of death,”

    Then the logical course of action would be to divert some of that excess funding from all those less common forms of death wouldn’t it?

  15. Wait wheres the pearl clutching and hang wringing for Falls then? 80% as deadly as guns but what about 10% the funding?

  16. re: Josh Horowitz amongst many other idiotic statements:
    “Assault Weapons make killing more lethal.”
    … uh… Josh, there is nothing more lethal than killing. Killing is always lethal…. killing with a screwdriver is lethal… and with a soda straw.. and with a marshmallow…. damnint you make my brain hurt.

  17. The study about funding for “gun violence” research is comparing apples to oranges. “Gun violence” isn’t a thing, just a propaganda buzzword for the gun control lobby. Something like half of suicides are by gun (about 2/3) of “gun violence” – did they count 2/3 of funding for suicide in general? Most of the rest are murders, about two-thirds of all murders – did they count funding for research of murders towards “gun violence”? What about studies of the illegal drug trade? What about research into gangs?

    To be more technical, “gun violence” is an extremely heterogeneous category whose research is easy for dishonest parties to attribute to other categories with which it naturally overlaps.

    • Look, dumbass, try to get it straight. There is an AGENDA, here, understand? Bringing up BS inconvenient questions is not helping the Master’s agenda, try to get your stuff straight, hear?

  18. People die in plane crashes but there appears to be no public health funding for studies of plane crashes. People are eaten by sharks but there appears to be no public health funding for studies of people being eaten by sharks. People are killed by jihadis but there appears to be no public health funding of terror attacks.

  19. Public health has become the battle cry for statists intent on removing Americans indivual liberties.

  20. So a Texas DGU is reported by a Wisconsin news station…

    I’ve been saying for years: “The only time you hear of a defensive gun use (DGU) is when some grandma chases off a robber.”

    Murders will be reported all the way across the country, but you’ll never hear anything about a DGU event, even as close as the neighboring city/county, because the vast majority are just plain boring (targeted victim pulls gun, bad guy runs off). Unless the DGU has a human interest angle – like a grandma running off a burglar.

    The “problem” of course is that typical DGUs are as common as, and I guess as newsworthy as traffic accidents – another thing you don’t hear of from the next county unless, like DGUs, there’s a human interest angle.

    O2

    • Even worse, medical care is the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA. and these numbers represent only the reported cases, the actual numbers if reported could place medical care is the leading cause of death.

    • Yo, Narc, I agree completely. Also every time somebody advocates that CDC do “studies” on firearms.

  21. Portland 911 had been a disaster back in the early 1990s, and I suspect it hasn’t changed. If I recall correctly, the odds of a EDO new hire staying there after 2 years and after $50,000 worth of training was something like 50 to 1. At the time, their hiring process was designed to be “fair”. So, candidates with law enforcement backgrounds and those who were already certified in Oregon as 911 operators were graded at the same level as receptionists and house wives. Oh, and if you were the wrong color (white) you had a few points subtracted. I do not know if they changed, but I doubt it.

  22. “high capacity, slim, single stack”

    Somehow high capacity and single stack are now able to be used together.

  23. ‘The US has the highest first day death rate in the industrialized world(ranking 68th in the world), more than 11,000 newborns die on their first day of life. This is 50% more first day deaths than all the other industrialized countries combined.’ -NBC News, 2013.
    If this about saving the children, where is the outcry and research for this?

    • It is my understanding (and I may be wrong) that in the US, if the infant is born alive, and dies shortly after birth, that’s infant mortality.
      In many other countries, there is a time period after birth when a death doesn’t count as infant mortality, but as something along the lines of a defect that is incompatible with life.

        • Well, otherwise it is clearly bullshit. Which anyone who has done any real travelling would know. There are third world countries out there, which most cannot even imagine.

      • The US also ranks 30th in the world, behind Estonia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal to name a few, in life expectancy under 5 years old. US Healthcare spending is more than twice the average of other developed countries. Something is very wrong.

    • Its worse than you think. Look at the scales, they are logarithmic and inconsistent at that.

      This chart is intended to paint a very odd picture of reality.

      A key point, the HIV outlier notwithstanding, is that the things shown as relatively low funded relative to their rate of occurrence (i.e., things below the trend line) are not to difficult to understand. This funding they’re talking about is for medical research. Not a lot of research is required to figure out why drowning, asphyxia, poison, falls and gunshot wounds are fatal – pretty well established science on those.

      Also, as usual, they overstate gunshot wound deaths by a factor of three because of the inclusion of suicide. If the gunshot mortality rate was 3.3, as it should be, the dot would be about where HIV is on the horizontal axis and at the same altitude on the vertical – Making the HIV overfunding relatively more obvious. And still, non-linear axes massively distort the appearance of the graph.

        • Precisely. A somewhat sensible way to look at this would be as three groups: Under $1 billion, Between $1 and $10 Billion, Greater than $10 Billion.

          Notably, under $1 billion are all the things that medicine can’t do much about – Fire, Drowning, Falls, Gunshots, Car wrecks. Why would a medical doctor study these, what new info would he gain?

          Above $10 billion are several of your big hitters: Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Lung Disease. These kill 2/3 of the people who die. Here is where HIV sticks out as over-funded.

          Everything else is in-between. This is probably reasonable. Sure, maybe a bit more research into alzheimers or stroke might be warranted and maybe medical research is spending a bit too much on fire (by proportion) but other than little quibbles like that, the spending tracks well with what kills people and what, among those things that kill people, can be helped by medical research.

          Medical science can make inroads into cancer treatment and prevention but there is not a lot an oncologist can do about a bullet wound.

  24. Hi all, I’m a new poster to TTAG. I am a medical student who is interested in the issue of firearm fatalities. I am training in an academic medical center where the conversation about firearm-related injuries and mortality tends to lean left, which is to say that the views I’m learning about in the comments on this site are underrepresented around me. It seems to me that folks who own and are passionate about guns wouldn’t be opposed to seeing less people die as a result of firearm injuries, and it makes sense to me to approach gun violence from a public health framework (that is, trying to study how such deaths happen and then proposing measures to prevent those deaths).

    However, I also see many criticism of this “public health” approach recounted here. One is that gun-related injuries is not a leading cause of death compared to, say, heart disease. My thought there is that the fact that guns are not themselves a leading cause of death shouldn’t prevent us from studying how some of those deaths can be prevented (particularly suicides, which make up the bulk of those deaths).

    Beyond that, I’m here to admit that I am not a part of the gun community but am genuinely seeking to learn where you all think folks in the medical/public health community who are interested in reducing gun-related deaths are going wrong. I think our society can do better than 33,000 deaths from firearm-related injuries annually and am looking to learn how to advance that view in a way that helps everyone rally around finding ways to get us there.

    I’ll be re-posting this comment under a few posts in hopes that someone will see it and respond. Please don’t take it as spam or a false flag. Thanks in advance for your engagement, folks.

  25. “I think a good parallel can be drawn to motor vehicle accidents. Those kill about the same number of people, but that has been decreasing substantially. … All of that really starts from essential public research that determines the proximate causes of accidents — and it’s only with research that you can start to develop plans and policies and initiatives.”

    Except for the obvious differences:

    1 Many more car owners and drivers than gun owners.
    2 Most car fatalities are caused by incompetence/user error.
    3 Most firearm related deaths are caused by either people knowingly shooting other people or themselves and the fact of the death incurred proved the competence in the use of the firearm.
    4 There are very few actual “accidental” deaths caused by firearms.
    5 And Deaths by firearms have decreased significantly as well.

    Typical science of comparing apples to oranges and coming up with cantaloupes.

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