Another fake “study” blames firearms for causing death, as if guns have minds of their own

The American Journal of Medicine recently published a study claiming that many deaths occur “from” firearms. But the proper descriptor would have been deaths “committed with firearms,” which is a much different thing.

By using the word “from” to describe deaths that “[n]ews media and policy makers frequently discuss” – and tacking this on alongside deaths from “drug overdoses” and “motor vehicle accidents” – the inference is that firearms themselves cause death. This is erroneous because firearms are inanimate objects that do nothing except exist.

In the very opening to this paper, the authors make the suggestion that guns themselves are killing people in the same way that drug addicts die from overdoses or bad drivers die from motor vehicle accidents. Again, the causative factor is wrong, incorrectly suggesting that guns are the same as drugs and car accidents.

“Firearms are objects,” writes Dean Weingarten for Ammoland. “Drug overdoses and motor vehicle accidents are actions. The author repeats the error by listing firearms as a ’cause of death.'”

It is important to note that even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not list “firearms” as a cause of death. Instead, the agency lists homicide, suicide and unintentional injury as causes of death, which they are.

Nobody has ever died from a firearm, in other words. People have certainly died from injuries caused by a firearm, but those injuries are concurrent upon someone else pulling the trigger. A gun in and of itself does not have the ability to harm anyone.

Americans own four times the number of guns they did in 1945, yet gun-related deaths are declining

So-called “esteemed” medical journals love to publish this type of tripe. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), for instance, published a paper back in 2018 claiming that most firearm injuries occur during the convention dates of NRA (National Rifle Association) gatherings, especially in the U.S. South and West.

Any opportunity to bash guns and these types of journals are on it, sad to say. But to the discerning reader who knows what to look for, the anomalies and flat-out false claims are easy to identify, in this latest case using simple data.

As it turns out, reducing access to firearms has almost no effect on either suicide or homicide rates. Even accidental death rates show very little change when guns are taken out of the picture.

Over the past 85 years, accidental deaths with firearms have dropped 94 percent, even though the Second Amendment has remained mostly intact. Further, 91 percent of this 94 percent reduction occurred in the years since 1945.

“The reduction has occurred while the per capita number of firearms has risen from .35 per capita in 1945 to 1.37 per capita in 2019,” Weingarten further writes.

“In 75 years, the number of firearms per capita in the United States has increased 390%. There is little correlation with the number of guns and the number of fatal gun accidents.”

Amazingly, by the end of 2020, the number of privately owned guns per capita will have increased by a factor of four compared to 1945. And yet the homicide rate today is markedly lower than it was back in 1945.

“In 1945 the homicide rate was 5.7 per 100,000. In 1933 it was 9.7. In 1957, it was 4.0. In 1974, it was 9.8. In 1980, it was 10.2. In 1984, it was 7.9. In 1993, it was 9.8. By 2013, it was back down to 4.5,” Weingarten further explains.

“The homicide rate has gone through wild swings, as the per capita number of firearms has steadily increased,” he adds, noting that there is really no correlation between the two as the fake medical journals often claim.

For more related news about firearms that you will not find in the mainstream media, be sure to check out Guns.news.

Sources for this article include:

Ammoland.com

NaturalNews.com