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“Guns don’t kill people. Toddlers kill people.”
That’s the bold — if satirical — message of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which published a video in October warning Americans of the dangers of toddlers.
Toddlers have shot about one person a week for the past two years and by May, toddlers were behind more U.S. shootings in 2016 than Muslim terrorists were. (emphasis added)
The problem speaks to the ubiquity and normalcy of guns in the U.S. and childrens’ access to loaded guns, shooting — sometimes fatally — either themselves or others.
Guns can be found in one in three homes with children — around 1.7 million of those children have easy access to loaded guns, which owners failed to lock away.
“America’s got a real problem,” the Brady Campaign video declares, followed by parody. “We need to lock them up. Not the guns — that’s just un-American. The toddlers. Round them up. Deport them. Get them out of our country. And keep them away from our guns.”
The Brady Campaign’s movement is a play on a successful National Rifle Association slogan: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
If gunslinging toddlers are a real problem then why is it we spend billions of dollars on security theater known as the TSA to defend against terrorism that pretty much does not exist statistically speaking? Wouldn’t those resources be better used to come up with practical gun safety improvements and education? I certainly do not trust the Brady Campaign to not be above using children to achieve their ant-gun agenda; however, I am open to the facts and ways we can make everyone safer.
Indeed. The Brady campaign often cooks its facts and engages in selective reporting. Mike R., you sound like someone I’d like to get to know (assuming I don’t know you already!). My email address is phsmith@rviewer.com Give me a shout sometime if you’re so inclined.
Paul —
You say: “The Brady campaign often cooks its facts and engages in selective reporting.” Yet you provide no proof that the data cited in this report is incorrect. Sorry that’s just trolling. As it happens the same data in this story can be found from a number of other sources. Here’s just one from earlier in the year.
https://mic.com/articles/142348/in-2016-toddlers-have-killed-more-people-in-the-us-than-muslim-terrorists-have#.ctvHRs7tq
Stephan–My response wasn’t about the Brady Campaign. That was just a side comment. (But I might enjoy going back and digging up some of their more egregious reporting sometime and writing a blog about it.) My complaint was about the current article in question which, in fact, misreports and misinterprets what data it does reference. In one case referencing alleged data that _itself_ was neither sourced nor referenced. For all we know that particular writer could have made the data up.In my rebuttal I identify which sources I’m referring to.
This is yet another case of awful, awful…reporting! The hysteria in the Jan. 2017 News.Mic article is based on a Washington Post opinion piece from October 2015 reporting _not_ that toddlers had shot and _killed_ someone every day, but that so far that year 13 had accidentally killed themselves and 2 had killed other people. While still a tragedy, it is hardly the tragedy reported by the Schwartzreport. The second main source for the News.Mic article comes from another article from something called Identity.Mic that by selective reporting gives the impression that toddlers kill more people in the US than Muslim extremists. A little investigation proves that claim utterly false. Then there’s the thrid main source that purports to present statistics from 2016 that report “a toddler has now shot a person every week” for two years. It cites the same WP opinion piece for its 2015 figures and a whole hatfull of figures for 2016 that it NEVER actually attributes. What’s suspicious about this is that comprehensive firearms injury and death figures are not released until much later in the year following because it takes some time to come up with authoritative data. So where did this article get the figures? Who knows. The author(s) certainly doesn’t tell us. But even here, the alleged lethal toddlers aren’t reported to have “killed someone every week.” That’s the fantasy of the News.Mic author Natasha Noman carried in Schwartzreport. I don’t mean to downplay the fact that these accidents occur. As a long-time gun owner, I have a pretty good idea of the reasons why most of these things happen (there is more than one reason), and what _could_ be done about it. But fundamentally bad reporting of mis-reported or fictionalized facts isn’t going to solve the problem.
O.K. Paul SNOPES http://www.snopes.com/toddlers-killed-americans-terrorists/
or try the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/02/toddler-shooting-gun-control-children.
The Washington Post piece was not some political polemic but a report on research data. And here’s another one http://everytownresearch.org/reports/mass-shootings-analysis/
The fact is there is no other country on Earth that has these kinds of statistics. We have a national psychosis about firearms, and all the trolling in the world will not change the social outcome data.
Okay, Stephan, ya got me. Incomplete as it is, the Snopes article makes a good case that a few more toddlers killed people in 2015 than did terrorists. Of course, there are a lot more of them, and a lot more stupid parents, than there are terrorists, so maybe we should be surprised there aren’t more deaths. Still, it hardly merits the polemical conclusion that gun homicides by toddler equal one a week for two years, that the article you cite draws. But that’s just bogus (or maybe stupid) reporting, especially since with 2016 (one of the years in question) that has changed dramatically in the other direction, making the conclusion even more false. The fact is, independent of all this I had been thinking of writing an article for my “Shaking up the Zombies” blog for several months about negligent mistakes people make that lead to just these very tragedies. You’ve given me incentive to get on with it.
Paul —
I find your statement, “Okay, Stephan, ya got me. Incomplete as it is, the Snopes article makes a good case that a few more toddlers killed people in 2015 than did terrorists. Of course, there are a lot more of them, and a lot more stupid parents, than there are terrorists, so maybe we should be surprised there aren’t more deaths,” so unutterably strange I don’t quite know how to respond.
The point is that there should be zero toddlers killing people with firearms. How many toddlers there are is meaningless. You are focused on guns, I am focused on wellbeing. I just find 33,000 people a year dying from domestic gunfire unacceptable. As Nichola Kristof said, ” “More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.”
This statement has been repeatedly fact checked, and found to be true. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/aug/27/nicholas-kristof/more-americans-killed-guns-1968-all-wars-says-colu/
And I don’t think there is any serious threat to the Second Amendment, so I think that is entirely a BS argument. More than that I know the true history of this Amendement; it is not an attractive story. But it is our history and should remain. However, 33,000 deaths a year is simply not acceptable.
The Guardian covers this well. So does the tomdispatch.com Back in May they reported that those wicked toddlers had already snuffed 23 folks. The real news was that 8 of those varmints were from Georgia. Those Georgian little rascals had killed 8. You really have to watch out for wicked kids these days, and note that there are some really mean states (aside from Texas). But tomdispach also points out that ‘mans best friend’ the dog can be murderous. Watch out especially for canines named ‘Trigger’.
I am sorry to see “The Counted” column end in the Guardian. Our US boys in blue killed 1091 last year. In England those billy club toting bobbies killed…… 2. Protect and serve…. whom?