The New Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Is Wrong

“Guns” are not the leading cause of death in kids

Guns, which is to say the arms most commonly used, such as pistols, revolvers and rifles, very infrequently discharge accidentally. Rare incidents have been noted in which weapons fire when triggers are not pulled. Older models, rarely, might go off when dropped; newer models see this even more rarely. Guns are also misused or mishandled, which all know.

When these accidental discharges, caused by malfunction or misuses, occur, which again are rare, sometimes, also conditionally rarely, people are hurt or even killed. But understand this is a double-rarity: the unlikeliness of the accidental discharge multiplied by the unlikelihood of an injury resulting from that discharge.

Therefore, it is not a logical fallacy to say that “Guns kill”. Or to say “Guns are a cause of death,” or things like that. It can and has happened, but again, rarely.

To contrast, here is an example of an extreme error, found in the opening sentences of the Michigan Gun Violence Prevention Task Force report:

Firearms are now the leading cause of death among children and teens in the United States, surpassing drownings, childhood cancers and motor vehicle accidents. This is not just a national crisis; it is a public health emergency that touches every corner of our state.

The first sentence is false, and glaringly false, embarrassingly false. Firearms are not now, nor were ever, the leading cause of death of anybody. Not even during war.

(Incidentally, the person who gave us this falsity calls herself, using a barrage of letters after her name as bullets, “Natasha Bagdasarian, MD, MPH, FIDSA, FACP”.)

Given that falsity, it does not follow that this untruth can be the cause of a “national crisis”, nor can it be a “public health emergency.”

Murder is high on the list of causes of death for those under 18. So is suicide. And so, alas and sadly, are deaths by accidents. Indeed, accidents (of all kinds) are a leading, if not the leading, cause of death among the young.

It’s by now cliche and tiresome to say these things, but they are worth repeating just the same, because you can never surrender the foundations of any argument:

• When a murderer kills his victim using a firearm, the murderer killed the victim, not the gun;

• When an “intimate partner” kills his “special other(s)” using a firearm, the “intimate partner” killed the “special other(s)”, not the gun;

• When a person, young or old, murders himself or herself using a firearm, the person killed himself or herself, and not the gun;

• When a person starts firing indiscriminately at people in his “community”, it is the person committing mayhem, not the gun.

And so on. Never accept the term “firearm violence”. It is propaganda. A cop using his firearm to stop a marauder has used “firearm violence.” So too a soldier. A person protecting his home against invaders the same. Never use the faulty language.

Because others use faulty language does not mean you must.

Given the report’s list of “recommendations”, what the rulers of Michigan want to do is to take as many firearms as they can from the hands of citizens. Which, I suppose, will make them “feel” safer. All the usual bans and proscriptions make the list, all justified by pointing to other states which have already lapsed into soft tyrannies.

Those most consequential is “Allowing for legal accountability for the gun industry.” Meaning rulers can sue gunmakers for when a murderer uses a gun. By this logic, when a murderer uses public roads, overseen by rulers, we ought to be able to sue rulers for enabling murderers. Not just roads, but any public facility. Lawyers on our side ought to take note.

Now the report itself is written as if for the simple: it has color coding, needless graphics, and gradeschool language larded with Expertisms. It has an Appendix, taking up a relatively large portion of the document, begging for money for, well, for people who sit on such “task forces” writing such reports. Temerity isn’t in it.

But what’s odd is there is no evidence.

I repeat: there is no given evidence for the claims made by task force members. For instance, in the section on suicides and firearms, an area of concern to everybody, there isn’t even a hint of how many murder themselves with guns. There’s only some money begging (given by prominent green circle dollar signs) and pleas to sue gunmakers.

The whole report is like that. One large Appeal to Authority Fallacy. Nothing but “Do this, do that, because we say so. And please give us more money.” Which the governor of the state heartily recommends.

So I thought I’d look up the claims. I did this for the country as a whole, as these numbers are easier to get. I don’t have them for Michigan (the greatest state) alone.

Data

According to the CDC, the leading cause of death for both 1-9 and 10-24 year-olds is accidents (they say “unintentional injuries”, which I suppose is more scientific). These are percents of deaths, and not rates per 100,000 (which is more common).

This is for 2023, the latest year of complete data. (I apologize for the haze screenshots; don’t know why they’re like this.) Obviously age plays a large role, as all already knew. But it is quite clear, the report’s opening sentence are quite false for Ages 1-9. We’ll see about 10-24 below.

Accidents are the largest cause of death. A breakdown of the types of accidents varies a bit, depending on who is counting and what sources. The CDC isn’t especially consistent in age grouping. One of their counts lists poisonings at the top followed by motor vehicle accidents, but that is for 1-44 year olds.

Stats from the paper “Unintentional injury deaths in children and youth, 2010–2019” by West and others in the Journal of Safety Research list Motor Vehicle Traffic at the top (33-60%) for 1-9s and 10-19s, then, with some flipping depending on the age block, Drowning, Fire/Burns, Suffocation, Other Transportation, Poisoning, and Falls at the bottom at 1-2%. Which means firearms accidents must be less than 1% of total accidents. And thus not a leading cause of death.

Which means accidents are still by the leading cause of death for those under 19. The Michigan report is thus wrong again.

Here from the same 2023 CDC report are the tables with the absolute counts (total numbers across the country), the percent of all deaths, and the rates per 100,000, for various age blocks. We start with 1-4 year olds.

Also note that all homicides are not by firearm, especially in the young. About two-thirds of homicides show the murderers using firearms (this is, it appears across all ages; one imagines that ratio is even smaller when 1-4 years olds are murdered). Which would put homicides with firearms the 5th cause of death in this group.

People who murder themselves use firearms about half the time (same link). There are no suicides given in 1-4 year olds.

Here the absolute numbers (all causes) are small, relatively speaking in a country of 350 million or so, and it is clear firearms being used in the course of death are never the leading cause.

Here are the 15-19 years olds.

Here, as expected, the absolute numbers jump up. Blacks, as we’ll see, account for at least half of all numbers, and have homicide rates 10-15 times higher than other groups. There is, and has been, a black homicide problem, coupled with a white pandering problem.

Even if both suicides and homicides were lumped together, and all such deaths were blamed on firearms, accidents still outnumber them. But we cannot lump suicide and homicide together, nor are all these deaths firearms related.

Accidents for 15-19 year olds are 38.6 per 100,000. The nearest breakdown of actual firearm use in homicide and suicide, both lumped together (which makes no sense causally), is this picture (a paper from JAMA Psychiatry):

This removes from the count homicides and suicides where the means were other than firearms. Even lumped together, the rate for 15-24 year old is about 16 or 17 per 100,000, which is still less than half of accidents. Cars kill more. Again, the Michigan report is wrong.

Here’s a similar figure from a 2021 CDC report:

Firearms as “the leading cause of death” cannot be supported. (And can never be supported, because the term itself is meaningless.)

The problem is with blacks. Here from the CDC report are the rates for blacks 15-19 yr.

The case is now made that, for blacks of this age, and even considering firearms were only used in 2/3 or murders, homicide-with-firearms is the leading cause of death. Suicide is small here.

Whites, same age group:

The white homicide rate is 5.5 per 100,000, whereas the black is 46.3.

Black males, 15-19 yr:

White males, 15-19 yr:

Whites males homicide rates are 6 per 100,000, whereas it’s 53. 8 for black males.

Black female, 15-19 yr:

Note carefully the rate for black female homicide deaths is 21.5, where it was 6 for whites males of the same group.

White female, 15-19

The conclusion is ever the same. Blacks are the problem.

The wholesale proscriptions on gun ownership and use will do nothing to alleviate the real problems, which Michigan rulers do not want to see, or, in their ideology, cannot see.

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