6/25/2013

The Mayors Against Illegal Guns's “No More Names” bus tour is making more than one mistake

Mayors Against Illegal Guns not only listed terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a victim of gun violence, they list all cases where a police officer or civilian fatally shot a criminal as victims.  They also listed all suicides as victims of gun violence, completely oblivious to the fact that research shows that these individuals would have committed suicide some other way.  It might also be nice to differentiate gang shootings from other deaths.  From Politico:
Tsarnaev’s name was read aloud during a stop on [Mayors Against Illegal Guns'] “No More Names” bus tour in Concord, N.H., prompting loud shouts from the crowd, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader. Several protesters shouted "he’s a terrorist” when Tsarnaev was named, the Union Leader reported on Tuesday. 
Mayors Against Illegal Guns told The Atlantic Wire in a statement Wednesday that they “relied on the public list compiled by Slate.com entitled 'How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?', and his name was on the list.” The group said his name should have been deleted, called Tsarnaev’s inclusion a “mistake” and apologized. . . . .
But there is another problem.  You just can't evaluate whether we should have guns based on their cost.  You need to compare the number of defensive gun uses against the number of bad things that happen. 

Note: I was in Raliegh, North Carolina on Saturday giving a talk to GRNC.  Apparently just that day MAIG was having their bus tour in Raliegh and, despite their best efforts not to let anyone know that they were going to be in Raliegh, the GRNC was able to get more people at the event than could MAIG.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Richard McGrath said...

John, hope you don't mind if I use the comments section on your blog (which I just discovered today) to thank you for publishing More Guns Less Crime all those years ago.

I work as a family physician (over here in New Zealand we call them general practitioners) and a few weeks after reading the book, presented a talk at a grand round at the local hospital on why doctors should be encouraging gun ownership as a preventive health measure.

It certainly provoked some comments but pro and con from the audience. Some colleagues were shocked, but thankfully the data and statistical analysis in your book allowed me to present a fairly solid case for liberalising gun laws, particularly as concerns handguns, which unfortunately New Zealanders are not allowed to carry.

Thank you for your tireless work in searching for the truth on a very emotive topic.

6/28/2013 9:03 PM  
Blogger John Lott said...

Thanks, Richard, you should drop me an email sometime at johnrlott@aol.com. Thanks.

6/29/2013 5:11 PM  

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