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Indeed. Early is this quote: SENATOR BILL JACKSON: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. BROOKE GLADSTONE
by ctdonath 13y ago
Indeed. Early is this quote: SENATOR BILL JACKSON: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That’s not true, by the way. They then fail to address the objective truth: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was [with] AK-47s and all other rifles. There's also more deaths from cars than with shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. He was making a point; rather than addressing the point, the critics drill in to one small verbal error and dismiss the inconvenient objective truth.
- gruseom 13y agoI forgot about that when I said the program doesn't once ask what the truth is. You may be right that they gave a misleading answer, but at least they (momentarily) brought up the question.
- dllthomas 13y ago"There's more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s" is not anywhere close to reality. If we restrict to rifles (about 5% of homicides where a firearm is used) and broaden to all blunt instruments, we get the same ballpark, not a clear win for the rifles. I can't find anything that calls out hammers specifically, but lumped in a category with baseball bats and tire irons and golf clubs and 2x4s and wrenches and candlesticks and lead pipes, I'd be amazed to find hammers dominating. It is certainly a perfectly reasonable position to assert that the number of homicides which used a rifle are low enough that a focus on reducing them is a misguided assignment of priority, even before discussion of particular mechanisms. This happens to be a position I hold. But you don't get to make a point by making false (and false by an order of magnitude) statements.