The Sad and Terrible Truth About NRA’s ‘Good Guy With A Gun’ Mantra

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The National Rifle Association, run by fanatic Wayne LaPierre, hasn’t always been a tool of big money.  On the contrary it was originally started for hunters, to show them how to use and maintain their weapons.  It offered courses on target practice and etc.  Unfortunately that’s all changed, and now the NRA is one of the most powerful political lobbies in the United States, with dozens if not hundreds of politicians lining their pockets.

Audry Miller is comforted by community activist Andrew Holmes during a memorial service for her 11-year-old granddaughter, Shamiya Adams, on July 20, 2014, in Chicago. Adams was killed when a stray bullet flew through an open window and an interior wall and struck her in the head. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Audry Miller is comforted by community activist Andrew Holmes during a memorial service for her 11-year-old granddaughter, Shamiya Adams, on July 20, 2014, in Chicago. Adams was killed when a stray bullet flew through an open window and an interior wall and struck her in the head. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Their insane propaganda, which includes urging every American to own a gun because the boogeyman is coming to get them, is out of touch with reality, and creates a dangerous paradigm that kills more people than it saves.

From Slate.com……….

Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association issued a passionate call to arms last year, painting a bleak picture of a dystopian America on the brink of collapse:

We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all.

LaPierre’s central message: Owning a gun is the solution. The world is a scary place. There are bad guys everywhere threatening you and your family, and the only thing they’re afraid of is a gun in your hands.

Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners.

A study from October 2013 analyzed data from 27 developed nations to examine the impact of firearm prevalence on the mortality rate. It found an extremely strong direct relationship between the number of firearms and firearm deaths. The paper concludes: “The current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer.” This finding is bolstered by several previous studies that have revealed a significant link between gun ownership and firearm-related deaths. This international comparison is especially harrowing for women and children, who die from gun violence in America at far higher rates than in other countries.

Behind such horrifying statistics are numerous heartbreaking tragedies, such as Zina Daniel, a woman from Illinois who was killed by her abusive ex-husband, or Caroline Sparks, who was only 2 when her 5-year-old brother accidently killed her with his Crickett rifle.

If we examine data from within the United States, the odds aren’t any better for gun owners. The most recent study examining the relationship between firearms and homicide rates on a state level, published last April, found a significant positive relationship between gun ownership and overall homicide levels. Using data from 1981–2010 and the best firearm ownership proxy to date, the study found that for every 1 percent increase in gun ownership, there was a 1.1 percent increase in the firearm homicide rate and a 0.7 percent increase in the total homicide rate. This was after controlling for factors such as poverty, unemployment, income inequality, alcohol consumption, and nonhomicide violent crime. Further, the firearm ownership rate had no statistically significant impact on nonfirearm homicides, meaning there was no detectable substitution effect. That is, in the absence of guns, would-be criminals are not switching to knives or some other weapons to carry out homicide. These results are supported by a host of previous studies that illustrate that guns increase the rate of homicides.

Read more from Slate.com…..

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Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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9 years ago

Americans should be ashamed of themselves for falling for the crap put out by the NRA. They’ll buy a gun, get tired of carrying it because they are heavy and hard to conceal, and then throw it in a drawer somewhere and forget to unload it. That’s a tragedy waiting to happen.

Bill Formby
9 years ago

Mike, I think that the number of guns, and the harshness of our penal system including the death penalty correlate to the violent crime rate in this country. The correlation comes from the issue of how little value we put on life itself and our tendency to always be “at war” with something.

9 years ago

It goes far beyond firearm ownership. In Israel, where almost everyone is a reserve-type member of the IDF, they have military-issued firearms in their homes with ammunition.

Yet, the incidence of gun deaths from random assaults and “accidents” (which are really only negligence) is far below that of the USA. That “Let’s go out and kill something” is an indication of a national culture that is deeply disturbed.

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