Tag: gun control

Federal 2018 Data: Falling Killed 126 Times More People than Rifles of Any Kind

Federal data on causes of death in America show that, as recently as 2018, falling accounted for at least 126 times as many fatalities as rifles of any kind — an inconvenient fact for Democrat lawmakers who are currently demanding a new round of nationwide gun controls.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 2018 National Vital Statistics show 37,455 people died from unintentional falls throughout the year.

The same CDC data shows unintentional firearm deaths for 2018 came in at 458, which means accidental death by falling was about 82 times more likely than accidental death via any kind of firearm.

The numbers become especially pertinent to today’s political climate when FBI Unified Crime Report figures are brought into the equation. The FBI figures look at the intentional, criminal use of firearms, and show a total of 297 deaths from rifles of any kind in 2018. This means accidental death by falling occurred 126 times more often than intentional death by a rifle of any kind in 2018.

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4 Reasons Gun Control Can’t Solve America’s Violence Problem

The gun-control paradigm—the idea that the solution to American violence is more laws restricting guns—is unhelpful.

Gun control doesn’t work. Indeed, any statistical connection between gun policy and violence is tenuous. But even if gun control was effective, it would still be flawed.

Gun control burdens the free exercise of the constitutionally-protected Second Amendment right to bear arms, so it’s subject to compelling legal challenges and is flatly rejected by many Americans. In addition, the enforcement of stringent gun control invariably inflicts heavy burdens upon other civil liberties—especially in poorer communities and among marginalized populations.

Gun control’s coexistence with the values of a free society is, at best, an uneasy one. But it’s even less viable in the particular context of the United States. Consider the 400 million guns already in private circulation, plus the totally irreversible and ever-increasing ease of the self-manufacturing of firearms. No matter what laws are passed, widespread distribution and access to firearms are (and will remain) immutable facts of American life—especially for people who are willing to break laws.

In this context, it’s evident that gun control cannot solve the problem of violence in this country. The following four observations about American violence suggest some promising alternative paradigms.

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Federal Bump Stock Ban Blocked by Divided Appeals Court

The federal ban on bump stocks—devices that increase the rate of fire for semiautomatic weapons—is likely unlawful and must be put on hold, a divided Sixth Circuit said Thursday.

Bump stocks harness a gun’s recoil energy to rapidly move the firearm back and forth, bumping the shooter’s stationary finger against the trigger. In the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, in which a gunman using semiautomatic rifles with bump stocks killed 58 people, President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to quickly ban “all devices that turn legal weapons into machineguns.”

Federal law generally bans civilian ownership of machine guns manufactured after May 1986, including any parts used to convert an otherwise legal firearm into an illegal machine gun. It defines a machine gun as a weapon which fires “automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued a rule reinterpreting the terms “single function of the trigger” and “automatically” to ban bump stocks.

The group Gun Owners of America and others sued, claiming the rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, and the 14th Amendment’s right to due process.

A lower court should have granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction against the rule, because they’ll likely be able to prove that the bump stock ban is unlawful, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said.

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Biden: I Don’t Have Any of the Facts on Colorado, But We Definitely Need a Gun Ban

Speaking from the White House Tuesday afternoon, President Joe Biden admitted he doesn’t know or have all of the facts about the shooting that took place in Boulder, Colorado Monday night. Regardless, he called for additional infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law abiding Americans. 

“I want to be very clear. This is the one thing I do know enough to say on in terms of what’s happened there. While we are still waiting for more information regarding the shooter, his motive, the weapons he used, the guns, the magazines, the weapons, the modifications that apparently have taken place with those weapons involved here, I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps to save lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Seante to act,” Biden said. “We can ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a Senator. It passed, it was the law for the longest time…we should do it again.”

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