NOW PLAYING: Million Myrmidon March
12 May, 2000
I'm not a mom -- that's biologically impossible for me. But if I were a mom, I wouldn't consider for a minute joining the gaggle of people who are being duped at the so-called "Million Mom March."
It's unfortunate that the 100,000 or so "moms" that will actually show up for this media circus (there won't be anywhere near a "million moms" there, and it's not even a "march" either -- it's going to be a bunch of speeches in one spot. Gee, the whole name is a lie! Imagine that!) can't be bothered with the actual facts. They'll just fall into lock-step and gleefully believe every lie or distortion they're told, without thinking it through for themselves.
Just for grins, let's take a peek at some of the crap that the organizers of the "PMS Parade" have pasted on their website:
• Every day 12 children die from gun shot wounds
Oooh! That's a good one, isn't it? Sounds so horrible! My goodness, that's ... 4,380 little munchkins slaughtered by evil, nasty guns! Something must be done!
Too bad for the Million Myrmidons that their nice little sound-bite statistic falls to pieces if you peek underneath it. According to the 1998 child death statistics from the National Safety Council (which classifies a "child" as someone between the ages of 0 and 14):
- 2,600 killed in automobile accidents
- 200 suffocated
- 570 killed from fire or burns
- 850 died from drowning
- 70 children were poisoned
- 160 children died from falls
- 40 died from carbon monoxide inhalation
- 110 died from gunshot wounds
- 500 more died from other injuries including medical mistakes, exposure, etc.
So... looks like the numbers the the "moms" have are a little off, eh? Not quite 12 kids per day -- more like one every three days. And yes, that's tragic, though I'll bet that the parents of a kid who dies from drowning are no less grief-stricken than those whose child is killed by a gunshot wound.
Of course, the Gun Control Crowd can't get people as worked up if they say, "Well, yeah -- more kids die each year from car wrecks or drowning or fire or suffocation or even falling -- but gosh, we need to worry about the GUNS!"
If the real number of rugrats who died from gunshot wounds is 110, how do the "moms" come up with a figure of 4,380? It seems that they're counting deaths for those "under 20." In which case, a large number of U.S. soldiers killed in battle should be counted as "victims of gun violence" too, eh? Anyway, the "moms" have 4,270 teens 15 and older in their "child death" statistic.
Just who are all these innocent teens cut down in their prime? Well, according to Mark Steyn at the National Post, they're fellows like Jermaine Johnson, 19, who died on a February weekend while he was peacefully going about his business of stealing Nathan Donohoe's car from a parking lot in Dallas, TX. Unfortunately for Mr. Johnson, Mr. Donohoe happened to interrupt him in mid-theft and was inconsiderate enough to shoot him in the head.
Then there's Percy Thompson Jr., 17, of Montbello, CO, who was shot dead on February 24th after a crack deal "went wrong." And let's not forget Antonio Donta Nicholson, 15, of Washington, D.C. (where handguns have been completely banned since 1977, by the way), who died shortly after 11 p.m. on February 20th in a "set-up murder" in a drug neighbourhood while in the company of a 27-year-old friend with a long record of dealing and two outstanding arrest warrants for auto theft and assaulting a police officer. If instead of going tragically "wrong" more of these routine crack deals went right and passed off peacefully, the "child gun death" rate could easily be cut by two-thirds.
But more "sensible" gun control would have prevented all this, right?
Here's another lovely little statement from the Million Myrmidon site:
There were a total of 32,436 people killed by guns in the U.S. in 1997. Of these:
- 17,566 were gun suicides
- 13,522 were gun homicides
- 981 were unintentional or "accidental" shootings
- 367 were shooting deaths of undetermined intent
The "moms" aren't going to give the reader the whole story of course: that suicide rates fluctuate independently of gun control laws and gun ownership. More gun laws won't affect the suicide rate -- if people are serious about killing themselves they'll simply use a different method or jump through whatever "sensible" hoops are erected.
As far as the "homicides" go, again the reader isn't told the real story: 75 percent of murderers have adult criminal records. As for the rest, a large number either have criminal convictions as juveniles or are still teenagers when they commit the murder; laws dealing with access to juvenile-crime records prevent full access to their rap sheets. What this points to is a failure to keep convicted criminals in jail, not the need for more gun laws. The "moms'" homicide stat also includes drug buyers who kill a drug dealer to steal his stash, and thugs who assault each other in barroom brawls. No doubt the hundred-thousand-million moms' "sensible gun laws" would put an instant stop to that, huh?
Since they don't come clean on their first two numbers, it's no surprise that they're not mentioning that the number of fatal gun accidents is at its lowest level since 1903, when stats on that sort of thing started being kept. Yep. Even though there are both more people AND more firearms around now than there were in 1903, the total number of accidents is lower now than it was 97 years ago. Guess the hundred-thousand-million myrmidons don't want to trumpet THAT fact too loudly, eh?
There's plenty more garbage on the "moms'" site, and this is long enough already. The rest of their claims are as easily refuted as the ones above -- The Million Mom March does NOT advocate banning guns. Hmmm. Well, one of their heroines, Sarah Brady of Handgun Control, Inc., said "We must get rid of all the guns." She was on the Phil Donahue Show, in September 1994 when she let that charming quote slip. Oops. Looks to me like they're lying again.
Or how about this:
• Since passing the Brady Law in 1994, over 400,000 convicted felons have been prevented from purchasing firearms because of the mandatory background checks.
OK, if "400,000 convicted felons" have violated this law, why haven't they been prosecuted? In 1997, only 36 people were prosecuted and convicted of violation of the Brady Bill. What about the rest? Most of those who were "prevented from purchasing firearms" were not convicted felons; they were denied mostly due to paperwork errors. Oooh! Now that's an effective law, isn't it?
I wonder if any of the "moms" know that as many as 561 times a day (that's over 200,000 times a year), women use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault? In 89.6% of violent crimes directed against women, the offender does not have a gun; and only 10% of rapists carry a firearm. So armed women will usually have a decided advantage against their attackers.
According to the "moms":
• One-quarter of adults in the United States own a gun and only about one in six Americans (16%) own a handgun. That means that five out of six Americans do not own a handgun.
Well, "moms" -- handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. People use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year. But let's make it harder for women (and others) to defend themselves, right?
The "hundred-thousand-million moms" claim that they want to "save lives." Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.
Maybe the "moms" should investigate the crap they're being told to believe by the politicians and the media -- perhaps they'd find out that their "march" is actually contributing to taking lives rather than saving them.
