Deltoid

Lawrence Kennon writes:

The following documents exactly the kind of "junk science" being foisted off on the public by the medical profession, and in particular the CDC and the NEJM.

It does nothing of sort.

There are dozens of falsehoods, and dozens of claims that are extremely dubious. It would be possible to put these down as honest errors, caused by Suter's pro-gun bias, except for the following example which can only have resulted from blatant dishonesty on Suter's part:

Edgar Suter writes:

harmful and unconstitutional nostrums

Crime and homicide rates are highest in jurisdictions, such as Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, and California, where the most restrictive gun licensing, registration, and prohibition schemes exist. Why are homicide rates lowest in states with loose gun control (North Dakota 1.1, Maine 1.2, South Dakota 1.7, Idaho 1.8, Iowa 2.0, Montana 2.6) and highest in states and the district with draconian gun controls and bans (District of Columbia 80.6, New York 14.2, California 12.7, Illinois 11.3, Maryland 11.7)?(49) (See Graph 18: "Representative State Homicide Rates")

Precisely where victims are unarmed and defenseless is where predators are most bold.

Got that, folks? Suter implies that gun control is a "harmful nostrum" that caused the homicide rate to be ten times higher in the restrictive places.

What's wrong here? Well, for one thing Suter has dishonestly chosen to represent "states with loose gun control" by the six such states with the lowest homicide rates, and to represent states with restrictive gun control by a city and the four such states with the highest homicide rates. Why didn't he choose Louisiana 16.9, Georgia 12.8, New Mexico 10.5, or Mississippi 12.8 to represent states with loose gun control and Rhode Island 3.9, Hawaii 4.0, or Massachusetts 4.2 to represent restrictive gun control states? His graph 18 should be entitled "Misrepresentative State Homicide Rates".

Could this be an honest error on Suter's part? Could it be coincidence that he chose to represent the states with loose gun control with the one with the lowest homicide rates? Well, the chance of randomly selecting 6 states from 22 and coming up with the six that have the lowest homicide rate is one in 74613. Coincidence? I think not. Suter must have looked at the complete list of homicide rates and deliberately set out to mislead his readers.

Suter is not to be trusted.