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.