shooten
Member
Someone sent this in to the San Diego Union-Tribune in reponse to the U-T's editorial supporting the AWB. In it, they cited statistics from the VPC. This guy rips em a new one. I removed his name and city but he deserves a hand. Read and enjoy. I wish I had written it.
Focus of assault weapons ban wrong, ineffective
March 10, 2004
I am amazed and saddened that the Union-Tribune resorts to a shrill headline and shoddy journalism in the March 8 editorial "Cop-killers / Assault weapons ban should be extended." You use data on the percentage of law-enforcement officers "felled by assault weapons" that were supplied by an organization which, on its Web site, describes itself as "the most aggressive group in the gun control movement."
If you had checked a source with no ax to grind – such as the FBI's crime statistics – you would have learned that in fact no officers were killed by these weapons, but that a full 100 percent were killed by criminals, actual human beings. On Page B4 of the same issue your reporter got it right: "Deputies subdue knife-wielding man." They did not subdue a knife. Mothers Against Drunk Driving has got it right: They are not mothers against cars.
Legislation such as the "assault weapons" ban has absolutely no demonstrated effect on reducing any types of killings. I challenge the editors to produce any data to the contrary from a reliable, nonpartisan source.
Even if the statistic cited were true if worded properly – that 20 percent of officers killed in the line of duty during the current gun ban were killed by criminals armed with this ill-defined class of firearms – does this not support the conclusion that gun bans do not work? Criminals do not care which weapons are banned; they can and will obtain any types they desire, be they guns or knives.
By focusing attention of the weapons criminals use rather than on their crimes, why they commit them and how severely they are punished for them, politicians pushing these laws to ban weapons only make some ill-informed editors and other citizens feel better that something is being done while accomplishing nothing.
No, I am not a "gun nut" and I do not long to legally own one of these weapons. This editorial was just faulty reasoning and bad reporting in support of trash legislation.
Focus of assault weapons ban wrong, ineffective
March 10, 2004
I am amazed and saddened that the Union-Tribune resorts to a shrill headline and shoddy journalism in the March 8 editorial "Cop-killers / Assault weapons ban should be extended." You use data on the percentage of law-enforcement officers "felled by assault weapons" that were supplied by an organization which, on its Web site, describes itself as "the most aggressive group in the gun control movement."
If you had checked a source with no ax to grind – such as the FBI's crime statistics – you would have learned that in fact no officers were killed by these weapons, but that a full 100 percent were killed by criminals, actual human beings. On Page B4 of the same issue your reporter got it right: "Deputies subdue knife-wielding man." They did not subdue a knife. Mothers Against Drunk Driving has got it right: They are not mothers against cars.
Legislation such as the "assault weapons" ban has absolutely no demonstrated effect on reducing any types of killings. I challenge the editors to produce any data to the contrary from a reliable, nonpartisan source.
Even if the statistic cited were true if worded properly – that 20 percent of officers killed in the line of duty during the current gun ban were killed by criminals armed with this ill-defined class of firearms – does this not support the conclusion that gun bans do not work? Criminals do not care which weapons are banned; they can and will obtain any types they desire, be they guns or knives.
By focusing attention of the weapons criminals use rather than on their crimes, why they commit them and how severely they are punished for them, politicians pushing these laws to ban weapons only make some ill-informed editors and other citizens feel better that something is being done while accomplishing nothing.
No, I am not a "gun nut" and I do not long to legally own one of these weapons. This editorial was just faulty reasoning and bad reporting in support of trash legislation.
