The Misinformation Antidote by C. Scott Sunday

Author:C. Scott Sunday
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. Scott Sunday
Published: 2024-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

MASS SHOOTINGS IN THE UNITED STATES

“Shootings are the ultimate superstorm…. After every mass shooting, we hear a simple message—do something. Please do something.”

—President Biden, September 22, 2023, announcing the formation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention

The United States has several unique attributes that separate it from a large portion of the rest of the world. Most of these attributes are positive in some respect, even given variable value systems and cultural norms. Often, the positive aspect is accompanied by a negative of some sort, and these are often inseparable. For example, the emphasis on individual freedom, inalienable rights, and somewhat limited government power would seem to be correlated to the elevated rates of violent crime the United States historically records compared to its peer group.

Because of the United States’ unique approach to firearm access and ownership, as embodied in the 2nd Amendment, violent crime committed with firearms is almost exclusively emphasized by media and politicians, even though violent crimes committed with other objects (or no object at all) are also higher than most other nations. Crime in general is often an emotional topic, and emotions are usually inflamed when discussing it, particularly murders. Emotions are easily manipulated and almost always are, particularly where a path to “push someone’s buttons” is clear. Once emotions lead to a “position” on a topic, it’s virtually impossible to change—because it is propelled and maintained by emotion and not intellect—thus very valuable to politics. It’s been said that “people can’t be reasoned out of positions they didn’t reason into”.

The current fad is to refer to certain acts committed with guns as “gun violence”, and to machinate and obfuscate information related to almost every aspect of guns. Often, suicides are included in “data” about “gun violence” without being detailed separately, and too often the different categories are not even noted. Murder and suicide are two completely different acts, and a neutral intellectual scientific analysis cannot combine them, but because suicides outnumber murders, conflating the two achieves the objective of increasing the scale of the “problem” of “gun violence”.

In 2021, 54% of “gun deaths” were suicide according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Giffords Center (giffords.org) says it is “on a mission to save lives from gun violence” (notably, NOT “reducing suicide deaths”) and says that “… firearms account for 5% of life-threatening suicide attempts in the United States but over 50% of suicide deaths”. The Giffords Center does not explain why anti-gun legislation would be more effective against guns than anti-opioid legislation is against opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil, which is extremely relevant given that these opioid deaths account for five times more victims each year than gun suicides.

The narrative is always about how many people were killed “by guns” but never about how many people were saved “by guns”. Databases maintained by various media outlets and nonprofits focus exclusively on deaths, and don’t include incidents where a gun was used to stop a death or prevent a crime. Compare the

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