Using ‘Youth’ to Promote Civilian Disarmament

11 Pages Posted: 16 Dec 2013

Date Written: December 13, 2013

Abstract

On the Sandy Hook anniversary, civilian disarmament proponents continue to use the tragedy to advance their agenda. This includes the American Association of Pediatricians, who claim: “where there are more guns in the United States, there are more people dying.” Too promote this rhetoric, they work with corporate media to mislead the public. In this vein, a recent paper from the journal “Pediatrics” was touted as proof that more guns means more children shot. But examining their research highlights many oft-used gambits to manufacture impending doom in readers’ minds: The authors’ definition of “youth” seems fluid; Authors ignore gang influences to imply it is children like yours getting shot; They employed sampling error by using only “youth” (mainly adults) visiting one emergency ward in Flint, Michigan, one of the most violent cities in America; The Centers for Disease Control shows that people in this age range have experienced drastic reductions in firearms-related violence in the last 20 years or so, even though firearms ownership has increased significantly.

Keywords: gun control, Second Amendment, media bias, junk science

Suggested Citation

Nemerov, Howard Ross and Nemerov, Howard Ross, Using ‘Youth’ to Promote Civilian Disarmament (December 13, 2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2367444 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2367444

Independent

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
115
Abstract Views
1,224
Rank
433,058
PlumX Metrics