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
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