How A Study Accidentally Proves Gun Control Isn't Needed
“If you ban guns, there won’t be guns for anyone to buy and criminals won’t be able to get them.”
That’s the refrain of the yellow-bellied gun-grabber, of course. Most of us have heard some variation on this at some point in time and most of us just roll our eyes. Some will counter, though.
“Yeah, that’s how we got rid of drugs,” they’ll fire back, and in doing so make an excellent point. After all, illegal drugs are still plentiful and based on the fact that we even have an opioid epidemic proves that they’re still an issue, right?
However a recently published story might actually quantify it a bit better and, probably by accident, prove that gun control just won’t work.
A new study published in the American Journal of Medicine conducted by a physician at MetroHealth Medical Center is calculating the future risk of death from firearms and drug overdoses in the U.S.
According to Dr. Ashwini Sehgal, who is also a Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, one out of every 100 American children will die from firearms and one out of every 70 will die from drug overdoses if current trends continue.
While the researchers go on to try and make an anti-gun case, I think they fail. After all, let’s look at these numbers for a moment.
One out of every 100 children in the U.S. means one percent of all kids die due to a firearm in some way, shape, or form. One in 70 works out to something like 1.43 percent.
In other words, children are more likely to die from a drug overdose than from a firearm. This is despite the numerous laws on the books banning many drugs and tightly controlling virtually everything else with a handful of exceptions. Meanwhile, guns are supposedly all but completely uncontrolled in this country.
That’s not true, of course, but let me have a little fun with this one.
Now, let’s look at the real problem with those killed in both of these statistics. Almost all of these dead children are dead due to illegal activity. With drug overdoses, the very act is typically criminal. While some overdose on lawfully-prescribed medication, most use more illicit drugs.
With firearms, though, it’s a bit more complicated. A small handful is the result of an accident, of course, but most are the result of things like gang crossfire or are the victim of a crime in some other way. Some of these are actual gang members themselves–even if they’re not legal adults, gangs recruit early–and many of them are armed themselves.
Armed criminals, however, tend to arm themselves through illegal means. They buy guns on the black market or get a straw buyer to obtain their firearms.
In other words, the vast majority of all of these deaths are the result of criminal acts. Yet despite guns being arguably less controlled than drugs, they result in fewer deaths. Funny how that shakes out, now doesn’t it? It’s almost like gun control isn’t the problem in the first place.