If there’s one thing that the media’s push for gun control has taught us, it’s that people who know absolutely nothing about firearms should not be the ones leading the charge on issues of gun violence. For the latest example of what happens when the firearm illiterate attempt to educate us about gun control, consider the recent “study” detailed by the outrageously liberal Washington Post which came to this groundbreaking conclusion – larger caliber bullets do more damage than small-caliber bullets.
According to the Washington Post, “Analyzing data on hundreds of shootings in Boston from 2010 to 2014, Anthony Braga of Northeastern University and Philip J. Cook of Duke University found that on a bullet-per-bullet basis, shootings committed with a large-caliber firearm are much more likely to result in a fatality than those with a smaller-caliber gun.”
For anyone just as ignorant about firearms as the article’s author, the newspaper goes on to clarify that, “Caliber is a measure of the diameter of the bullets fired by a particular gun.”
While it’s questionable why anyone would need a PhD and exhaustive research to conclude what hunters and firearm experts have known for centuries – larger caliber bullets have more stopping power – the quote above isn’t all that controversial.
However, the conclusions that both the Washington Post and the study’s authors draw from their painfully-obvious results are beyond absurd. The study and article both argue that since large-caliber bullets are more likely to kill, banning large-caliber firearms would reduce gun deaths.
The Washington Post goes on to add that this conclusion nullifies the claim that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, and the article even uses this position in its title “Actually guns do kill people according to a new study”.
The number of issues with this conclusion simply boggles the mind. Let’s ignore for a moment the reality that banning large-caliber firearms would no more keep these weapons out of the hands of criminals than any other gun ban and focus solely on the premise itself. Eliminating all large and even medium caliber firearms might reduce the number of gun deaths.
Then again, it might not given that shooters who are reduced to using small caliber weapons would no doubt compensate for the limitation of their firearm by placing more accurate shots and putting more rounds in their victim.
What such a ban would certainly do, though, is reduce the ability for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves with firearms, practically eliminate the ability for hunters to put down large game in a humane manner, and essentially nullify the Second Amendment. The idea that eliminating large-caliber weapons would be an effective and appropriate method of reducing gun deaths becomes all the more absurd when you consider the fact that the firearm which remains the number one target of the gun control crowd – the vilified AR-15 – fires a small-caliber bullet.
As for the claim that the obvious reality of some bullets doing more damage than others means that the gun is in fact to blame rather than the person using it, the lethality of various rounds has absolutely no bearing in the gun control debate. Christopher Ingraham – the author of the Washington Post article – misses the point of the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” quote by a mile when he suggests that the varying lethality of different firearms proves it is the firearm to blame. No Second Amendment supporter has ever argued that guns aren’t capable of killing, nor have they ever argued that some guns aren’t more capable of killing than others.
However, none of this changes the fact that it is still the person pulling the trigger that is to blame rather than the tool that they are using – regardless of the size of the bullet that tool puts out.
Only those who know absolutely nothing about firearms would suggest that the increased stopping power of large-caliber bullets is new, groundbreaking evidence that proves the gun is the problem. Of course, the authors of the study weren’t even able to accurately put together a chart showing the differences in caliber size, with the chart they published listing the 7.62 x 39 round (which has a caliber size of 7.91 mm) as being a higher caliber than the 10.9 mm caliber size .44 magnum round, the 9.07 mm caliber size .357 magnum round, and five other rounds on the chart which are actually a higher caliber than the 7.62 x 39 round yet are ranked below it. Such errors only highlight the fact that those in the media and academia alike speak about things of which they know nothing when they publish absurd gun control studies such as this.
~ American Gun News
We all know, proven by experience, that liberal though is guided by emotion not facts or logic. Thus they have no business teaching anyone.
I have two guns and as far as I know they have never even hurt anybody much less kill them.
Ignorance among liberal writers is nothing new. I saw an article in Texas Monthly Magazine published around 1972 about the Texas Ranger’s weaponry. The writer said the Ranger carried a “.357 magnum shotgun”.
Guns don’t kill people. Liberal idiots kill people.
If we are lucky we will end up with a constitutionalist on the SCOTUS and they will rule that we have the right to carry in every state with only government buildings and schools being restricted, private property has always been at owners discretion. This would be better than the senate finally voting on it because the antis would fill it with extraneous regs and restrictions , a positive SCOTUS ruling would be best.
I believe many American gun owners have larger caliber rifles and hanguns in to assure that if attacked by a reporter, they might increase the odds of their own survival. Just sayin’…
It has become more and more evident that they get most if not all their information about guns from Hollywood FICTION.
Just the other day one TV news person was spouting on how the SHELL CASING identified a gun as being stolen.
Short of having a casing fired from said gun before it was stolen and comparing the firing pin marks on it to the ones made in the new casings found at the scene where an attempted break in was stopped all a shell casing will tell the police is the caliber of bullet fired and simply narrow down the suspects weapon to a list of weapons that can fire that round excluding HOMEMADE weapons that can be as simple as a pipe the bullet can fit inside.
The media claiming a gun was proven to be stolen based on just SHELL casings left behind is like the FICTIONAL TV shows were they miraculously can even get the make, model, year, or even serial number from just the dent on the casing made by the firing pin.
Yet they carried on as if the “SHELL CASING” identified exactly what gun was used within minutes of the incident while they were still gathering evidence. As I stated it would take a forensic comparison of a known casing from the gun to the new ones just found for the police to identify they were fired by the same gun. That does not happen just minutes after a crime.
More people have been killed and or seriously injured, according to shooting reports, police data and such, having been shot with the ubiquitous 22. Caliber rim fire cartridge than with many much more powerful rounds.
Didn’t Cho of the VA TECH shooting kill 32 people with two .22 cal. pistols?