I can't talk about my hatred of guns and the NRA on Facebook

[The Time is Now]

24. Not a frequent poster

Been a lurker since '04, but every once in awhile get exercised. I am astonished how much control we as a nation have let the gun lobby take on this issue.

Mark Twain popularized the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics." It's easy to torture numbers to get them to say whatever you want them to say. So, in the "Gun Control Stats" chart (which does not, by the way identify year, but I believe it is 2009) "Firearm Homicides" are compared with "Unintentional Falls," however, the chart does not contain any information about accidental gun deaths. You can find some information here, although it's from 2010. By the way, the NRA has successfully lobbied to prevent statistics from being collected on a lot of this information. ("The scientists writing the letter to Biden wrote that, effectively, the NRA has successfully hamstrung a credible gun control conversation. When the only statistics available are imperfect, it becomes that much easier to disregard them.&quot

In any event, smartgunlaws link leads with this: "In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour." If we take the Australian solution - and I fully support this - all of them are preventable.

I am not optimistic. If a site that dares to identify itself not only as Democratic, but as a democratic underground and that site shuts down discussion of this issue as not sufficiently "general," the conversation is, shall we say, hampered.