{"id":203195,"date":"2024-06-04T13:59:37","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T18:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=203195"},"modified":"2024-06-04T13:59:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T18:59:44","slug":"ny-times-creates-tool-to-decide-if-you-need-self-defense-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/ny-times-creates-tool-to-decide-if-you-need-self-defense-gun\/","title":{"rendered":"NY Times Creates Tool to Decide If You Need Self-Defense Gun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(Photo: NY Times<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/span>Estimated reading time: <\/span>6<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Mark Oliva<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leave it to those reporters at The New York Times <\/em>to be ever-thinking about ways to keep their readers informed and involved. The Old Gray Lady published an\u00a0online, interactive tool<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to demonstrate to readers how important self-defense is, especially in the home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times<\/em> published an article headlined, \u201cThis Is How Close We Live to Gun Violence<\/strong><\/a>.\u201d The article showed the in-depth work by the Times\u2019 researchers to map every homicide committed by a murderer criminally misusing a firearm in the United States since 2020. The Times drew a quarter-mile circle around each crime scene to then estimate how many people lived near those horrendous crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times<\/em> calculated that 47 million Americans \u2013 8.7 million more than pre-pandemic \u2013 live within a quarter mile of these crime scenes. The report didn\u2019t account for the spike in criminal activity during and post-pandemic and it didn\u2019t overlay the \u201cDefund the Police\u201d policies by progressive politicians and prosecutors to go soft-on-crime. It did, however, provide a convenient list of the cities with the staggering percentages of those who live close to a murder scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narrative Before Facts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An accompanying article<\/strong><\/a> clutched the collective pearls in the Times\u2019 newsroom, interviewing emergency room doctors who are left to treat those victims of crime and attempt to save lives because of criminals running amok. It portends that the growing number of law-abiding gun owners is somehow responsible for the criminal misuse of firearms, the unlawful killing of others and overall lack of humanity displayed by criminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times\u2019 even wrote<\/a>,<\/strong> \u201cA rise in gun ownership made it more likely for violent disputes to become deadly.\u201d However, they failed to demonstrate how lawful gun ownership drives criminal activities \u2013 much less murder. The Times attempted to tie the murder rates, which are slowly falling, to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), giving the gun control group Giffords Law Center ink to credit gun control laws for reducing murders. The Times glancingly wrote about policing, but mostly in a way that was a burden on communities. The authors didn\u2019t seriously address the detrimental effects of yanking thousands of police off the beat, reducing patrols, releasing criminals without bail or failing to prosecute criminals to only have them repeat or commit more serious crimes. For the authors, law-abiding gun owners were the problem. The readers just needed to trust their narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the authors never proved their premise. They couldn\u2019t show a definitive link between law-abiding gun owners and criminal activity \u2013 much less murders because there isn\u2019t one. There is no causation, or even correlation, between law-abiding gun owners and shocking crime rates in communities across America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Shooting News Weekly highlighted<\/strong><\/a> that while the data isn\u2019t perfect, there\u2019s evidence of \u201ca slight negative correlation between murder rates and gun ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSay what you will \u2014 and the gun banners certainly will \u2014 but the data doesn\u2019t show a correlation of gun ownership and murder rates,\u201d wrote<\/a><\/strong> Rob Morse, the blog\u2019s author. \u201cWe also see a number of countries in the data with very low rates of gun ownership and frighteningly high murder rates. We also see countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that confusion of lawful gun ownership and murder isn\u2019t accidental.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m a retired engineer, not a criminologist or a sociologist. I spent an hour putting this data together,\u201d Morse\u00a0explained<\/a>.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cIf I can figure out that civilian gun ownership has an insignificant effect on the murder rates in various countries, then so did the researchers who are paid by anti-gun billionaires. This data is out there for anyone to see. They\u2019ve seen it and it means they lied to please the people who are paying them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That study wasn\u2019t the only one to arrive at the conclusion that the availability of firearms to law-abiding owners isn\u2019t the driver of crime and murder. Gun Facts<\/strong><\/a> found similar results when they examined their own data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n