Sources Matter, Unfortunately

While researching on how gun-free zones are not working to curtail mass shootings but exacerbating them, I came to the conclusion that a person can find irrefutable evidence to support either side of this argument. What? How is that possible? Breitbart, a conservative website, has data from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) showing 92 percent of mass shootings are happening at gun-free zones. That data was completed in response of Everytown for Gun Safety producing data that showed 14 percent of the same data. Why the difference? Criteria! We can get numbers, how I love them, to say just about anything! So what to do? How could I “square this circle?”

Go to the media!!! Not likely a place I could find any resolve due to the issue of bias. CNN clearly is in favor of the idea that gun control will end gun violence. MSNBC, the American version of Pravda, is in lockstep with the uber-left’s “progressive” idea of no guns except for the famous and well connected. (You think Bloomberg’s bodyguard is unarmed?) Fox News is a life member of the NRA. (That is what you call baiting! I myself am a life member of the NRA and have no problem with anybody with the same connection, but to suggest that a whole news network is connected to that organization is ludicrous, even though most of the news anchors seem to be in favor of the Second Amendment. I stated this for balance as the views of the other news agencies are my opinion and I offer it at no price, exactly double what it is worth!) So the media is as unbiased as the web.

So what about statistics? It’s hard to make some basic numbers lie, after all 2+2=4, or it did unless it identifies more with 5 nowadays. Maybe with 3, but back to my point. Gun ownership in America has remained around 43 percent for the last 50 years according to Pew Research, a fairly neutral source depending on who you ask. That data is actually from Gallup, another reliable source to most of us, and is compared to a General Social Survey that shows ownership down 15 percent, from 49 percent to 34 percent in the same time frame. Population has increased 50 percent over the covered period, so we either own guns the same, or slightly less, depending on which view you take.

So do gun-free zones offer a false sense of security? You’re darn-tooting they do! A professor from Purdue, Eric Dietz, Ph.D., has studied mass shootings from 1950 and only finds two that weren’t in a gun-free zone. Some may say he is biased, but he is the former director of Homeland Security and a 22-year Army veteran. He does admit to needing to do more studying on the subject, but his initial take on the matter is good enough for me!!