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Study: Alaska sets record in gun deaths per capitaAccording to Dillingham's KDLG-AM (via APRN), a new study from the Washington D.C.-based non-profit organization Violence Policy Center has found that Alaska is number one in the country for gun-related deaths per 100,000 residents, according to data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on homicide, suicide and accidents. Alaska's rate in 2008 (the most recent year statistics are available), says Kristin Rand, legislative director for the non-profit, was the first to exceed a rate of 20 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 residents in the 4-year history of the study. "Stunning," she called Alaska's rate of 20.64 gun deaths per 100,000 residents. The national rate is 10.38 per 100,000. Hawaii was found to have had the lowest rate of gun death. About 60 percent of Alaska households contain firearms, data show. Rand says there is a clear correlation between rates of gun death and rates of gun ownership and comparative strength of gun laws. "States that tolerate more guns just have higher rates of gun death," she said. Listen to more, here. I'll bet Alaska's TOTAL number of gun deaths is far eclipsed by many other states. What a bullshit statistic! That statistic isn't from "a study performed by the VPC", it's simply recounting the recently released DOJ statistics. And while not anything to be proud of, it is presented without the contextual information the actual report provides. Note that Rand fails to cite to an actual peer-reviewed study (VPC doesn't do those much anymore as they, having almost no grass-roots support, lack the funding) to support her follow-on claims about correlations between gun laws and gun -homicides-, which is what VPC tries to equivocate "gun deaths" with in the listener's mind, as their positions depend on manipulating public opinion using "fear of crime". There's a reason for that, such studies don't exist independently and VPC's contrived attempts to invent them don't stand up to even cursory review. As noted above, it is curious that VPC and the other wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Joyce Foundation fail to break out "gun deaths" into suicide, homicide, accident and lawful use of deadly force by police and private citizens and to include meaningful context by referencing violent crime rates and total deaths, homicide or not, by all means when they get in front of the press. Actually it isn't curious, it's a carefully crafted campaign of misinformation and outright lying designed to hide the fact that the best research available from independent and government sources simply does not support their positions on gun ownership and gun laws in the United States. Heck, the Joyce Foundation itself (without them there'd essentially be no gun control organizations of any size in this country, check the membership and budget numbers) is now reduced to, in essence, buying journalists via its Media Matters for America campaign to provide positive gun control news (any time you read a news story or editorial supporting gun control, particularly those with a Brady or VPC mouthpiece providing the "facts", look for the Media Matters disclosure blurb at the end). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Foundation http://www.joycefdn.org/content.cfm/grant-list?GrantID=32765&GrantDetails=1 |
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