Mike Males
I don’t believe articles and commentaries on crime and guns in liberal/left media, especially not dubious sources like MSNBC and Atlantic magazine, unless I can personally verify them from primary sources like the FBI and CDC – which is just about never. Everyone spreads whatever lies buttress outmoded ideologies.
But the utter junk right-wing media and pundits peddle is crazed idiocy that doesn’t even pretend to factuality. Let’s take one more example in the endless clown parade: the current salvo to credit Florida’s (and Texas’s) wide-open gun-toting laws for somehow protecting the public (“good people … now have the means to protect themselves, their families, and those around them,” one nationally posted article declared of Florida’s “constitutional-carry” law).
And let’s use right-wingers’ own macho standards: how well do gun-rights states (which are getting ever-more gun-happy) protect their women-folk and kids from being shot, versus gun-control states (which are getting even more restrictive)? The two figures, straight from Centers for Disease Control tabulations, tell you all you need to know.
It isn’t even close. Florida and Texas, both sporting blustering macho governors, are grotesquely unable to protect their women and children from gun slaughter compared to liberal California and New York. Let’s remember that 63% of gun homicides killing children under age 15 are committed by shooters ages 25 and older (a disturbing reality both gun-rights and gun-control lobbies shamefully lie to evade). Male shooters 25 and older kill 72% of female gun homicide victims.
Another way to frame the issue is that Texas and Florida grown men shoot women and children to death 2 to 4 times more than do California and New York men. And gunmen in right-wing states are getting more murderous faster than in liberal states.
The problem is that the best research indicates gun regulations by themselves play only a limited role in explaining the large differences in violent dangers between gun-control and gun-rights states. Texas and Florida, for example, are far more dangerous states not just from guns, but for violent deaths victimizing women (38.8 per 100,000), kids (8.4), and (worst of all by far) men (91.2), than are more responsible, safer California and New York (28.4 for women; 4.6 for kids; 75.5 for men).
Of course, heavily-funded right-wing media relentlessly lies to prevent facts like these from getting out. Meanwhile, mainstream/liberal/left media routinely lets MAGA-media get away with lies, when not actively helping promote them.
Don’t believe ANYONE on crime and guns until you verify their content for yourself.