Sharp as a Butter Knife

           

            I was all set to respond, once again, to the insanity of our gun laws and also to smack Jeb Bush upside the head for his "stuff happens" comment, when I realize that I have nothing new or better to say about either.

             By now, you know how I feel about the gun violence in this country, and if not, you can read my previous blog posts here.  

            And poor Jeb Bush, who is quickly losing the right to be thought of as “the smarter brother,” has just demonstrated again why he will never be president.  People tend to say the phrase he used, albeit in a more street worthy form, with a shrug of the shoulders to indicate that nothing could be done about the particular stuff that happened. I suppose we have to expect that from a guy who thinks his brother succeeded in keeping us safe and that the wars, the costs and the deaths were just more “stuff” that just happened.

            I wonder what other “stuff” Jeb might find unworthy of consideration by the commander-in-chief.

            But I’m sparing Jeb my ire today because he’s already been thoroughly criticized and lampooned for his tendency to say “stuff” that makes him look ridiculous.  Even Joe Biden must be laughing at him.

            No, today I’m talking about the gun nuts and sworn protectors of the Second Amendment who can’t seem to read past the headlines of their own right wing websites or make sensible arguments using, wait for it . . . their own facts.

            Case in point comes from the LinkedIn American Politics, Culture and Economy group.  If I didn’t disbelieve, flat out in conspiracy theories, I would swear that this conventional sounding group has been thoroughly infiltrated by people who only know about "stuff."

            Here’s the comment that got me going:

We cannot find consensus as long as people who want gun control want it to be about guns. More people were killed last year with fists and knives than with assault type weapons yet whenever this issue come up the talk is about "military type" weapons. If I choose to protect myself (you did say self defense) with a large magazine pistol nor an assault weapon who are you to say I can't.

The best way to stop bad guys with guns is good guys with guns. Gun control should be about aim.

            Let’s leave aside the idea that gun control shouldn’t be about guns or that the injuries people suffer from guns has to do with somebody’s inability to point them in the right direction.  I’ll save that chestnut for another day when I have nothing else to roast.
 

            Like any good social scientist I demanded to see the evidence supporting the “claim that more people were killed last year with fists and knives than with assault type weapons.”

            Normally, demanding to see the evidence is an effective way to end an argument like this one, but this time the writer unexpectedly obliged me.  Here’s the link he sent: http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/11/knives-kill-more-people-each-year-than-rifles-time-for-knife-control/

            Sure enough, the headline says “Knives Kill More People Each Year Than Rifles: Time for Knife Control?  The accompanying graphic shows a big picture of a rifle with a wooden body—something you might think Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies might cherish—and a hunting knife.

            Well, if you only get this far, you can see that the source isn’t making a claim about assault weapons or military type weapons.  And it says nothing about fists.  The only thing that we can get from this is that when you compare the number of homicides with knives to the number of homicides with rifles—the Jed Clampett type-- the former is greater than the latter.

            But then I decided to give my LinkedIn counterpart the benefit of the doubt, so I did something unheard of.  I read the article.

            The article relies on data collected by the FBI, which it summarized in the following table:

           

            The table gives us the number of killings that occurred between 2009 and 2013.  We were both too lazy to see what the numbers were for 2014. It breaks the killings into those with knives and those with 5 different kinds of guns.

            Score 1 for my compadre.  The number of deaths inflicted with knives in 2013 is, in fact, about 1200 more than those inflicted with rifles and about 800 more than were inflicted by both rifles AND shotguns.

            Hmm.  I wonder how many of the knife deaths were inflicted with butter knives?

            Fortunately, for my side of the argument, there aren’t any numbers about assault or military type weapons, so I guess the part of the claim about deaths from those kinds of weapons has to fall.  You kind of have to wonder, though, what’s in the “Firearms, type not stated” category, which has the second highest level of gun deaths and is about 400 gun deaths greater than the number of deaths from knives.

            And, of course, the elephant in the room—and don’t worry Jeb, I’m not talking about you--is how high the overall number of gun deaths is compared to the number of deaths from knives.  There were over 5 times as many gun deaths as knife deaths and almost 4 times as many handgun deaths as there were knife deaths.

            Tell you what.  Since rifles and shotguns are a much smaller problem than deaths from knives—and since it’s impractical to ban all knives because, if we did, we’d never be able to spread butter on our white bread toast and we’d have to cut our meat with scissors and saws—let’s agree that you can keep your shotguns and rifles—Jed Clampett will be happy-- and we won’t do anything about knives. In return, we’ll also agree to ban handguns.  Deal?

            Didn’t think so.

            But I do hope that you get the point.  If you’re going to argue based on stuff, let’s at least be sure that the stuff you cite means what you think it means and that it doesn’t make you look foolish when you talk about it.