XPost: stl.general, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.journalism.criticism, alt.politics.republicans   
   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2025/07/02/saint-louis-anti-gun-   
   editorial-an-unhinged-screed-with-loose-relationship-with-facts-n1229142   
      
   I read a lot of editorials.   
      
   By that, I mean those written by a paper's editorial board. A lot of   
   people think of editorials as the same as op-eds, and they're not. Op-eds   
   are the thoughts of a single person who writes for the publication. They   
   may or may not represent the values of that publication in what they   
   write. Their opinions are their own, as many op-ed pages note to some   
   degree or another.   
      
   Editorial boards craft the official stance of a publication, which is part   
   of why I can honestly tell you that pretty much every major and second-   
   tier news publication in this country that's not expressly conservative in   
   its direction is anti-gun.   
      
   They make it very clear.   
      
   And the editorial board at the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch is doing nothing   
   to dissuade me from that opinion with an editorial titled, "Editorial:   
   Guns kill kids more often in Missouri than in most states. It's not   
   coincidence."   
      
   Guns don’t kill, people kill, goes the popular old trope against rational   
   gun-safety laws. Setting aside that it’s not strictly true (what about   
   accidental discharges of found firearms, which kill hundreds of kids a   
   year?), the trope is always colliding with inconvenient data.   
      
   No, it's not.   
      
   In every single instance, the gun did nothing by itself. Someone had to   
   pull the trigger. Even in negligent discharges of "found firearms." The   
   phrase doesn't imply that every death by gunfire is intentional. It's only   
   pointing out that someone pulled that trigger and that is where the fault   
   lies.   
      
   However, people like the members of the editorial board continue to try   
   and pretend that the guns are the issue, as if people have absolutely no   
   responsibility in the matter.   
      
   If “guns don’t kill, people kill,” how to explain the fact that Americans   
   are statistically far more likely to be killed by guns in states such as   
   Missouri, which has almost no restrictions on adult gun possession, than   
   in states that have substantive restrictions? Are Missourians just worse   
   people than, say, Illinoisans or New Yorkers? We don’t think so; the gun   
   lobby apparently does.   
      
   Actually, the gun lobby believes no such thing.   
      
   However, the gun control lobby and the editorial board seem to believe   
   that people in Missouri are so psychologically and emotionally weak as to   
   be driven to commit horrible atrocities simply because the tools they can   
   use for that are more readily available in their state than in others.   
      
   What else can one surmise from this line of "reasoning" presented here?   
      
   The latest inconvenient data comes courtesy of the American Medical   
   Association. In a major new study of pediatric firearms deaths, the AMA   
   charts the clear correlation between states’ gun-safety policies and the   
   rates by which children are killed by guns.   
      
   The study in question has massive flaws, as we've pointed out previously.   
   Plus, it's correlation, which doesn't necessarily mean there's causation.   
   That's an important point because we've seen the homicide rate go down   
   since Bruen actually forced anti-gun states to stop restricting who can   
   get permits to only a handful of people.   
      
   If more guns meant more crime, we should see the opposite, and we don't.   
      
   The short version: Missouri remains a dangerous place to be a kid.   
      
   Start with the unacceptable, horrendous, nauseating fact that guns are the   
   leading cause of death today for American children. That’s not the case in   
   any other advanced country. Just us. Firearms take roughly seven young   
   American lives a day, every day. Is it a coincidence that the country with   
   the loosest gun laws, and more guns per capita than anyone else, also   
   buries child victims of firearms at a higher rate than any other country?   
   Or (again) are Americans just worse people?   
      
   Actually, they're not the leading cause of death in children unless you   
   really think legal adults who can buy property, sign contracts, live on   
   their own, start careers, and enlist in the military are still actually   
   children.   
      
   In that case, you've got other issues.   
      
   As for comparing the United States to other countries, what we find out in   
   many cases is that our non-gun homicide rate is higher than most developed   
   nations' total homicide rates. While we haven't broken that down by age,   
   my bet is that we'd find that to hold true across the various age   
   demographics.   
      
   Why?   
      
   Because there's something we have here that those countries don't. I can   
   speculate what precisely that is, but it's an important data point that   
   needs to be mentioned when you start going on about how we've got so many   
   more "gun deaths" than these other countries. I mean, yeah, we do, but we   
   have more non-gun murders, too, and that's something that should be   
   considered.   
      
   Throughout the entire screed that outlines the Post-Dispatch's official   
   position, they're coming from a position predicated on misinformation, bad   
   research, poor understanding of the statistics, and a host of other fact   
   that they've opted to ignore, either because they were too stupid to think   
   to look for themselves or because they knew what they'd find. Or both.   
      
      
   --   
   November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look   
   forward to America being great again.   
      
   We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that   
   stupid people won't be offended.   
      
   Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.   
      
   Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama   
   / Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.   
      
   Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the   
   The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood   
   queer liberal democrat donors.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)