Another hatchet job

There's a gun poll over at Parade Magazine. Go vote and vote often. We're winning at about 93% at the time of this post. It not a scientific poll so it don't mean shit but it's fun to blow the bastards out of the water. The article that goes with the poll is about as balanced as a drunk walking home after a bender.

Gun-control advocates argue that weakening laws is disastrous. While it wouldn't necessarily lead to more mass shootings, they say, it would almost certainly increase the number of gun-related murders in the U.S. There are currently more than 11,500 each year, and America has one of the world's highest firearm homicide rates. Per capita, our rate is 39 times greater than that of England, 13 times Australia's, and
6 times Canada's.

It was the statistics that caught my eye. They seemed excessive. So I went looking for facts. I found an article at Wikipedia on international homicide rates. Yeah I know Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source but I checked its statistic for homicides per 100,000 in the US against the real deal at the Bureau of Justice Statistics and it matches. I'll give Wiki the benefit of a doubt in this instance. The Wiki article provides the most recent statistic for each country. Some of the data is several years old so how it matches up to what happening currently is unknown. The article claims our rate per capita is 39 times higher that England, 13 times higher than Australia, and 6 times higher than Canada. I found a per capita rate of 5.8 [2008] for the US, 2.07 for the UK, 1.37 for England and Wales, 1.45 for Australia, and 1.85 for Canada. That would make our intentional homicide rates in the US 2.8 times that of the UK, 4 times that of Australia, 4.2 times that of England/Wales, and 3.1 times that of Canada. Bit of a difference from 39, 13, and 6 isn't it. This might seem a small thing. I'm focusing on the statistics offered and pretty much ignoring the rest of the article. aside from the fact that the article clearly supports a anti-gun agenda, why should I pay one bit of attention to this "article" when the author, Rebecca Webber, can be bothered to check her stats for accuracy? Just another hatchet job courtesy of the Brady Bunch, VPC, or in this case I suspect the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

Hey don't forget to vote in the poll.