January 8, 2010

A Math Lesson

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When it comes to gun-related crime, it’s standard procedure for gun-control groups to toss around numbers without putting them into perspective. The Violence Policy Center tried it recently and got this math lesson from A. Barton Hinkle of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, who calls such tactics “misleading, if not malicious.”

Writes Mr. Hinkle,

“Now consider this statistic: Concealed handgun permit holders have killed 107 people since 2007. That news, from the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., sounds pretty bad–until you put it in context. How many Americans have been issued a permit to carry a concealed weapon?”

Using estimates for the number of concealed carry permit holders, Mr. Hinkle writes, “the percentage of concealed-carry permit holders who have killed someone with a firearm comes to two one-thousandths of 1 percent.”

Read Mr. Hinkle’s full article.

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Categories: Safety