David Auerbacher has a piece where he argues that stats are on the side of freedom haters. He is right if you think having many studies of rigged studies by lying ideologues using false measures and ignoring confounding variables (ie. race) are ‘the stats’. But rather than addressing the usual idiocy that has been addressed to death elsewhere, I would like to comment on one specific phrase used by him and other freedom haters.

“Gun deaths”.

The use of the phrase ‘gun deaths’ is a sure sign that the person making the argument is arguing in bad faith (if not outright lying with statistics) and has absolutely nothing worthwhile to say on the topic of guns and violence.

What this phrase ignores, and what gun control advocates scramble to hide is that guns have substitute goods.

The large majority of gun deaths are suicides, another thing liberals try to hide with the phrase ‘gun deaths’ by trying to lump suicides in with murders and mass shootings. Substitute goods for guns in relation to suicide include: drugs, poison, rope, plastic bags, carbon monoxide, water, electricity, high places, and knives, to name some of the more common suicide goods. Guns have the advantage of being quick, relatively painless, and mostly effective, but the other suicide goods are all adequate substitutes.

Side note: Isn’t it odd that liberals, who support euthanasia and the right-to-die, suddenly hate the right-to-die if it bolsters the emotional case for gun control.

There are also many substitute goods for guns in relation to murder, including: knives, fists, feet, bats, hammers, carbon monoxide, matches, drugs, water, and explosives, to name of the most common.

By only measuring ‘gun deaths’ the deceptive liberal is ignoring that someone without a gun can easily obtain other methods of killing themselves or other people if they should choose. To say gun deaths rise or fall in relation to gun availability or gun control measures is to say nothing of any value at all. If the gun is not available, the gun death will likely become a knife death or an OD or a drowning, etc.

“Nearly 75% of the cases involving firearms are actually gang related.” Does anyone honestly think that gangs will stop murdering each other if law-abiding citizens are restricted from owning firearms? Leaving aside that what makes criminals criminals is that don’t follow laws, such as gun control laws, is there anyone that could possibly believe a gangbanger would say to himself, “I really wanna ice that bitch nigga, but I ain’t got no gat. It therefore behooves me to refrain from committing violence upon his person, however much distress his continued existence upon this mortal plane causes me.”

No, if a gangbanger wants to ice a bitch nigga, and he ain’t got a gat, he gonna get himself a knife and stab that bitch nigga.

Guns deaths is used specifically to hide the substitution effect for murder (and to conflate murder and suicide) so that deceitful freedom-haters can paint gun freedoms in a negative light.

There is nothing special about a gun death that separates it from a knife death, a hanging, a drowning, or an OD. A person is no less dead if they are killed with a knife than with a gun. There is no reason to make this distinction other than rhetorical or statistical manipulation.

If anybody uses the phrase ‘gun deaths’ you can ignore their arguments because they are, at best, full of shit and not worth listening to.