Check you facts when talking gun control

Editor,

In Lorinda Newton’s March 10 letter, she contends that states with the most gun laws have the most firearms fatalities.

This is wrong.

According to the JAMA Internal Medical Journal in 2013, “In the dozen or so states with the most gun control-related laws, far fewer people were shot to death or killed themselves with guns than in the states with the fewest laws…Overall, states with the most laws had a 42 percent lower gun death rate than states with the least number of laws.”

Newton references three locations she states have strong gun laws but high gun crime — California, Chicago and Washington, D.C. — and in each example she errs. Neither Chicago nor D.C. are “gun-free zones,” their restrictive laws struck down as unconstitutional. California, which has strong gun-control laws, actually has one of the country’s lowest proportions of deaths by firearms. Check the data yourself at www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/Firearm.htm

Newton references a lawsuit holding property owners responsible for gun violence: “In the case of the Virginia Tech shooting, the parents of the victims successfully sued the school for damages.” This is a gross misrepresentation of the details of that lawsuit. The parents of two of the victims sued not because Virginia Tech banned guns from campus, but because they were slow to alert students that an active gunman was on campus. The county court found in favor of the parents, but the decision was overturned by the Virginia High Court. See more in CNN’s “Virginia high court dismisses Virginia Tech mass shooting lawsuit.”

Newton states “property owners of gun-free zones are liable for injuries on their unprotected property.” According to a Jan. 3, 2018 article on Ammoland, three states — Arizona, Georgia and New Hampshire — have introduced legislation to enact this, but it has not passed anywhere.

Newton’s and other essays supporting laws holding gun-free zone businesses liable for gun violence on their property imply that carrying a gun protects you from gun violence. Facts don’t support it: the 66 police officers killed by guns in 2016 or the 46 killed in 2017 belie this assertion. Quite the opposite, as a study reviewing all police line-of-duty deaths over a 15-year period concluded that 10 percent were killed with their own service weapon.

Considering that trained police officers miss their targets in seven out of 10 shots fired, expecting that a civilian in a mass-shooting event could quickly incapacitate a shooter in an ambush is unrealistic, at best. If dozens of well-intentioned civilians suddenly pulled out guns to protect everyone, how could they tell the “bad guys” from the good? Would such a situation likely lead to fewer deaths?

We’re not opposed to responsible gun ownership and use. We do object, quite strongly, to unsupported claims and false statements made to derail sensible attempts at gun control and public safety.

Nancy Hepp, Clinton

Melanie Bacon, Langley