EDITOR’S NOTE: Sources tell us that the “Doctors that Hate Gun Owners” will be having a rally/press conference on April 3rd. One of the cornerstones of their talking points is the thoroughly discredited study published in March 2017 by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). This misleading, highly torqued study is a politically-riddled sham, calculated to drum up anti-gun sentiments by invoking the images of children injured with firearms. We ran the commentary below at that time, and we feel that this information bears repeating.
Stay tuned as we give our take on the Australian firearm fairy tale next week.
How do you tell when a story is “fake news”?
Researchers defining police shootings as accidents is one way. Calling 24-year-old adults “youth” and lumping them in with 16-year-olds is another.
This is, sadly, standard fare for doctors with a political agenda. Combine that dishonesty with a media party willing to promote any and all anti-gun agendas with glee and you have, well, March 27, 2017.
The study in question, published on March 17 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, made international headlines with its grossly misleading statements and preconceived conclusions.
The line generating hysterical headlines around the world is pulled from the study’s conclusion.
“We counted almost 1800 firearm injuries among children and youth in Ontario over a 5-year period, which represents almost 1 injury per day.”
That spawned such asinine headlines as:
- One youth shot almost every day in Ontario, study finds – Globe and Mail
- 1 child or youth injured by gunfire nearly every day in Ontario, pediatricians find – CBC
- Despite Stringent Gun Control, One ‘Child or Youth’ Shot Every Day in Ontario – Breitbart.com
- A CBC News promo clip screeched, “Tonight! Guns in the Home! Shocking statistics reveal that nearly every day injuries are caused by youths with access to guns and many are not accidental!”
- The CBC promo clip cuts to one of the researchers, who says, “When I first saw the total number of injuries it was staggering,” before ending with “Learn more tonight, only on the National at 9 and 11!”
So much for journalistic integrity.
Let’s start with the age issue.
Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act uses the following ages to define child, young person (youth) and adult:
- child means a person who is or, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, appears to be less than twelve years old
- young person means a person who is or, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, appears to be twelve years old or older, but less than eighteen years old
- adult means a person who is neither a young person nor a child.
In other words, adults are anyone 18 years of age or older. You cannot compare a 24-year-old gang member and criminal with a 7-year-old child and say you’re talking about the same issue. That is absurd.
So why did this study’s researchers include seven years of adult statistics in their study of children and youth firearm injuries?
The answer is as simple as it is deceitful: They started with a preconceived conclusion and kept raising the age of those included until they could “prove” their desired result.
Fake news. Fake researchers too.
Honest researchers with integrity would ask the question and see what conclusion the evidence supports. These people started with their conclusion (guns are bad and hurt children) and kept falsifying the data until it “proved” their preconceived notion.
That’s not research. That’s propaganda. And the media party gleefully spreads the fake news.
At no point do the researchers explain what parameters they used to define a gun.
The Ontario Court of Appeal, in R. v. Dunn, determined a firearm is any barrelled device capable of firing a projectile over 214 feet per second.
“Barrelled objects shooting a projectile with a velocity of more than 214 ft./s. (or 246 ft./s., using the V50 standard) are firearms, because they are capable of causing serious injury or death…”
Is that the standard used by the researchers? We have no idea. They never say.
At no point do the researchers explain what they considered an “injury.” Did the person cut themselves? Did they drop a firearm on their foot? Did they shoot themselves? We have no idea.
We do know, however, the number one cause of hunting injuries is falling.
If a 21-year-old hunter fell down and broke his leg while carrying a rifle, is he considered part of this study? Good question.
What the study does tell us clearly is refugees from Africa and Central America have the highest rates of accidental and assault-related firearm injuries. That same table shows the longer African and Central American refugees are in Canada, the more likely they are to be shot, accidentally or otherwise. This is described in the study’s abstract like this:
“Among immigrants, refugees had a 43% higher risk of assault-related firearm injury compared with nonrefugees. Immigrants from Central America and Africa accounted for 68% of immigrants with assault-related firearm injuries.”
The Canadian Paediatric Society possessed rare courage when it revealed “…of all firearm deaths among 15- to 24-year-olds, 94% were in males.”
Criminal gang members, for the most part, although nobody wants to say that out loud.
The Canadian Paediatric Society went on to say:
“Guns should not be kept in homes or environments where children and adolescents live or play. Screening for the presence of a firearm in the home is an essential part of the safety assessment of a depressed or suicidal youth, and removal of the firearm from the home must be recommended in this situation.”
Shades of the thoroughly discredited Kellerman study! While demonizing guns and gun owners, The Canadian Paediatric Society also expressed stunning ignorance of Canadian gun laws.
“Legislative measures to strictly control the acquisition, transport, ownership and storage of firearms, and to reduce smuggling of firearms, are also recommended.”
Hmmm – First day on the planet? So, can we look forward to a recommendation from our new Firearms Advisory Committee that guns be removed from families with children? Let’s hope the stupid basket doesn’t get that far.
References:
Risk of firearm injuries among children and youth of immigrant families, CMAJ 2017 March 27;189:E452-8. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.160850: http://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/12/E452.full
Youth Criminal Justice Act: http://www.laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/Y-1.5/FullText.html
R. v. Dunn: https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2013/2013onca539/2013onca539.html
Canadian Paediatric Society Position Statement: https://www.cps.ca/en/documents/position/the-prevention-of-firearm-injuries-in-canadian-youth
ELECTION 2019: A Very Busy Campaign!