From the Cold, Dead Fingers of Young People

Unbeknownst to me, and all of America, it would seem that you are not an adult until you reach the age of 24, in the minds of activist doctors anyway.  Wait. I've got ahead of myself.  Let me start earlier.

There was this bullshit tweet by the Root of All Evil.

OK, let's just focus on the substance of that tweet for a moment.

In 2010, from which this tweet refers to, there were 74.1 million children in America.  That's the population of Britain, mind.

So, based on stats in the link The Root of All Evil tweeted, 99.9953% of kids in America did not and won't get cancer in their childhood, mainly because those most at risk of any kind of cancer are usually older than 60, so that's a bollocks comparison to begin with, but I'm unsurprised that he would cite it.

Infections that people most often die from, including kids, are usually acquired in a hospital, but even so this isn't all that common amongst children, in fact it's incredibly rare. Fewer than 1000 American kids.

And "congential probs" (typically congenital heart defects) are very slightly more common than infections, but are usually treatable if you're aware that you have a defect, and you can expect to live many, many years past childhood, yet there is no guarantee. Many people who die from congenital heart defects were entirely unaware it existed.

So, all three of those comparisons are total bullshit.  You can cherry pick the data all you like and make up any sort of bollocks comparison to anything else, but it means fuck all.  It means you're an arse with a particular axe to grind.  Naturally, anyone and everyone who works in Public Health will twist and distort everything to suit their agenda.  The Root of All Evil is no different.

But Chapman didn't make up the stats, he merely distorted them after they were initially distorted by both Judith S. Palfrey, M.D., and Sean Palfrey, M.D. (hereafter the Palfreys M.D.). And this is where it gets peculiar.  The legal age of adulthood in America is 18.   But the Palfreys M.D., well they've decided to reclassify 18-24 year-olds as children (or young people).  Now, when anyone says "young people," I naturally assume they refer to anyone who is not a legal adult.  So for Americans, anyone 17 or younger would be a "young person," the very legal definition of a "child."  Young adults are not "young persons."  They are adults, who are younger than older adults.  Even now, at 41, my older neighbours consider me to be a "young adult."  In their mind, I am young, even though I'm now middle-aged.  So it's semantics and perception.  But statistics and science demand accuracy and integrity, not personal perspective and clear bias.  So the Palfreys M.D have skewed their data to include up to 24-year-olds to suit their anti-gun agenda.  And the Root of All Evil then called all of them "kids."  They aren't kids. 18-24 year-olds in America are not fucking "kids."  They're legal adults.  Dickhead.

So, here's a graph that the Palfreys M.D. provided with their paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Now, you can't tell from the graph unless you read the paper, but they claim there were 6,570 "gun-related" deaths amongst "children and young people" aged 1 -24.  But how many were truly young people, you know, the "legal children?"  

This site claims that:

In the U.S. for 2010, there were 31,513 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death: Suicide 19,308; Homicide 11,015; Accident 600.

So, the total gun deaths are 30,923, of which 62.4389% were suicides, 35.6207% were homicides (includes cops killing civilians), and 1.9403% were accidental discharges.  But this doesn't give us a breakdown by age.  There is a clue, however, why the Palfreys M.D. included up to 24-year-olds in their figures, and that comes from this line (emphasis added):

In the US the overall firearm death rate was 10.2 per 100,000, the overall firearm homicide rate 4.1 per 100,000, and the overall homicide rate 6.0 per 100,000, with firearm homicide rates highest persons 15 to 24 years of age.

Ah, so it is the 15-24 year-olds who account for the highest homicide rates, which just so happens to be the age group most likely to be in a gang.  But 18-24 year-olds are not "children."  They are adults.  They shouldn't be added to the statistics and the graph. Naturally, the Palfreys M.D. are playing fast and loose with their data to suit an agenda.

In order to discover how many firearms deaths (for any reason) occurred amongst the under-18s in the US for the year 2010, I had to visit the CDC's fatal injury report generator page, because I couldn't find anything anywhere that listed gun deaths by age.  Here's a breakdown:

There were a total of 1,337* firearms deaths for the under-18s, or 4.3236% of all firearms deaths in America for 2010.

98 (7.3298%) were unintentional.

838 (62.6776%) were homicides.

375 (28.0478) were suicides.

26 (1.9446) are undetermined / unknown.

(*yes, my hacker geek friends, I'm aware that 1337 spells "leet".)

Now I would probably discount the suicide deaths, because anyone who truly wants to commit suicide will find any means available to do it. But let's include them anyway.  Altogether, only 0.0018% (1,337 out of 74.1 million) of legally-defined children in the United States died as a result of firearms.


Compare those figures with the total deaths of all children under 18 in the US, which equals 9,028 (or 0.01218% of 74.1 million).

14.8094% of all the children's deaths are related to guns.

Motor vehicle deaths (all types), however, tally 2,833 (or 31.3801%), more than twice the number of gun-related fatalities.

And are there any paediatricians in America calling for cars to be banned?  Pish. No. Don't be stupid. Cars don't kill kids (particularly those fancy, expensive Jaguars). Only guns do. And smoking. Bugger! I almost forgot about smoking.  There doesn't seem to be a selection on the CDC's site for kids who died "from smoking."  So, I picked Fire/Burn deaths instead, because fires only happen because there are smokers. That was 389 youngsters. 

Anyway, meet the Palfreys M.D., so that if you happen across them on a public street (wherever they live), you can give them the middle finger and call them rude names for being activist doctors with a clear agenda to distort the truth in support of their gun control beliefs.

Jeez. Aren't they Palfreys M.D. cute?  Don't ya just wanna give them a big ol' bear hug?  I know I do.  So do some of their contemporaries.  Have a look at these comments:

To the first commenter, I agree that the NEJM should stick to medical topics (but they won't), and to the second commenter, a lack of research by medical professionals is what we've all come to expect from the medical community, particularly editors of any medical journal. We don't trust doctors, particularly activist doctors and medical journal editors who are just as bad as any politician.

By the way, if you were curious, the 18 to 24-year-olds' gun-related deaths equalled 5,244.  Hmm.  1,337 versus 6,581 (the CDC's total is 11 more than what they counted), and 6,581 is almost five times more than the actual "children and young people's" deaths.  Which figure would you choose if you were in the Public Health / Activist Doctor racket?  You got it! The bigger one!

Just to put a different point onto the end of this blog post here's an interesting tidbit from Just Facts. The Gun Control people like the Palfreys M.D. in America are enormously stingy bastards when it comes to political contributions:

From the 1990 election cycle through August 22, 2010, the following political contributions were made by gun rights and gun control interest groups to federal politicians:

	Total Contributions	Donations to Democrats	Donations to Republicans	Percent to Dems	Percent to Repubs
Gun Rights	$22,467,579	$3,231,405	$19,195,400	14%	85%
Gun Control	$1,888,886	$1,776,310	$112,326	94%	6%

Oh, wait. Sorry. I'm not done yet.  Let's have a brief look at what sort of tweets-in-reply to the Root of All Evil's bullshit tweet were:

Dey be coming for yo fags, yo booze, yo soda pop, and yo guns, motherfuckers!