Soldier Email

I was trolling through some old documents on my computer and I came across something I wrote back in February that I thought might be fun to share with someone. Since I'm quite certain no one will ever read this, I'm in no danger of having fun by posting it here, but I thought I'd do it anyway. It was a response to the old email that was circulating back then that showed Sen. Hillary Clinton shaking hands with a less-than-thrilled soldier. If you haven't been sent the email, you can find it here.

The text that I take issue with (which was attached to the email that was sent to me, but which is not on the cite linked above) is as follows:

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If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws inthe nation, than you are in Iraq.........................Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington.
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Here's my response.

First of all: Who wrote this? How do we know that this soldier is really giving a sign of ‘coercion’? How do we know what he meant by it? Is he trying to tell us that Hillary has a goon squad with a gun to his head just off camera? Or is he trying to tell us that one of his superior officers asked him, or even ordered him to pose for this picture? Why would anyone do that?

In all likelihood he’s just making a joke, right? And for a soldier in the United States Armed Forces, to agree to have his picture taken with a United States Senator and then to make a joke out of it and attempt to humiliate that Senator before the country seems, at least to me, to be a joke that’s in rather poor taste. One might even say that it treads very close to the line between bad taste and blatant disrespect for one’s country, or at least for this Senator and the office she holds. And for a group of people known for their patriotism, the military, it seems to me, should be more careful about showing such a lack of respect if they wish to be taken seriously.

This is the group that I’m told day in and day out to support. Bumper stickers. Billboards. Television commercials. Yellow ribbons. Soldiers are dying, we hear. Support our soldiers, they tell us. Many of these bumper stickers say “Support the president and our soldiers” which seems to me to be a compound command with two contradictory instructions. How can you both support Bush, who is getting soldiers killed at a rate of like 25 a day, and the soldiers he’s sending to their deaths? But I’m unpatriotic for asking such questions, right? This soldier who mocks a US Senator for fun, though… he’s the model of patriotism.

Also the math here strikes as a little fuzzy. The point that’s being made is that it’s more dangerous in Washington than it is in Iraq. Interesting statement. Bold. I like it. But let’s take a moment to take a closer look.

It says that over the course of the last 22 months 2112 people have been killed in Iraq. That’s a strange statement to make. Why pick 22 months? We invaded Iraq almost four years ago. As it turns out, this was written in July of last year (long before this picture was added to it, but that’s neither here nor there), so they’re only talking about the first 22 months of a war that threatens to continue indefinitely. But, that’s okay, right? Cause this is a safe war with a death rate that’s low when compared to the nation’s capital with it’s really strict gun laws. Right? So we can stay in Iraq forever and it’s actually safer to fight this war than it is to go out for coffee across the street from the Whitehouse… Right? Hmmm.

We’re told that the death rate in Washington is nearly 25% higher at 80 deaths per 100k. Is that in the last 22 months? Is that in the last five minutes? 80 per 100k over the course of what time period? Wouldn’t that be helpful information in evaluating the argument this guy’s making? Well let’s find out. First we need to know what we’re comparing it to, so let’s break down the Iraq numbers. If it’s 60 per 100k in Iraq and there are 160k (1.6 x 100k) soldiers in Iraq, that means we must have lost 96 (1.6 x 60) men in Iraq in the first 22 months. That seems a little low. Especially since the email admits to losing 2112. Odd. Something’s wrong.

You can figure out what it is by dividing 2112 by 1.6. You get 1320. Why did I do that? Because if it’s 2112 for 160k, then it’s 1320 for 100k, and if you divide 1320 by 22, you get 60. Bingo! He’s not saying we lost 96 men in 22 months. He’s saying we lost 96 EVERY MONTH for 22 months. Jebus. And DC is worse?

I did some looking stuff up on the web, and I don’t claim that any of the following numbers is accurate, but you’re more than welcome to do your own research and see what you come up with. The population of DC in 2004 was 553k. We’re told that 80 people out of 100k die from firearms in DC. I’m assuming he means per month, since it was per month in Iraq. So, that’s 80 x 5.5, carry the 1.. That means there are 440 shooting deaths in DC a month. A MONTH. This IS a dangerous place to live. That’s 5280 shooting deaths in DC a year. Jeez, that’s a lot! In case it doesn’t seem high to you after spending your adult life watching the evening news, I should point out for comparison’s sake, that in 2003 the total number of homicides in the entire state of New York was a piddling 889 (about 4.6 per 100k) and in Texas it was only 1364 (about 6.1 per 100k).

But back to DC. Things are bad in DC. Indeed, we have to assume that as bad as things are in DC, they must be getting worse and FAST! The number of homicides in 2003 in DC was just 198 (about 35 per 100k). What does that mean? Let’s backtrack. This thing was written in or around July of 2005 and purported to include 22 months of activity in DC in its figures. That would put the start of the area covered in or around August of 2003. Even assuming that ALL of the deaths that occurred in 2003 were firearms-related, these numbers are still rather ominous. DC has gone, in the same 22 months we’re talking about here, from being a town where 198 people are killed over the course of an entire year, to a town where 440 are killed by firearms every month.

Yeah. That’s some horse shit.

The truth is it’s a LOT more dangerous in Iraq. It’s a whole lot easier to get killed over there than it is in any of the fifty states. Indeed, the firearms related homicide rate for the entire country is only about 6.24 per 100k (2001). It’ll be higher in the cities, of course, because the national average takes into consideration the high crime areas and the low crime areas. That’s why the numbers are so disparate between Texas and DC and between New York and DC. Texas and New York are states. DC is a tiny part of a huge city, and it’s the worst part. Comparing the firearms death rate in Iraq to that of DC is like comparing it to ‘Compton’ or ‘Watts’ or ‘The 5th Ward’ or ‘Queens’. You’re comparing the war zone in Iraq (which we created) to the perpetual war zones in America (which, arguably, we created through years of slavery, oppression, bigotry and social injustice). And STILL Iraq is the clear winner.

By the way, let’s take a closer look at that too. Remember how I said that the gun-homicide rate is only 6.24 per 100k? That may not seem like a lot, but it is. It’s a HUGE number. First off, consider that the population of the US is about 300 million. 300M divided by 100k is 3000. That means you get your gun-death rate by multipolying 3000 x your 6.24 up there. That’s 18720 gun related homicides a year in this country. And here things really are getting worse. That 6.24 number is up from 3.72 per 100k in 1993. And it doesn’t take long to see that things are already far worse here than they are in other parts of the world with civilized gun-control laws. Just to name a few industrialized states with mandatory gun registration laws:

• Japan has 0.03 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• England has 0.07 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Scotland has 0.19 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Spain has 0.19 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Ireland has 0.3 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Germany has 0.21 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Italy (including Sicily, the birthplace of the Mafia) has 1.16 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Israel (a country waging a war on terror on its own soil) has 0.72 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• France has 0.55 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Even Northern Ireland (the terror capital of the world before the Middle-east stole the title) has only 3.55 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.
• Canada, which doesn’t have mandatory registration, is the nation that all the Charlton Hestons in the NRA point to when they say “Guns don’t kill people”. Canada has a lot of guns too. 26 percent of Canadian households boast at least one firearm (next to America’s 41 percent, though, this seems less significant). Even Canada has only 0.6 gun-related homicides per 100k annually.

One question we might ask ourselves here is why does Canada, which has almost as many guns per capita as we do, have so few deaths? Because they’re less free? Er… No… They’re a democracy, just like we are. It could be the weather. It could be the fact that they have fewer minority citizens (by which I mean citizens who have been historically and systematically disenfranchised by a fearful majority). It could be that they have fewer poor people. It could be a lot of things. I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer on this, but it is important to mention Canada as the counter example in the gun argument. They do have guns and they don’t tend to shoot each other.

What’s important to realize here is the fallacy of using this as an example of proof that ‘guns don’t kill people, people do’. Yes, it’s true: In Canada, people kill each other less often than they do down here. But that has NO effect on the argument that people would shoot each other less here (where people seem to want to kill people a lot) if fewer people here had guns.

Oh, and by the way, Canada changed that law in 2003 and now has mandatory gun registration. We are virtually alone in this. And do you know why? Because people are afraid that if you make people register guns the next thing that will happen is that the government will come and take them all away.

It’s not infrequent that you hear gun-nuts quoting “Adolf Hitler’s famous 1935 speech”: “This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.”

Sobering thought. Nobody wants to follow Hitler into anything, right? Just a couple problems with this.

• Hitler never said this. This quote doesn’t appear in the text of any speech Hitler ever made that was recorded, and by 1935 every speech Hitler made was recorded. Also: the Nazis didn’t have a major gun registration legislation pass in or near 1935. They did apparently have some gun legislation pass in 1938, but it only further restricted possession and trade of military grade weapons.
• The Nazis never took all the guns away from their people (except the Jews, and it isn’t the Jews who are complaining about gun control in America, it’s the red-neck hillbillies who are in NO danger of being sent to concentration camps).
• Does anyone really think that a bunch of red-neck hillbillies with 22s are going to be able to stand up against the Military might of the United States if they decide to come for their guns? Does anyone think that if every Jew in Nazi Germany had had a hunting rifle the Holocaust would have been prevented? Get real folks.
• The protection that we have against getting sent to concentration camps is our legal system, not our citizen militia.

Nevertheless, this is the fear. If we register guns and take stock of ballistics tests and so forth for the sake of aiding law enforcement, we can kiss all our freedoms good-bye because it is the right to bear arms that guarantees every other right. Not the right vote. Not the right to speak freely and discuss political ideas. Not the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Those rights are just window dressing. If Billy Joe Jim Bob in Alabama can’t have his modified M16, we’re all doomed.

You know what’s funny about that? I’ve never owned a gun in my life. I don’t plan ever to own a gun in my life. And yet, despite my woefully inadequate efforts toward self-defense, I’ve never been silenced by my government, no matter how much I disagree with it. Neither, by the way, has Billy Joe Jim Bob, and it’s not because the secret service during the Clinton Administration (with which he undoubtedly disagreed vehemently) was afraid of his guns. This fact, I’m sure, they would have been happy to prove to Billy Joe to his complete satisfaction if he’d ever threatened the president with them.

Let’s take a moment to take another look at murder rates in this country. I said that Iraq dwarfs DC and DC dwarfs Texas and New York. Let’s look at a few more. Texas’s murder-rate (6.1 deaths annually per 100k population) is tied with Illinois’s as the thirteenth highest in the country. Well, let’s just look at the top twenty:

1. Louisiana 12.7
2. Maryland 9.4
3. New Mexico 8.9
4. Mississippi 7.8
5. Nevada 7.4
6. Arizona 7.2
7. Georgia 6.9
-- South Carolina 6.9
9. California 6.7
10. Michigan 6.4
-- Arkansas 6.4
12. North Carolina 6.2
13. Texas 6.1
-- Illinois 6.1
15. Tennessee 5.9
16. Kentucky 5.7
17. Alabama 5.6
-- Alaska 5.6
19. Florida 5.4
20. Virginia 5.2

Notice anything funny about that list? With the exception of California, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, Alaska, Arizona and New Mexico, all of those states can be considered ‘Southern’ states. Any thoughts on why it’s this particular group that’s claimed those top slots? Well, I have a theory about Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Alaska. They’re wastelands with miles and miles of nothing and then one or two big cities here and there. Naturally that’s going to skew the numbers in those states, making their over-all death rates look more closely like those of their biggest towns. California? Well.. they’ve got L.A. Illinois’s got Chicago. Michigan’s got Detroit. Florida’s got Miami. The rest are all places with a bunch of hillbillies who love their Second Amendment.

Of the top twenty murder-rates in the country, four are pretty easily attributable to one really big, notoriously violent city, four are attributable to extremely small, spread-out populations and twelve are Southern states. I don’t have a breakdown of which states have the highest rates of households with guns, but you know what? I bet it’d look pretty damn similar. It’s important to focus here on what that means. These are murder rates, not gun-related death rates. But they correspond, it seems to me, to the places where we expect to find the most guns. Cities and the South. Two plus two equals: The more guns you have, the higher your murder rate’s gonna be.

But let’s get back to the email. We’re told Washington has a high firearms related death rate. We’re told that Washington has strict gun laws. So what’s the point the email’s trying to make here? That gun laws are bad because they don’t prevent 100% of deaths? That we would have fewer deaths if we had fewer laws? Cause that seems contradicted by the data I just gave you. Are we just mocking gun laws for the sake of mocking them?

No. This is an unintentional acknowledgment that strict gun control does bring down the numbers of firearms-related death. The email says: “you are about 25% percent more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation’s Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation…” The only reason to say that is if you are playing to expectations that stricter gun control laws can be somehow related to lower expectation of getting shot and killed. Which, by the way, is just obvious for everyone on the planet who isn’t actively trying to convince himself otherwise.

Consider this: Between the years 1981 and 2000, firearms were involved in the killing of 663,914 people. Almost two thirds of a million people died by the gun in this country in twenty years. 27,470 were accidental deaths. 281,904 were homicides. The rest were suicides.

27,470 deaths could have been avoided if the people who made these mistakes hadn’t had access to firearms. With the homicides, I suppose there’s an argument to be made that if you want a guy dead you’ll find a way even if you can’t find a gun, but the truth is it’s a lot harder to murder 281,904 people in twenty years if you don’t have millions of guns in circulation. And it’s a WHOLE lot harder for 354,540 people to kill themselves if they can’t shoot themselves in the head. Pulling a trigger is a LOT easier than jumping off a bridge, or swallowing a bottle of pills, or slitting your wrists and making it the twenty or thirty minutes it takes to bleed to death without changing your mind and seeking help.

I’ve known three people who tried to commit suicide in my life. All three were unsuccessful. Two of them tried to do it with pills. They both made it to the hospital, got help, and live happy productive hormone-free lives now. The third shot himself in the throat, severed his spinal cord and will spend the rest of his life as a quadriplegic because HE had access to a gun

If you’re more worried about homicide, than suicide: It’s also a lot harder to pull of a drive-by knifing, than it is to geek a few guys from the next block over in a drive-by shooting. And it’s very seldom that an innocent bystander is killed near a knife fight. People survive knife wounds more often than gunshot wounds even when they are the intended victims. The list of bad goes on and on and on here.

But, one last time, let’s go back to the email. I think we can assume that even the guy who wrote this thinks killing is bad. He compares DC to Iraq unfavorably because of his insane argument that more people die there. There is an implicit argument against gun-control, but it’s based on the faulty assumption that it’s not effective.

But even if we assume that he’s right, and that gun control isn’t effective, does that mean the people who want to run it up the flag pole just to make sure (and maybe save a couple tens of thousands of lives in the process) are evil? I mean, take another look at who it is we’re mocking. A gun enthusiast? Someone who just hates gun control and who’s really pro-crime and pro-indiscriminate-shooting-death? No. We’re mocking Hillary Clinton, a Senator who’s well-known to be anti-gun and pro-gun-control. It seems to me that there’s a little hypocrisy in there somewhere. Not to mention the disrespect I spoke of earlier.

Well. Rant finished. It will be interesting to see if THIS gets emailed willy nilly around the country. I guess I don’t expect it to. It’s not pithy, or funny, and for some reason logical, factual responses to mean-spirited, intentionally misleading propaganda are rarely kicked around and around the conservative echo-box as much as the stuff it responds to.