Check statistics before gun rants
A recent anti-gun letter writer is just another hysterical, hyperbolic, anti-gun agitator who does not care whether her “statistics” come from a reliable source or from another hysterical anti-gun website that cooks up its figures and presents them as accurate. In this case, the writer’s “statistics” are cribbed from a site known as “gunwars.news21.com,” which gets its “facts” from health departments that include anyone from 19 to 24 as “children” and include and combine homicides of children by criminals, suicides and accidents. All these claims are lumped together and many are myths, such as the myth a child is “killed by a gun every four hours.” Exactly 411 children died in incidents involving a firearm in 2012, only slightly more than one a day, not one every four hours. The writer claims homicides and accidents were responsible for this “one every four hours” figure when in fact more than 25 percent of child deaths from firearms are the result of suicide, according to the CDC, the FBI and any reputable database. I could go on about the myths and outright lies used by people like this writer, but space does not allow.
Richard W. Schultz
Beware the meat industry hoaxes
With April Fool’s Day just around the corner, it appears the meat, egg and dairy industries have been playing us for fools all year round. Their more remarkable hoaxes include “California’s happy cows,” “free-range chickens” and “humane slaughter.” All lies. Less fun is the stuff they never talk about. Like the hundreds of millions of chickens crammed seven into a cage designed for one, unable to move or spread their wings. Or their hundreds of millions of male counterparts ground up live at birth and fed to other chickens, or just dumped into plastic garbage bags to suffocate slowly. Or the miserable breeding sows producing millions of piglets per year while trapped in tiny steel cages. All in the spirit of year-round April Fool’s Day, the meat industry has even developed a whole dictionary of fun terms to fool unwary consumers. Those filthy cesspools of animal waste that poison downwind neighbors with putrid odors? They call them “lagoons.” And to make sure kids don’t confuse the pig flesh on their plate with “Babe” or “Wilbur,” they call it “pork.” Ah, those folks are such kidders. But they won’t fool American consumers much longer. Anyway, happy April Fool’s Day!
Tristan Bell