Logic Fail?

Our favorite hoplophobe, Lucy Hornstein, the physician who refers to Second Amendment advocates as sociopathic domestic terrorists, has been heard from.

In comments on this post, Dr. Hornstein writes:

Non-events are wonderful. Too bad they (and concealed carry in general) have nothing to do with 32,000 firearms deaths last year (20,000 suicides). You sound like the folks who refuse flu shots because they’ve never gotten the flu. Logic fail.

Actually, we’re not like anti-vaccine activists at all. In fact, the guns we lawfully carry are our vaccine against firearms deaths.

And given the abysmal rate of effectiveness of the flu shot against this year’s strain, ours might even be more effective.

I was talking about encounters with lawful gun owners. Lawful gun use, either by police or in lawful self-defense by civilians (and that doesn’t count defensive gun uses in which no shots were fired, which outnumber defensive shootings by several orders of magnitude) comprise only a small fraction of yearly firearms deaths.

Those so-called “assault weapons” she wets her britches over comprise only a tiny fraction of annual firearms deaths, even counting mass shootings like Aurora and Newtown, and despite the fact that they are the most popular sporting arm in America today. There are many millions of AR15 rifles out there.

In fact, long guns only account for 300-odd yearly firearms deaths, and AR15 pattern rifles only represent a small fraction of that number.

The demographic most responsible for firearms deaths are young, inner-city, unemployed black males engaged in the sale or purchase of illicit pharmaceuticals.

If we really wanted to do something meaningful to reduce firearms violence, we’d target that demographic, by some means other than passing yet more ineffective laws to add to the laundry list of the ones they’re already ignoring.

Dr. Hornstein cannot seem to grasp the fact that the firearms restrictions she wants will only affect the 99.88% of gun owners who are law-abiding, and affect those who are committing gun crimes not at all.

In fact, concealed carry permit holders have proven to be far less likely to commit a crime than her allies in bedwetting hysteria, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

So yeah, there is definitely a logic fail involved here.

But it wasn’t mine.