In the wake of the Waco biker gang fiasco, UT-Austin Professor John Traphagan has suggested “… as a whole, Americans do not seem to be able to handle gun ownership in a way that permits maintenance of a civil society.” This mind-bending statement appeared in the Dallas Morning News, accompanied by erroneous analysis by Traphagan of his own statistical assertions. The coup de grace is a tired series of proposals for gutting the Second Amendment and providing facile illusions of safety.
Most infuriating is the insinuation that there is no material difference between criminal abuse of firearms and lawful ownership. In reality, for every firearm abused at Twin Peaks, 10.4 million in private ownership were not. That’s more than 10 million-to-1—more than twice as safe as any individual airline flight.
Traphagan is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own “facts”—otherwise known as lies.
