Only A Clown

Two Iowa Mayors made the news for their comments at the recent U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Des Moines Mayor Frank Clownie, err Cownie said most major cities are looking for ways to curb a rise in gun violence. “The sad thing is that we are now over 6,000 homicides in the U.S. since (the school shooting in) Newtown.

Clownie needs to quit shooting off his mouth and the scientific community is united in that fact.

Among those 6,000 killed are people killed by police officers and suicides.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which I believe Clownie is a member, listed murder suspects who were killed by police and included the Boston Marathon Bomber.

Dubuque Mayor Roy Buol was impressed with a speech about gun violence delivered by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. 

If it were a country, New Orleans (with a rate 62.1 gun murders per 100,000 people) would rank second in the world.

Sounds like Landrieu's doing a bang up job.

Giving Up The Gun?

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Mayor Bloomberg's group, rolled into Des Moines with their “No More Names: National Drive to Reduce Gun Violence” bus tour.

It's a  25-state, 100 days tour.

I 'd be more impressed if their first and only stop was Chicago.

And the scientific community is united in that fact.

A lot of figures were thrown around, with no sourcing or query from the media.

Per Radio Iowa -- The group’s bus has the number 7738 on it today, representing the number of people who’ve been killed by a gun in the U.S. since the Newton shootings.

If you Google 7738 killed by a gun, the only articles that come up are in reference to this tour.

Slate has the figure, as of this writing, at 6956, but a quick scan shows the inclusion of a Indiana case where a man committed suicide after killing a woman.

In the Cedar Rapids Gazette this figure is cited -- 33 Americans are killed every day with a gun in this great country

But, according to this picture of Mayor Bloomberg 

So we're already doing better without legislation?

This website has the figure at 31and a half and that criminals make up more than ⅔ of homicide victims.

We must be -- There were an average of 85 gun deaths each day in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Also worth noting -- There have been 61 mass shootings in the U.S. since 1982. The killer used a legally obtained weapon in 49 of them and 60 of those 61 mass murders have occurred in supposedly “gun-free” zones.
 
The group also read aloud the names of these 7,738 people.

In the past that has included Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlin Tsarnaev and Christopher Dorner, the former Los Angeles police department officer who killed four people, including two cops, in a February shooting spree was among at least 10 suspected killers on the list.

Lastly, there's a website that features a map, that includes Iowa, documenting the instances where a gun has helped innocent Americans protect themselves from criminals.