The Patriot Post® · Massachusetts Gun Laws Great, According to Bad Stats

Apparently, there’s a gun owner out there who likes Massachusetts’s gun laws. John Rosenthal, who says he owns a gun and also founded Stop Handgun Violence, wrote at Huffington Post lauding the state’s law requiring local police chief be the final arbiter over citizens getting to have Second Amendment rights. “Because of the Commonwealth’s effective gun laws and reasonable vetting of firearm license holders,” Rosenthal writes, “very few license holders have committed murder. The Violence Policy Center has attempted to track the number of people killed nationwide by concealed carry permit holders over the last eight years. Of the 722 people killed by concealed carry permit holders only nine of them were killed by a Massachusetts citizen with a license to carry (compared to Texas and Florida which had 36 and 69, respectively in the same time period).” Stop right there. As Dan Zimmerman points out over at The Truth About Guns, those numbers were cobbled together to support an agenda. The 722 deaths include justified uses of self-defense, suicides and accidental discharges. There are lies, damned lies and statistics, and it seems like Rosenthal can’t make his arguments without all three.