Gun-Friendly Washington, D.C.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Captured from The Truth About Guns

Anyone who knows even a minimal amount about guns in American society will recognize that “something ain’t quite right” here. Now, having worked in Wyoming, I have no doubt that it is a gun friendly state (more on that later). But Washington, D.C.? Gun-friendly? Hardly.

You don’t have to be a fan of journalist Emily Miller’s book Emily Gets Her Gun to know D.C. is not gun-friendly in the least. In fact, I have written previously about how, as a law-abiding individual who had not even thought about bringing a firearm to the District, D.C.’s gun laws managed to make me feel like a (potential) criminal nonetheless.

In a later post, I will discuss the social scientific concept of “face validity” in greater detail. But for now a simple way of thinking about “face validity” is akin to the “sniff test.” Does common sense suggest this is right? Clearly a measure of gun friendliness that puts the District of Columbia near the head of the list fails the sniff test. And it suggests that the creator of the infographic may lack common sense in thinking about guns. Unlike carrying a spent casing in Washington, DC, lacking common sense about guns is not a crime. But it does suggest a need for some modesty.

And speaking of modesty, how can we get to “common sense gun laws” in the absence of the same among its promoters?

HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW

Less than a day after sites like The Truth About Guns (see also Gun Free Zone and probably others) began highlighting the problems with this infographic, it disappeared from Forbes website. I don’t know whether it was embarrassment or intellectual honesty or both which led to the removal of the graphic. But if it was intellectual honesty I would think some sort of correction or clarification would be posted rather than just sweeping it under the virtual rug.

The fact that infographic was so obviously flaws and was not on the Forbes website when I check made me think it might be a ruse — something put together by people in the gun culture to make gun control advocates look bad. But using the “cached” option on a Google search I was able to find evidence that it had in fact existed, at least for a moment.

Here today. . .

1/5/2015: Screen cap from Google cached version of forbes.com page showing infographic

 

Gone tomorrow. . .

1/6/2015: What happens when you click on the link where the infographic used to be