Canadian Media pushing gun control this week. Hard.

The National Post, which is the -least- socialist newspaper in Canada, printed this today:

Actually, guns do kill people, according to a new study

A new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open underscores an often overlooked factor in gun-policy debates: When it comes to lethality, not all guns are created equal.

Analyzing data on hundreds of shootings in Boston from 2010 to 2014, Anthony Braga of Northeastern University and Philip Cook of Duke University found that on a bullet-per-bullet basis, shootings committed with a large-caliber firearm are much more likely to result in a fatality than those with a smaller-caliber gun. Caliber is a measure of the diameter of the bullets fired by a particular gun.

The study analyzed data on 221 gun homicides and 1,012 nonfatal shootings that happened in Boston between 2010 and 2014. On first glance, the numbers provided a confirmation of the depressing demographics of shooting cases: "Most gunshot victims and survivors were young minority men with prior court arraignments," Braga and Cook found. "Most attacks occurred in circumstances where gangs or drugs played an important role." Most occurred outdoors in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

I like that, "on first glance" thing, because now they're going to tell you how its the gun that is at fault.

They controlled for a number of other factors, such as circumstances of shootings and the number of times victims were shot. They then found that all else being equal, a person shot with a medium-caliber weapon, such as a common 9mm handgun, were roughly 2.3 times as likely to die of their wounds than someone shot with a small-caliber gun. Large-caliber gunshots were even more deadly, resulting in odds of death 4.5 times that of small-caliber gunshots.

This is fricking Earth-shaking science here, right? Note that there's no mention of them controlling for the type of bullet, as in hardball vs. hollow point. Because its the GUN that did it.

 "The implication," they write, "is that if the medium- and large-caliber guns had been replaced with small caliber (assuming everything else unchanged) the result would have been a 39.5% reduction in gun homicides" in Boston during the study period.

You know what galls me here? Those assholes got PAID to write that paper. National Post goes on to say:

The results undercut the idea that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." That catchy turn of phrase is often used by gun rights supporters to emphasize the human role in gun violence rather than the gun itself. The idea is that the gun matters a lot less than the murderous intent of the person pulling the trigger. If the person matters more than the gun, in other words, it's better to focus policy on people than to regulate guns.

This view is widespread among experts who take a permissive attitude toward gun regulation. A Rand Corp. study published earlier this year, for instance, surveyed a group of gun experts who generally favored fewer gun restrictions, asking what would happen if a given gun policy was successful at reducing gun homicides. On average, those experts believed that about 90 percent of the prevented gun homicides would simply end up as homicides by other means. That reflects a belief that homicidal intent is the key factor driving the lethality of gun violence.

But National Post knows better! Some guns are MOAR LEEEETHAL!!!!

Yeah. They are. Rifles are much more powerful than handguns. You get shot with a .308 hunting rifle, or a shotgun slug, chances are you are going to die no matter where you get hit. You get shot with a 9mm pistol, unless they get you in the brain or the heart, you'll probably live. It'll suck, but you'll live.

What guns are going to be banned by the Federal Liberals if they have their way?

Pistols. You know, the smallest and least powerful guns you can get.

This is what passes for journalism in Canada. For fuck sakes.

The Phantom