Editor:
“More people die in swimming pools than from guns.”
That odd bird of a statement was casually flipped into the fray of Brandon Varise’s recent “informational meeting” at City Hall regarding his application for a zoning variance to allow an indoor gun range within a downtown storefront he is developing in the former McMahon-Telfer building.
The quoted speaker was Bruce Anderson, part of a four-person panel supporting Varise’s application. Anderson presented himself as a National Rifle Association (NRA) instructor and range safety officer. Obviously, the man has no Life Guard experience. He also cited no statistics to back up his claim.
Mocking Anderson’s baldface lie is this actual fact from Center for Disease Control (CDC) data among all age groups in the United States for 2013:
3,391 deaths by drowning vs. 33,169 deaths by firearm.
Note that CDC’’s “drowning” definition includes all non-boating-related deaths in water. So, anybody who drowns in a swimming pool, bathtub, lake, river, ocean or any other body of water is included in these statistics.
Anderson made his patently ridiculous claim after someone in the audience mentioned the Parkland Kids who attacked the veracity of the NRA after their fellow students were massacred. Anyone who follows the news closely knows the NRA now faces a heap of damnation for its questionable financial relationships in Russia and its meddling in American elections, not to mention its internal office wars over wasteful administrative spending.
The following links will update anyone unaware of these facts of the NRA’s current morally bankrupt position in American society:
The March for Our Lives organized against gun violence after Parkland massacre:
Serious legal trouble for the NRA’s “non-profit” status in New York state:
How The New York Attorney General’s Probe Threatens The NRA’s Future
Russian agent/NRA darling Maria Butina, jailed for conspiracy against the United States:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Butina
An organization full of fraud and disarray at the top:
https://www.salon.com/2019/06/11/in-the-trump-era-the-nra-has-finally-been-revealed-as-a-pathetic-fraud/
Anderson should not try to insult our town’s intelligence with public misinformation like this, particularly from such a demonstrably unAmerican operation as the National Rifle Association.
Also, he might want to reconsider his allegiance to any falsely “patriotic” organization so hellbent on bad faith that it has no place in honest civic debate. Better yet, the gunman might consider joining the United States Lifesaving Association
– Jamie Jobb