I thought I had seen it all in the GOP primaries this year, but I was in for a surprise. It seems that some 35,000 people have signed an online petition to allow openly carrying firearms at the GOP convention in Cleveland. My first thought was, “You’ve got to be kidding.” Nevertheless, this story is for real.
Posted on the website change.org, the petition notes “though Ohio is an open carry state, which allows for the open carry of guns, the hosting venue — the Quicken Loans Arena — strictly forbids the open carry of firearms on their premises.” That “is a direct affront to the Second Amendment and puts all attendees at risk,” said the petition. I have actually read the Second Amendment, and it does not say anything about openly carrying firearms. The Constitution nor the Bill of Rights create a right to openly carry firearms, and does not mention “risk” as a reason to openly carry firearms. Granted, individual states can allow certain firearms to be carried openly. However, it is fair to conclude that those same states can determine when and where firearms can be carried out in the open, and where such activity can be prohibited.
The petition also states, “This is a direct affront to the Second Amendment and puts all attendees at risk.” The petition reads, “As the National Rifle Association has made clear, ‘gun-free zones’ such as the Quicken Loans Arena are ‘the worst and most dangerous of all lies.” I would be curious to know which lies the petition is referring to. Considering that I have spent most of my life in so-called “gun-free zones”, I have never considered myself at risk or subjected to danger.
A blog called Hyperationalist has claimed responsibility. He or she writes: “It just doesn’t seem right that thousands of patriotic Republican good guys should be left totally unprotected by whatever bad guys might wish to do them harm. I mean forgodsake people, ISIS could show up to take out everybody in and around that building and they’d be sitting ducks. Sitting ducks, I tell you! There might even be a bad egg or two among the delegates.” It’s my guess that this person also sees the boogieman, make that a Muslim bogeyman, under the bed.
According to an analysis by the New America Foundation, Islamic terror attacks in the United States have led to the deaths of 45 people since 9/11. That is an annual average of three deaths per year attributed to Islamic terrorism. Following are a few things that are more likely to kill you then an Islamic terrorist:
Television: TV might be linked to earlier deaths among those who watch more than a few hours a day, but more concretely, the devices themselves kill 176 people a year. Literally. They fall on people. That’s 55 times more deaths than Islamic terror claims annually.
Fireworks: According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, celebrating the 4th of July might be more deadly than Islamic terror attacks. The organization reports an average of 7.1 deaths per year — meaning Americans are more likely to blow themselves up than be eviscerated by the jihadist bombers they so fear.
Cows: Yes, cows. According to the CDC, cattle slay an average of 20 Americans every year. While these deaths occur mostly among farm workers, dogs kill 28 Americans per year, spiders kill seven, and venomous lizards and snakes kill six. All of these animals are still more likely to kill an American than the caliphate and other Islamic boogeymen.
Elevators: While the fear of dying as a result of an elevator malfunction has probably plagued many Americans at one time or another, such a worry is likely fleeting. However, if Americans are truly concerned with “common sense,” a virtue Donald Trump frequently touts, they would do well to readjust their phobias. Elevators kill 27 Americans per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Choking: Americans will sooner perish from choking on food or other objects than from an Islamic terror attack. At least 2,500 people per year are killed by this type of asphyxiation — 781 times more than from a jihadi assault. Hot dogs are particularly menacing. Perhaps we should ban them in the same vein as Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims. Then again, killing fewer cows to grind up for beef dogs might lead to an uptick in cattle-on-human violence. America is at a perilous crossroads.
Lightning: People often quip that one is “more likely to be struck by lightning” when they want to highlight an event’s improbability. However, even as the number of deaths from lightning decreases over the long-term, it is still higher than the number of people killed by Muslim terror attacks each year. Forty-nine people per year die from being struck by lightning — more than 15 times the rate of death from Islamic extremist murders.
Car accidents: Though most Americans are aware of the high risk of death by car accident, this knowledge doesn’t mitigate their extreme Islamophobia. The Association for Safe International Road Travel estimates about 37,000 Americans die each year in vehicular accidents, over 11,562 times the number killed by Muslim fanatics.
Heart Attacks: Heart attacks are one of America’s leading killers, claiming 190,625 times more American lives than Islamic terror. 610,000 Americans die from heart attacks per year. Cancer kills 589,430 Americans annually, and diabetes is the main cause of death for 69,071 Americans per year. They are responsible for astronomically more fatalities than radical Islamic terror.
Police: According to a three-year average of American police killings logged by killedbypolice.net — a more comprehensive database than the federal government’s — police killed 998 people on average per year from 2013-2015. That’s roughly 312 times the average annual number of people killed by Islamic extremists since 9/11. The average number of people killed by Islamic terrorism in the last three years is 7.7 — including the recent shooting in San Bernardino — and by that parallel measure, police are still about 130 times deadlier than terrorists.
Prescription Painkillers: The CDC estimates that 44 people die per day from overdosing on pharmaceutical painkillers. Never mind that that number is almost 14 times the number of Americans killed by Islamic terrorism each year. Based on the CDC’s figure, about 16,060 Americans die annually from painkillers — making the Big-Pharma money-makers 5,019 times more deadly than the Islamic terror that has Americans trembling whilst hiding under their blankies.
Overall, the chances of being killed by an Islamic terrorist in the United States are fairly slim. I should have mentioned that the odds of being killed at the GOP convention in Cleveland by an openly carrying, gun toting fellow Republican are substantially greater than being killed by an Islamic terrorist.
THINK ABOUT THIS 