By Chad D. Baus

Gun owners in Ohio were given attention from former Joyce Foundation board member Barack Obama in his acceptance speech at Invesco Field in Denver on Thursday, and his comments, while short, are sure to draw renewed attention to his ignorance about firearms.

[Note: story updated May 27, 2009 at request of author]

By Howard Nemerov

The death of a child is horrible and painful, and any decent person would do whatever it takes to save that life. How could an organization called the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) possibly have an agenda that could result in more child fatalities?

A recent report by the CDF leads with: "Firearm Deaths Among Children and Teens Increase for the First Time Since 1994: 3,006 in 2005." Insisting this ties into the now-defunct Clinton "assault weapons" ban, CDF says:

According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 3,006 children and teens were killed by firearms in 2005, the first increase since 1994 and the first rise in gun deaths since Congress allowed the Assault Weapons Ban to expire in 2004.[1]

Gun control organizations often insinuate that the assault weapons ban caused a decline in violent crime, but violent crime peaked in 1991 with an overall rate of 758.2 (per 100,000 population), while the murder rate peaked at 9.8. By 1994, when the "assault weapons" ban went into effect, violent crime dropped 5.9% and murder decreased 8.2%.[2]