A TED talk by the managing director of “Sandy Hook Promise”, Nicole Hockley:

6:05 – “Lets just take a step back for a moment.  What is gun violence?  And how should we define it?  It is gun related death and suicide, unintentional, and law enforcement related shootings and all other non fatal acts of violence involving a firearm.”

6:45 – “Gun violence occurs on average 500,000 times per year” (by her definition above I’m assuming).  Nice work at inflating the usual 30k people statistic (~15k which are suicides).

Looking at the Sandy Hook Promise website, there’s nothing real blatantly “anti-gun” on it that I can see.  A lot of “see something say something” type stuff involving mental health and social media snitching (over anything gun related).  I don’t doubt that she wishes all guns were banned, but she’s obviously smart enough to know that outright saying that isn’t going to make a lot of friends (That pesky 2nd Amendment and all).  Being into firearms and having children who you responsibly share your hobby with in today’s day and age sounds exhausting.  They can’t talk about it apparently, or promote it without being at risk of being labeled a crazy person who’s going to shoot up the school.  I’m sure it’s different in the country than in the city, but still seems like this fear mongering is everywhere.

I still think it’s incredibly derpy that she included, unintentional shootings, and law enforcement related shootings in her definition of gun violence.  Like LOL WUT?  This is the first organization I’ve ever seen shit on the police.  Normally the rhetoric is that only the police should have guns because they are the highly trained pros and the most responsible people on the planet.  Including suicides in the definition is pretty standard, because it adds to the total.

Thoughts?