If you go into the woods today...

Yogi in Action. By SunshineHex at drawception.

From the National Park Service:

One person was fatally injured as a result of an incident which occurred in a campground in Yellowstone National Park on Saturday morning.

Park rangers responded to a 911 call from a woman at the Grant Village Campground, who told the emergency dispatcher that her young daughter had shot herself with a handgun.

Resuscitation efforts by responding emergency medical staff were unsuccessful. The girl died.

This accident was brought to you, as Raw Story points out, by your national legislature and in particular Senator Tom Coburn, who insisted on attaching an amendment to the [jump]
Credit Card Accountability Bill of 2009 permitting concealed handguns in national parks. Senator Dodd suspected him of using it as a poison pill to sink credit card reform, but then it didn't in any event. Coburn is still pleased about it, too—pleased enough to be telling some appalling lies on the subject.

Last week, while appearing on the MSNBC show Morning Joe, Sen. Coburn boasted that "[I]n 2010, everybody said you can't dare let guns go into the national parks, and of course the rapes, murders, robberies and assaults are down about 85 percent since we did that."

But a [May 9, 2013] check of the facts by Politifact, a "project of the Tampa Bay Times and its partners to help you find the truth in politics," discovered that the senator not only misstated the facts, but did so by an incredibly wide margin.

What they found was that the senator's staff was selective in the crime numbers it used to justify Sen. Coburn's comments. For example, while the gun law took effect in 2010, the senator's staff used 2008, not 2009, as the base year. But even if one used 2008 as a base year, murders in the parks actually increased from then until 2011, the most recent year that crime statistics are available for, from five to seven.

And if you use 2009 as the base year, which Politifact says would be a more accurate approach, murders jumped from three to seven in 2011 -- and there were 15 in 2010, the year the legislation took effect.

Statistically, murders in the parks rose 133 percent from 2009 to 2011, notes Politifact, and aggravated assaults went up 9 percent. The number of forcible rapes in 2009 and 2011 were 34 for each year, while robberies decreased 9 percent, from 64 to 58.

Lump all violent crimes together, and they increased 5 percent from 2009, the year before the gun legislation took effect, to 2011, the year after it took effect, Politifact found.

Oh well. At least no crimes were committed in the killing of that little girl. I'm sure that's a great consolation for her parents, and Senator Coburn should definitely pat himself on the back.

Booked. From thesmokinggun.

H/t @Criticalanglez.