U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “A new study published … by a leading non-profit organization that focuses on gun violence prevention found that there is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides, and accidental killings,” CNN dutifully parrots in a free advertisement presented as news.
We can glean a few things just from the lede. First, corporate media understands that real studies show:
“Americans read headlines. And not much else.”
Counting on that, CNN knows the intended impression on the majority will have been made and doesn’t have to worry that those readers will devote further thought to the correlation/causation logical fallacy.
And counting on that, most will never realize that the “leading non-profit organization” is Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown, that is, a billionaire-financed, citizen disarmament agenda-driven propaganda machine. Why not state that upfront, instead of crediting it as a “study”?
That was a rhetorical question.
Now let’s look at what the Bloombergians are claiming (and Chicom gun policy sympathizer) CNN is presenting as “settled science”:
“To compile its list, the group used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at each state’s rate of gun deaths in 2020 and compared those rates with 50 policies that they say are scientifically proven to be effective in preventing gun violence…”
The impact of a relatively small number of homicides on a low-population state can create that impression. Relying on rates this way hardly presents a balanced picture, making it easy to mislead. And the populations are hardly homogenous – any bets those high rates can all be traced back to Bloomberg Mayor cities and numbers in non-Democrat districts are low regardless of where you live or “gun laws” in effect?
It’s not like the moral defects doing the killings let little things like “gun laws” slow them down.
As for citizen disarmament laws being “effective in preventing gun violence,” remember, that’s not an empirically validated conclusion, it’s a promotional statement prepared for the media by one of Bloomberg’s paid flacks. And they’re deliberately omitting something. Reality.
“Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?” criminologists Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser asked in the Spring 2007 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. “In 2004, the US National Academy of Sciences … failed to identify any gun control that reduced violent crime, suicides or gun accidents.” This was “from a review of 153 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some original empirical research. The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the US Centers for Disease Control….”
(And yeah, I’m aware that Snopes and other left-wing anti-gunners badmouthed and nitpicked at that without actually contradicting anything. If anything their dismissing Kates and Mauser as” two well-known gun rights activists” is an ad hominem attack, that is, a deliberate logical fallacy.)
Also deliberately ignored, because lies of omission can be just as effective at subversion as flat-out disinformation, are the effects of armed citizens at deterring violence. Even lowball CDC estimates for “almost every major study” place the number at 500,000 with other studies placing it in the millions.
As for suicides, per the World Population Review, in 2019 the “armed to the teeth” United States didn’t even make the “top ten.” “Gun-free” Japan “had the second-highest suicide rate among the G7 developed nations,” and per the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development exceeded the U.S.
Not that anti-gun “progressive” care about suicides committed in other ways. If “assistance” and state sanction are involved, The New York Times actually lauds it. And let’s not forget higher than the general population suicide rates in this country occur among those the violence monopolists demand to be the “Only Ones” with guns:
“New Study Shows Police At Highest Risk For Suicide Of Any Profession”
As for “accidents,” despite an order of magnitude increase in the number of firearms in private hands:
“Since 1903, the earliest year of data available, the per capita rate of gun accident deaths has decreased 95 percent, from 3.1 to 0.14 deaths per 100,000 population.”
Unintentional Fatal Injuries with firearms appear near the bottom of the list, below “Drug Poisoning, Motor Vehicle Traffic, Fall, Suffocation, Drowning, Non-Drug Poisoning, Fire/Burn, Natural/ Environmental, Pedal Cyclist (Incl Motor Vehicle Traffic & Other), Struck by/ against, [and] Machinery.”
Unsurprisingly, gun owner organizations are the ones doing the work of lowering accidental (negligent) deaths with firearms even further. They’re the ones providing youth training and new gun owner training and advanced training, not the frauds who call themselves “commonsense gun safety” advocates but who only demand avoidance, fatal ignorance, and bans.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,” Mark Twain wrote, attributing the quote to Benjamin Disraeli, although its origin remains disputable. Regardless of who first said it, the gun prohibitionists and their media cheerleaders are using all three to swindle their countrymen out of their birthrights.
There’s the rub. How many will read counterarguments that expose the lies, as opposed to the number of citizens who will have their opinions “informed” almost exclusively by CNN headlines, and take that disinformation with them to the polls?
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
