New Calls for Gun Control are Based on Skewed Statistics

Just recently another active shooter event took place at a community college in Oregon. The “anti-gunners” were once again quick to jump to conclusions and renewed their calls for stricter gun control laws.

In a news conference shortly after the event occurred, President Obama expressed his frustration and anger. He once again called for action to enact stronger gun control laws and claimed that “states with the most gun laws have the fewest gun deaths”. He was implying that murder rates in the U.S. would decline if we had tougher laws. But, the President was trying to advance his agenda by implying things that are not necessarily technically true. States with the most gun laws also tend to be the states with the largest populations. Therefore, on a per capita basis, they may indeed have a lower “gun death” rate. However, if you instead look at cities rather than states, a different picture emerges.

For instance, in Chicago over 2,300 people have been shot this year. While not nearly that number have been killed, Chicago still ranks among the most violent cities in the nation and yet it has some of the strictest gun control laws.

Statistics from 2014, show St. Louis has the highest murder rate in the U.S., followed by Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Chicago. If you were to eliminate these violent cities from the statistics, the United States would have one of the lowest murder rates in the world. The murder rates in these cities is significantly impacted by gangs and drug-related activities.

And while the President emphasizes the U.S. has one of the highest murder rates “in the civilized world” when compared with all other nations in the world, the U.S. is far from the top of the list. To make the statistics work for them, the gun control advocates have to limit “civilized countries” to just the U.S., Canada, Australia, China, and Europe.

Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety jumped on the band wagon by stating that over 45 “school shootings” have taken place in the U.S. just this year. Once again they are attempting to imply these “shootings” all result in children being killed like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But to get to the 45 number, Everytown has to include suicides, discharges of firearms where no one was injured, shootings that took place after school hours when students and teachers were not present, and even shootings that occurred in areas neighboring school property.

The “anti-gunner” philosophy seems to be that if you tell a lie often enough the public will come to believe it is true! And it doesn’t matter if it is an outright lie or just implying things that are not totally factual. The gun control advocates are hoping action will take place based on the emotions of the moment. As typically happens, when time passes and more facts associated with the latest shooting become known, it will become more apparent that new laws would not necessarily have helped.

Indeed, the true agenda of gun control advocates is the total elimination of private ownership and possession of firearms. By removing guns from society, the gun control advocates could claim that the “gun death” rates would significantly decline. But, could they claim that the “murder rate” would decline? Eliminating a “tool” will not have an appreciable impact on the desire of people to commit violent acts. Instead they would just have to find another “tool” to use.

Instead of focusing on eliminating the “tool”, would it not be better to focus on what is causing violence in our society and then taking action to eliminate those causes?

Gary Evens is an NRA-Certified Instructor and Range Safety Officer.