By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman
Only a couple of hours after Congressman Steve Scalise and three other people, including a Capitol police officer, had been shot by a would-be mass killer, perennially anti-gun Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe told a press briefing in Alexandria that “ we lose 93 million Americans” every day to guns.
McAuliffe’s ridiculous comment is part and parcel of a popular meme among gun prohibitionists that there is a “gun violence epidemic” sweeping the nation. But it is nonsense, the kind of stuff intelligent people call “fake news.”
Attempting to exploit the shooting by turning it into a talking point to advance his gun control agenda, McAuliffe declared, “There are too many guns on the street.” He repeated the “93 million” claim until someone quietly corrected him.
McAuliffe’s gaffe underscores the tendency of gun control extremists to make dramatic statements about firearms in order to garner public support for an effort that has been a dismal failure. From background checks to so-called “gun free zones,” violent felons and mentally unstable people routinely ignore the laws while honest citizens are penalized for crimes they did not commit, and imagined crimes that have yet to be committed.
Dave Workman, Senior Editor
In an email blast later on the day of the attack on Scalise, which now appears to have been motivated by political hate, Shannon Watts, founder of the Michael Bloomberg-supported Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, also claimed that “93 Americans are shot and killed daily.”
Watts is playing fast and loose with facts. Approximately two-thirds of all firearms fatalities in any given year are suicides and she knows it. Watts’ carefully-worded remark combines suicide and homicide fatalities, and accidents to make it appear there is a criminal bloodbath unfolding across the landscape.
Anti-gunners constantly repeat such fake news to fool Americans about violent crime. A check of the FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that actual criminal firearms-related fatalities have been declining for several years. A close examination of that data reveals that more people are beaten, stabbed, strangled and bludgeoned to death in any given year than are killed with rifles and shotguns, including so-called “assault weapons.”
For several years, anti-gunners including Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety and former President Barack Obama asserted that 40 percent of all gun transactions in this country are conducted without background checks. The Washington Post Fact Checker declared that claim to be bogus in 2013. Still, many of those in the gun prohibition movement continue to make this claim, and the media unquestioningly repeats it.
Ironically, while anti-gunners use suicide figures to bolster their arguments, a genuine suicide prevention effort has been underway in Washington State for two years. It is championed by gun rights advocates. Working with suicide prevention experts at the University of Washington and advocates in that state’s Legislature, the Safe Homes suicide prevention task force is now a reality, with a pilot program in the works.
America deserves better than fake news from the gun prohibition lobby. But facts have never mattered to the gun control crowd.
Alan Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. Dave Workman is senior editor of TheGunMag.com. They have co-authored several books including their latest “Right to Carry: I Carry A Gun, A Cop Is Too Heavy.”
