By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s mid-debate claim that “150 million people have been killed since 2007” by gunfire while he was attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders’ voting record on gun control is being widely panned, and a simple check of data found in the annual FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) confirms he was way off base.
Biden’s remark even picked up a reaction from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) which declared, “If Biden was Pinocchio, right now his nose would be about the size of a California Redwood.”
According to the Washington Examiner, the Biden campaign insisted their candidate actually meant to say 150,000 people have been killed with firearms since 2007. But even that number is suspicious, because it doesn’t jibe with the homicide data.
“That number, if it were true,” the newspaper noted, “would be significant as the Census Bureau estimated the U.S. population was 329.45 million in 2019. Fewer than 40,000 people died in gun-related deaths in 2017, which was the highest total since at least 1968, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Data found in the FBI Uniform Crime Report shows Biden’s claim to be wildly inflated, and when he or any of the other Democrats talk about “gun violence victims,” they habitually lump together suicides, homicides and accidental deaths.
TGM checked the UCR data back to 2007 and did some math. Between 2007 and 2017, according to one set of FBI data, there were 103,109 homicides involving firearms.
However, in 2016, the FBI crime report offered some revised homicide data dating back to 2012 and using those numbers, plus the 10,982 gun-related slayings in 2017, the total jumps to 103,501. By adding data from 2018, the total climbs to 113,766. That’s still a far cry from 150,000, much less Biden’s stated figure of 150 million. (FBI data for 2019 homicides is not yet available.)
As noted in the Fox News report, “The heavily inflated figure misrepresented gun deaths in America since 2007. From 2007 to 2017, the number of firearm deaths in the U.S. was 373,663. This number includes both violent firearm deaths and unintentional or accidental deaths, according to the Center for American Progress, an organization that promotes progressive values.”
KING5 News said CDC data suggested the number of gun-related deaths from 2007 to 2018 was 413,403.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb’s response to Biden was scathing.
“We saw Joe Biden lose his cool a couple of times on that stage,” Gottlieb said, “but when he blurted that ridiculous claim about gun-related deaths, we wondered if he had lost his mind.”
As noted by KING 5 News’ fact checkers in Seattle, Biden’s other alarming claim Tuesday evening that he wrote the so-called “Boyfriend loophole” legislation was false. What’s worse, when he claimed credit for the legislation, he was standing next to the real author, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
Eventually, the former vice president conceded the point to his rival, KING said.
