By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Anti-gun groups should know better than to hop in bed with each other. They’re too fickle and their relationships almost always end in tears.
The Trace and the Gun Violence Archive may be the latest two anti-gun groups to part ways.
The Trace is the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire. It masquerades as a newsroom solely to provide cover for members of the corporate media who republish their stories as if they’re actual news. Trace staffers call themselves journalists, some even have journalism backgrounds, but in reality, they’re nothing more than ardent anti-gun activists paid in Bloomberg bucks.
The Gun Violence Archive has been debunked dozens of times for its fake mass-shooting data. Anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm the GVA calls it a mass shooting – even if the incident is gang and/or drug related. Last year, the GVA claims there were 656 mass shooting, which equates to 1.79 mass shootings per day. Initially, politicians, gun control activists and the mainstream media treated the GVA’s reports as if were gospel, but many now see the ridiculousness of the GVA’s claims.
The Trace and the GVA had a long history of collaboration, which produced dozens of biased stories. The two groups are even working together on the Gun Violence Data Hub, which they claim will go live sometime in the fall. Their two staffs will “collect, clean and publish datasets,” which they will then push out to the corporate media. The Hub has become a major fundraising hook for both organizations. Never mind that their work product will be created by paid anti-gun activists.
A story published Tuesday indicates that the Trace may have found a new data source – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. Titled “Gun Deaths Fell in 2023 — Except Among Kids,” the story claims that “while overall gun deaths continued to decline from their post-pandemic peak, child gun deaths rose, and gun suicides hit a record high.”
The authors admit they used provisional data from the CDC. The actual numbers, they acknowledge, “are likely to change slightly before final figures are released in December. While the data is not yet final, it provides the most comprehensive and accurate accounting of gun deaths in America.”
Despite the temporary nature of the CDC data, the story makes some bold claims: Murders involving firearms are down, gun-related suicides are at an all-time high, and the South had the highest gun-related death rates. But nowhere in the story does the Trace make its calculations available so their work can be reviewed. Every single hyperlink, and there are more than a few, takes readers to the CDC website and its raw numbers.
Suspicious timing
“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable,” Mark Twain said that.
Are crime rates going up? Is crime down? Nowadays, you can find statistics to support both theories, especially just 90 days before a major presidential election. However, the best tool to determine whether you’re safe or likely to become a crime victim is not a news story, a spreadsheet or a dataset, it’s an old-fashioned Mark I: Mod. 0 eyeball. Believe what you see, not what the government or its lapdogs in the corporate media tell you is true.
Quite frankly, many Americans don’t feel safe, and they pushed their lawmakers to act. As a result, a clear majority of states no longer requires law-abiding Americans to bend a knee and beg permission from the government to sell them back their constitutional rights in the form of a permit or license to carry a defensive firearm. Gun sales have skyrocketed. July was the 60th consecutive month that had more than one million NICS background checks, a major indicator of firearm sales, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
If crime rates are decreasing, these are the reasons why. It’s got nothing to do with more restrictive firearm laws, which are patently unconstitutional and raging in non-free states.
As to the Trace’s new reportage and its bold claims, consider who’s paying their bills. The Trace is funded by Michael Bloomberg, who actually believes you will be safer once you give up your guns.
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