New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter address the media prior to the 2012 New York City Veterans Day Parade, Nov. 11, 2012. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley)
Writing at American Greatness, Rich Logis explains how anti-gun radicals like Shannon Watts (funded by former Mayor of New York and fellow anti-gun crusader Michael Bloomberg) forget to mention the specifics when they spout misleading “facts” about guns and violence in America.
Logis explains:
Anti-gun Propaganda
On November 26, as President Trump visited Mississippi ahead of the U.S. Senate runoff election, Watts posted the following:Mississippi has the second highest rate of gun deaths in the nation – nearly 18 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Anti-gun propaganda is powerful, and Watts’ skills are finely honed. Her LinkedIn profile shows she held director and vice president positions with global reach in public relations at such prominent firms as Monsanto and General Electric Healthcare.
I’m not certain where Watts gets her information for that tweet, since my research showed that Mississippi has the fourth-highest rate. But that’s really not the point. My concern is with how she always withholds the specifics. Based on the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, Mississippi had a total of 587 firearm deaths in 2016: 268 were suicides, and 282 were homicides.
This is clever anti-gun methodology; two out of three of the annual total of 37,353 gun deaths nationwide are from suicide, totaling 22,938. Per the CDC, firearm suicide rates are 7.1 per 100,000; suffocation and poisoning rates, combined, are 5.7 per 100,000.
Imagine a world in which there were no guns at all. If those who are suicidal couldn’t access firearms, it is likely that some—perhaps the majority—would suffocate or poison themselves. In what unquestionably is a major public health crisis in America, suicide rates have been rising the last two decades. A gun, however, is still an inanimate object in a suicidal American’s hands, just as plastic bags, vodka, and sleeping pills are. Increasing suicide rates are wholly unrelated to discussions about legal and responsible gun ownership.
With Logis’ facts in mind, think about this quote from Michael Bloomberg “You can have a ban on assault weapons. But assault weapons kill 400 people a year. They get lot of press. But it’s 400 vs. 31,000 with handguns.”
Justifying the infringement of the rights of 80 million American gun owners with statistics including deaths by suicide doesn’t seem logically sound. But Bloomberg and Watts don’t seem to interested in logic.
Make sure you get your gun and your training now.