Lies and damned lies, meet statistics:

Violent gun crime has dropped dramatically in the past two decades, but the majority of Americans think it’s more of a problem now than ever, according to a Pew Research Center study released Tuesday.

According to the survey, done in March, 56% of Americans believe gun crime is worse today than it was 20 years ago. And 84% believe in recent years, gun crime has either gone up or stayed the same – when the reality is that it has dropped significantly.

The rate of non-fatal violent gun crime victimization dropped 75% in the past 20 years; The gun homicide rate dropped 49% in the same period, according to numbers Pew researchers obtained from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The public doesn’t get its feelings out of crime statistics,” said Alfred Blumstein, an urban systems professor at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. “The public gets its feelings from particularly notorious events, and what the press talks about.”

In other words, there is a long-term, orchestrated attempt  to lie to Americans about how firearms are used in our country. The mainstream media and control groups dramatically overemphasize the frequency and intensity of gun crimes, promoting local, small-scale crimes as national events to promote the narrative.

Perhaps the most interesting revelation of the study is in regards to which groups are the most ignorant regarding the reality of the collapse of gun-related crime.

The survey found that women and the elderly were less likely to be victims of crime, but were more likely to believe gun crime had increased in recent years. Men, who were more likely to be victims, were more likely to know that the gun crime rate had dropped.

Women and the elderly are the least informed, and not surprisingly, are the constituency for Americans for Responsible Solutions, the Brady Campaign,  Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Moms Demand Action, the Violence Policy Center, and the other control groups that have seen their memberships in a constant state of decline, even as gun rights groups grow.

If we take the liberty of broadly psychoanalyzing these control groups, we find that they are comprised of individuals controlled by fears of these own mortality and feelings of powerlessness, which is why the bulk of their messaging is voiced in terms of the weak begging the government to take care of them.

Control groups target the physically and mentally weak, and the long-term demographics do not favor them. Younger, more urban, and female shooters are the fastest growing demographic groups in a growing gun culture that has seen semi-automatic pistols and rifles become the “new normal.” The same is true in the media, as younger, more gun-saavy journalists like Emily Miller and Katie Pavlich counter the rhetoric of geriatric anti-gun journalists reaching retirement age.

As control supporters literally die out due to old age, the population coming up behind them is increasingly experienced with firearms and is distrustful of a dinosaur media they know better than to view as objective.

We are winning, and what terrifies them the most is that deep down, they know it, too.