The rising crime rate is turning into a major political issue, with Democrats busily trying to deny that the spike in shootings and homicides in many cities across the United States is cause for alarm (while also pointing to that same spike to demand more gun control) and Republicans pointing to the Left’s embrace of the Defund the Police movement and restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms as the main causes for the increase in violence.

It’s not just a domestic issue, however. Even the Chinese Communist Party is weighing in on the crime surge. A recent story by the state-owned Xinhua “news” agency attempts to use the dramatic increase in violence for propaganda purposes; claiming that our two-party system is enabling a “human rights catastrophe.

As the United States continues its COVID-19 fight, the perpetuating issue of gun violence continues to shatter communities, resulting in a human rights catastrophe for the country.

While shooting incidents occurred sporadically during Independence Day weekend, no major U.S. city had experienced a weekend as bloody as Chicago, where at least 10 people were killed and about 31 others wounded since Friday night.

More U.S. officials were publicly warning of a potentially violent summer. Though cities across the United States were witnessing a surge in violence, bipartisan consensus on tackling the issue was absent in Washington.

… In a Morning Consult-Politico tracking poll published in April, researchers found that approximately two in three Americans said they support greater restrictions on gun ownership.

You would think common sense would prevail among U.S. politicians, these self-proclaimed “defenders of democracy and human rights,” to follow public opinion and pass gun legislation to protect Americans. Unfortunately, common sense is hard to find in Washington these days.

Of course China’s critical of the United States for not imposing gun control laws. After all, in China gun ownership is banned for the most part, which is par for the course in Communist countries. Can’t have those pesky proletarians running around with guns, after all. They might end up getting the idea of fighting back against their overlords with more than just marches and speeches.

Taking advice on human rights from China is like taking dating advice from Bill Cosby. This is a country, after all, that is not only engaging in the systematic repression of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, but has more than 1-million Uighers in forced labor camps and is once again targeting Christians for “re-education”.

In April 2021, Radio Free Asia reported that “authorities in China are detaining Christians in secretive, mobile ‘transformation’ facilities to make them renounce their faith.” According to that report, “A member of a Christian ‘house church’ in the southwestern province of Sichuan… said he was held in a facility run by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s United Front Work Department, working in tandem with the state security police, for 10 months after a raid on his church in 2018. It was a mobile facility, that could just set up in some basement somewhere. It was staffed by people from several different government departments.”

The man explained that “he was held in a windowless room for nearly 10 months, during which time he was beaten, verbally abused and ‘mentally tortured’ by staff, eventually resorting to self-harm by throwing himself against a wall.” He added that “They use really underhand methods. They threaten, insult and intimidate you.” These methods appear to be similar to the treatment described by Uyghurs held in concentration camps in Xinjiang, treatment that Beijing continues to strongly dispute.

In terms of human rights “catastrophes”, there’s simply no comparison between the United States and China. The abuses that China points to in the U.S. are committed by violent criminals who face arrest, prosecution, and incarceration upon conviction. The abuses committed in China are done by government officials, who face promotion and awards for their misdeeds. There are also programs and policies that we can put in place to curtail shootings and homicides (that don’t involve new gun control laws, by the way), but there’s no way to put a halt to the human rights abuses in China without destroying the iron grip of the Chinese Communist Party.

The ham-fisted propaganda from state-run media isn’t likely to sway any free-thinkers to the CCP’s point of view, but it should serve as a valuable reminder that gun control and totalitarianism go together like hammer and sickles.