John Lott Calls Out CNN For Their Distortion of Firearm Death Rates

As they ramp up voters for Election Day, CNN published an article this morning titled  “How Great is America Really? A Global Election Report Card.”

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In it, Kara Fox and Anastasia Beltyukova cover several issues driving the presidential election including the economy, health care and, of course, our right to keep and bear arms.

In the “Gun Policy” section, the reporters shared information obtained from the 2007 Small Arms Survey as well as a 2010 report from The American Journal of Medicine in an obvious attempt to show how gun ownership in America is killing citizens “at a rate 25.2 times higher than other high-income countries”.

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But as John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center was quick to point out, CNN’s report only serves to highlight their bias against gun ownership and the right of the American people to keep and bear arms.

On his website, Lott said:

CNN makes the completely false claim that the US has “one of the world’s highest rates of death by firearms.”
Note: most countries don’t report their firearm homicide rates, and there are many other problems that make the US’s rate look worse compared to other countries (please see here, that also provides links to data sources).

Admittedly the CNN claim is based on total firearm deaths and most of those are suicides in the US, but the firearm homicide rates are so massive in other parts of the world that they swamp firearm suicides in the US.
(If you use murders [not homicides that include justifiable homicides], suicides account for about 70% of firearm deaths in the US.)

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Once again we see journalists will do anything to twist the truth about gun ownership in America and take any chance they can get (or manufacture) to point out their fabricated need for gun control.

Lott also makes a point to clarify who we have to thank for a portion of this misinformation:

At the very least, CNN should have labeled these graphs as showing the number of privately owned guns, not guns possessed, per hundred people.  There probably also should be a warning label indicating that received financial support from George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Well done, Dr. Lott. If we don’t hold their feet to the fire, who will?

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