Anti-Gunners Continue Scare-Mongering Amid Pandemic Gun Sales

Gun control advocates aren’t happy. Not only are mountains of gun control laws likely not passing this year because of abbreviated legislative sessions, but millions of people are becoming new gun owners. They’re learning they were fed a line of bull about what gun laws actually were. That makes them naturally skeptical of what anti-gunners might try to push.

Advertisement

However, anti-gunners are going to continue pushing their agenda, even if they have to engage in a bit of scare-mongering to do it.

For example:

The intersection of the stresses caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the proliferation of new gun ownership is alarming. Pennsylvania’s background check server, the Pennsylvania Instant Check System, has crashed at least twice recently because of the surge in gun purchases.

People, many of them first-time gun buyers, have waited in lines for hours to purchase guns.

Data from the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, tells us that in the U.S. an average of 52 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner each month, an average of 43 children (newborns to 19-year-olds) every day die as a result of gun violence, and suicides account for almost two-thirds of firearm deaths.

These disturbing statistics could surge as a result of the economic stresses on families quarantined, sometimes in close quarters, with no income and no health insurance. Introduce more guns into these households, and we could be looking at an escalation of the already existing health crisis caused by easy access to guns.

“These disturbing statistics could surge,” the author says.

Could.

Of course, they don’t have any evidence that they will. They have fears that they will. And to back that up, she presents biased research from an anti-gun organization with a known history of opposing the ownership of firearms.

Advertisement

Yeah, I’m sure that’s research you can trust.

Especially since the “43 children (newborns to 19-year-olds)” that supposedly die every day include a significant number of gang members and others involved in illegal activity. These murders are committed with firearms obtained illegally in the vast majority of cases as well, something new gun control law is likely to address.

Further, suicides are a mental health issue, not a gun issue, and failing to address it as such is legislative malpractice.

Now, when it comes to domestic violence, let’s not sugar coat it. It’s awful and it’s something I wish simply did not exist. Yet it does, unfortunately. However, most domestic abuse doesn’t result in someone being shot. While 52 women per month may be shot by an intimate partner, this is in a nation of almost 330 million. Let’s not pretend this is an epidemic, especially in light of the fact that 20 people per minute are abused by an intimate partner.

Yes, each one is a tragedy, but there’s a bit of cool logic we have to throw into the discussion, and that’s the number of people who successfully use a firearm to defend their own lives each year. Even by conservative estimates, we’re talking about tens of thousands of people. Many of them are women who use a gun to defend themselves from a domestic abuser.

Advertisement

Further, let’s note that while 52 women per month equates to 1.7 women per day shot and killed (52*12/365), as many as four women per day are killed in total. In other words, fewer than half are shot and killed, which tells us that domestic partners can murder their wives and girlfriend quite easily without firearms.

But those statistics won’t show up on Everytown’s research page. They won’t show up in blatantly biased and one-sided op-eds by people who have never looked at the issue beyond their own confirmation bias.

Heaven forbid some folks look beyond their fearmongering and focus on the actual facts.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member