In New Hampshire, there’s a debate brewing about expanding the state’s Stand Your Ground law. As it currently stands (no pun intended), the law is really more of a Castle Doctrine law. It only applies inside the home, whereas Stand Your Ground tends to apply everywhere else.

See, the debate is from the fact that lawmakers are considering expanding the law to also apply in one’s vehicle.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how this is beneficial. No one should have to spend precious seconds trying to find an escape route anywhere, especially while in their own vehicle.

Yet during a hearing on the subject, a Moms Demand Action betrayed just how ignorant many of their members on the subject they’re trying to pontificate on.

Another bill, House Bill 197, would permit the use of deadly force in circumstances where a felony-level offense is committed against another person in a vehicle. It was supported by 11 and opposed by 155.

The latter bill would be an extension of the 2011 New Hampshire Stand Your Ground legislation which allows individuals to use deadly force in their home to defend themselves.

Lois Cote of Manchester, a volunteer for Mom’s Demand Action, spoke in opposition.
As a retired child and family mental health counselor, Cote said she is paying particular attention to issues related to increased suicides from the pandemic and the bill could lead to more public shootings. It could also add to the fear of being killed or hit by a stray bullet.

She called the bill “an outrage.”

First, let me say there’s never been a single instance of a lawful use of a firearm in self-defense that turned into a mass shooting anywhere on Earth. ANYWHERE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, EVEN! That’s a ridiculous claim, but that’s not what I want to focus on. I want to focus on her saying she paid attention to “increased suicides from the pandemic.”

Did she? Did she really?

After all, suicides went down in 2020. This despite more guns being sold than ever before. Had Cote actually been paying attention to increased suicides, she’d have also seen the data from the Journal of the American Medical Association, a group that isn’t known for a pro-gun bias, that suicides dropped last year.

She didn’t.

Instead, what she paid attention to are the anecdotes of people who killed themselves.

See, we all expected to see more suicides. I sure did. As a result, we found we paid more attention to suicides in 2020 than we might normally have paid. We shared stories about them on social media and talked about it more. Everything made us think that we’re seeing a surge in suicides when nothing of the sort is taking place.

It’s much the same with violent crime, which people like Cote use to justify gun control.

When violent crime is more common, there are fewer news reports of it. It’s too common to cover to any significant degree. It’s not until it goes down that the media commits exhaustive coverage to a single shooting, for example. This creates the anecdotal illusion that crime is increasing when the opposite is taking place.

But if someone like Cote is speaking for Moms Demand Action and can’t even get a basic fact regarding suicide rates last year–a topic she said she was paying close attention to–then just how much do you think she gets right about anything else?

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