The man who shot and killed 10 people in Boulder, Colorado, last month used a stabilizing brace for his semi-automatic pistol, which makes a weapon more accurate. One of the executive actions President Joe Biden announced to curb gun violence could make it more difficult to obtain such accessories.

The move was one of several executive actions Biden rolled out last week, which he signaled he would pursue in the wake of the shootings in Boulder and the Atlanta area last month.

Gun violence experts and advocates pushing for tighter firearm restrictions say that Biden’s unilateral actions could lead to some reduction in gun violence but that congressional action would be needed for substantial changes — a prospect that appears dim in the closely divided Congress.

Gun violence has skyrocketed in recent years. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group that tracks gun violence in the U.S., found that more than 19,000 people died in gun homicides last year, the most in more than two decades, up by nearly 25 percent from 2019.

The Gun Violence Archive, however, is notorious for manipulating data to advance an anti-gun agenda. After all, they’re the ones who define a mass shooting as three or more people shot, not killed, in a single incident. This is an effort to beef up the total number of mass shootings so people will be more scared of these isolated events.

Frankly, people should take any numbers they present with a grain of salt because of that.

But what other experts do they cite?

Experts say the guns are becoming more popular among militia groups, such as members of the far-right boogaloo movement, and street gangs, such as the Latin Kings, because their parts can be purchased without federal background checks. And law enforcement officials are finding that more of the homemade firearms are being used in crimes in major cities, such as Los Angeles, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

…

Because the guns are untraceable, there are no comprehensive data about their use. The gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety says that until police departments can track the weapons, criminal prosecutions are the best indicator of their proliferation. In a review of 114 federal cases over the last decade, the group found that more than 2,500 ghost guns were connected to criminal activity.

Meanwhile, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, law enforcement agencies recovered about 10,000 ghost guns in 2019.

Everytown found that the number of states where online sellers of the gun parts are based grew from 12 in 2014 to 26 last year.

First, I should note that when I asked the ATF about the same thing, they told me they didn’t keep track of any such information. Funny how things changed, isn’t it?

Yet let’s understand one very important thing. Everytown for Gun Safety aren’t experts, they’re activists. They’re not interested in laying out the facts as they exist. They’re interested in trying to pretend the facts are whatever they need them to be.

Over and over again, though, these anti-gun activists are treated by the media as if they’re experts, but they don’t reach out to people like Erich Pratty from Gun Owners of America or Alan Gottlieb from the Second Amendment Foundation. Why is that? Maybe because they don’t want the other side of the story?

Honestly, the closest thing they come to citing an expert is here:

Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy, said that if authorities “don’t act swiftly, I think it is going to really elevate rates of a number of forms of gun violence — both urban gun violence as well as potential more politically driven, basically, domestic terrorism. I think it’s a very significant and important move that will have an impact. It’ll enhance our public safety.”

Yet it should be noted that this same center somehow always seems to come out in favor of gun control policies. I mean, at least Webster has the credentials to appear as an expert, though I maintain he’s just an activist in expert clothing.

What’s funny is that the mainstream media just doesn’t get what none of us take them seriously anymore.

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