The last couple of years have been pretty rough, all things considered. The violent crime rate has been high, which of course has a lot of people screaming about gun control. After all, in some people’s minds, restricting our right to keep and bear arms is the only possible solution.

To help advance that idea, though, people need to be scared. They need to be downright terrified.

Enter CNN, who is more than willing to present out-of-context information so that you can get your fear on. For example, gun recoveries are up.

In New York, police made 4,497 gun arrests in 2021, up 3% from 2020 but a 26% rise from 2019. Adams said in the press conference that police had recovered more than 6,000 guns in the city last year.

The high volume of guns recovered comes as the country has seen a surge of gun violence since the onset of the pandemic. A CNN analysis showed that more than two-thirds of the country’s most populous cities recorded more homicides in 2021 than the previous year, with at least 10 setting all-time homicide records — with the majority committed with a firearm.

CNN requested data on gun seizures and recoveries from police departments in over a dozen of America’s largest cities. Of the eight cities that responded with data through the end of 2021, all recorded more gun recoveries last year than in 2020, with several reaching highs not seen in at least a decade. Not all cities distinguished between guns recovered from crime scenes and those recovered from voluntary efforts, such as a gun buyback program, but the increases are indicative of growing numbers of firearms in America.

Except that distinction matters a great deal. Guns recovered from crime scenes are quite different from those who decide to turn in unused firearms. There’s a lightyear of difference between those two things.

Yet CNN would like for you to equate them as being the same thing.

Further, those “voluntary efforts” are generally firearms that have been in one’s possession for years, possibly even decades based on what I’ve seen turned it at so-called buybacks. As such, they hardly say anything about any increase in guns.

Additionally, let’s keep in mind that of the eight cities that supplied data to CNN, at least one of them is New York. That’s the most gun-controlled city in the nation, where getting a permit to carry a firearm is virtually impossible for most people. If the other seven cities are similar in that regard–and I suspect they all are–then gun recoveries take on a different tone.

You see, if someone is found carrying a gun without a permit in many of these jurisdictions, their gun is taken and it’s counted as a gun recovery. After all, they’re carrying a firearm illegally.

Yet many of these folks are only carrying illegally because there’s no option to carry lawfully. Not really. They’re carrying for self-defense, but because of the gun control laws on the books, they’re having to break the law to do so.

So the question is, how many fall into that camp and how many don’t?

CNN doesn’t know. More precisely, they don’t care to know. If they did, though, I doubt they’d report it in any way, shape, or form. After all, why report anything that doesn’t advance the narrative?