We’re all generally focused on the American Dream to some extent. We’re either trying to achieve it or we’re trying to hold onto it.

But this is a gun rights site. What do we care about the American Dream?

Well, normally, I wouldn’t worry about it. However, when someone tries to claim that the lack of gun control is robbing them of their American Dream, we’ve got a problem.

As an expat from the UK, I’m used to waking up to a rash of messages from the motherland and beyond. But the morning after, I had just one solitary text. I could sense in that moment the disbelief from people thousands of miles away. The exasperation that no words could make a difference in that moment. The inability to reckon with the reality that something so unspeakable could be allowed to happen. Again.

The one message I did receive was from my oldest friend living back in the UK that said, quite simply: “Dude, I fear for you. Just come home.”

As the sickening horror of what had happened inside Robb Elementary School emerged, a friend of mine with children around the same age confided that he was a “nervous wreck” and had spent the previous night Googling Canadian immigration laws. Emigration became a recurrent theme among many of the people I spoke to in the aftermath. The most poignant response came via text from a long-standing colleague lamenting the polarized and violent state of his troubled nation: “You’re not crazy to leave. We’re crazy to stay,” he said.

Except, if you’re being robbed of your American Dream, especially as an employee of CNN, then it’s kind of on you.

You see, while Uvalde–the incident which precipitated this op-ed–was awful in so many ways, it’s not remotely typical.

Violent crime is on the rise, yes, but despite that, the rate is still low enough that the average person has no reason to fear for their life. According to the FBI, the total violent crime rate in 2019 was 366.7. While that looks high, we need to remember this is total violent crime of all forms. That includes simple things like a couple of guys getting into a tussle.

Further, this is per 100,000 people. That means your odds of being impacted directly by violent crime remain fairly low.

In other words, the narrative that we’re all at risk all the time is awfully convenient, but it’s not really based on firm statistics. What it’s based on is what this author and his employer have pushed down the throats of the American people. That is, the media-driven narrative that guns are somehow this huge, massive problem and that we’re all inevitably at risk.

That’s simply not the case.

While events like Uvalde are probably going to be with us for a while, we have to remember that most people will never be directly impacted by a mass shooting in any way, shape, or form. After all, as violence surged in 2020, do you know how many people died in mass shootings? If we use the definition as most people think of it, just 38 people were killed in such shootings.

Now, this is in a nation of 330 million people.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to look at that and realize that the probability of being impacted by a mass shooting is ridiculously low.

But the media, of which this op-ed author is a part, has pushed the narrative that violence is everywhere and mass shootings will claim us all, but nothing is further from the truth.

If he’s being robbed of his American Dream, that’s on him and his bosses, not the right to keep and bear arms.