It’s really hard to tell me that there’s no chance the media is biased when 95 percent of the editorials I come across, at a minimum, are anti-gun. Statistically, that shouldn’t be remotely possible, especially since they’re often pushing for more than what the polling says is so popular with the masses.

And, of course, those who write editorials often think they’re clever, that they can present an argument we’ve never seen that will just shut down the pro-Second Amendment argument entirely.

Folks like the person who wrote this, for example.

If images of blood-spattered school hallways, hysterical parents and grieving communities won’t crack stubborn resistance to stronger gun control laws, perhaps statistics that characterize this nation’s deadly and unparalleled obsession with firearms might.

On May 2, the Associated Press reported that nearly 100 people had already been killed in mass shootings in the United States this year. That was using a database that counts incidents involving four or more fatalities, not including the perpetrator.

Other organizations track mass shootings differently. The Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people are killed or injured by gunfire. Using that definition, mass shootings in the United States rose from 273 in 2014 to 417 by 2019.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the toll mounted again — 610 mass shootings occurred in the United States that year, only to be eclipsed by a record 647 in 2022. Through May 16 this year, the number stood at 225, on pace to reach 603 by the end of the year.

Mass shootings, though, account for just a small portion of gun-related deaths in the United States annually.

What follows, of course, is nothing new. They’re the anti-gun statistics we’ve seen a thousand times already.

Oh, we could debate and debunk many of them, but why bother? We already have for some. Others are, in fact, accurate.

Instead, I’m going to give you one statistic that will reframe everything: 1.6 per 100K people.

Huh, you ask? What the hell does that mean?

That’s the non-gun homicide rate in the United States. We get into it a lot here. Basically, our non-gun homicide rate is higher than the total homicide rate of places like the UK, France, and the Czech Republic. Those countries still have gun homicides, too, mind you, so we’re not really comparing apples to apples here. Instead, this intentionally stacks the deck to give them a higher homicide rate to make a point.

And it’s not just those three nations, either. Japan, for example, which I’ve also discussed.

In fact, I took a look at Wikipedia where they’ve compiled the homicide rate for every nation. Our non-gun homicide rate is equal to or greater than 70 other nations’ total homicide rate with only Finland and Malta’s matching it.

Plus, don’t think that if you made guns go away entirely–you can’t, but bear with me–that you’d get that 1.6 per 100K homicide rate. You wouldn’t. At least some who kill their victims with guns would simply use another method, which means our homicide rate would be even higher.

See, while presenting all the data about guns, folks like our writer friend here forget that guns are a tool. Murder can be accomplished with others.

If you want to make the case that we’d be significantly safer if we enacted gun control, you have to show that guns are, in fact, the problem. That doesn’t happen when you simply throw anti-gun statistics. You have to frame the rest for people.

If non-gun homicides are higher than so many other nations’ total homicide rates, it shows that the issue isn’t guns. The issue is something deeper.

No, anti-gun voices don’t want to acknowledge that, but it is a simple truth that should be clear to anyone who cares to look.