From the moment the anti-gunners came out with that BS about how guns were the number one killer of kids, we all called it for what it was. You can't lump 18- and 19-year-old people in with "children" and not get called out for it.
Sure, the media pushed it, but we debunked it plenty. Now, they're backtracking.
It seems that they realize this wasn't the winning strategy they thought it was. It was way too easy to debunk and, when it was pointed out to folks, it was hard for any honest person to accept that legal adults were still "children" in any meaningful way.
At the beginning of this week leftists stopped calling guns the “No. 1 killer of children” and shifted the demographic to claim guns are the “No. 1 Killer of College-Age People.”
...
The left is now trying to salvage the claim by applying it to adults who are college age.
The Austin-American Statesman quoted the gun control lobby’s Moms Demand Action responding to the April 17, 2025, FSU shooting by saying, “Gun violence is the leading killer of college-aged people in the U.S.”
It seems Everytown has shifted gears as well, using the new descriptor.
And, to be fair, this is a lot more accurate than "children" ever could be.
It's still a spin, though.
Most of the people in this age category who are killed aren't going to college. They're never going to college. These are often people involved in criminal activities, such as gangs. Many have already shot and/or killed someone themselves.
These aren't people destined to be productive members of society.
But by framing them as "college-age," the anti-gunners hope to invoke images of young, smiling people standing on a quad of green grass between their English Lit and Calculus classes as they study to find a cure for cancer.
It's hard for many not to see it that way.
Yet by pointing out that the image isn't right, the anti-gunners can simply reply that they didn't say the victims were in college, only that they were the right age to attend college, and they'd be right. They are the right age.
These are the kind of games that anti-gunners seem to love so much. They can't win based on facts, so they engage in trickery. That's what was with calling adults "children" for statistical purposes, and that's what this is now. Especially in light of FSU, where at least some of the victims were college students.
Don't fall for it.
More importantly, don't let others fall for it, either.
Make sure people understand what we're talking about here, and that "college-aged" doesn't mean they're fine, upstanding citizens, much less college students.
But this is going to be much harder to counter. Be advised that it will be extraordinarily difficult.
Yet this also won't make the same impact that claiming it was children might have had with some people.
We're hardwired to protect children. It's something that's encoded in our biology, something that makes us human. Yes, people override that coding far too often, but it's still there for most of us, which means that the previous line of attack was a tough one, though I'm thankful they were just so clumsy in the attempt.
This one? Not as good a place to be. Easier to defend, maybe, but these are adults, and we're not as hardwired to protect other adults who have no relation to us in some way, shape, or form.
I'm ultimately taking this one as a win, though. The toughest fight they could give us was rather pathetic, all things considered. Now, they're having to retreat to an easily point to defend because their last one didn't work.
I'll take it.
