The communist Chinese government is furiously at work, doing whatever it can to deflect blame for unleashing the Wuhan Coronavirus on the world. They’ve gone as far as claiming the infection originated in a United States military bio-weapons facility.
This article is very much important to each and every one of us. Please read and retweet it. COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US. https://t.co/LPanIo40MR
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 13, 2020
Another aspect of the ChiComs’ propaganda offensive was published yesterday in the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily. The Chinese official state-run news agency issued an exhaustive report on the allegedly dismal state of human rights in the U.S. in 2019.
Under a section headed Civil and Political Rights in Name Only, the Chinese spinmeisters have clearly dipped into the Everytown, Brady and CSGV archives — dutifully regurgitated by like-minded media outlets — to mine their treasure troves of gun control talking points in order to make their case.
The result: the Chinese “report” cites long-ago debunked “statistics” used by the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex in the U.S. to argue for limiting Americans’ gun rights.
The Chinese propagandists employ these info-nuggets to bolster their bogus claim that the US has “the worst gun violence in the world,” take an obligatory shot at the NRA and quote ludicrous numbers such as the US experiencing 415 mass shootings last year.
Here’s the relevant section of the Chinese misinformation missive . . .
The United States flaunts itself as “the land of freedom” and a “beacon of democracy,” which, however, is just something imaginary that fools the people and the world. The lack of restraint in the right to hold guns has led to rampant gun violence, posing a serious threat to citizens’ life and property safety. Worsening money politics distorts public opinion and makes the so-called democratic election a game for the rich.
Politics has led to a proliferation of guns. The manufacture, sale and use of guns in the United States is a huge industrial chain, forming a huge interest group. Interest groups such as the National Rifle Association made large political donations for presidential and congressional elections. The intertwined drawbacks of party politics, election politics and money politics make it difficult for the legislative and executive authorities to do anything about gun control, only allowing the situation to deteriorate.
According to an US online media report dated Dec 11, 2019, the United States has far more guns than any other country and in 2017 the estimated number of civilian-owned firearms in the United States was 120.5 guns per 100 residents, meaning there were more firearms than people.
According to a Nov 20, 2019 report on the website of the Center for American Progress, one person is killed with a gun in the United States every 15 minutes, citing figures on shooting deaths from 2008 through 2017. In total 39,052 people died from gun related violence in the United States in 2019.
Mass shootings occurred one after another. The United States is a country with the worst gun violence in the world. Frequent mass shootings have become a defining feature of the United States.
Citing figures from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) , the online edition of The Mirror reported on Dec. 30, 2019 that the number of mass killings in the United States hit a record high of 415 in 2019, with more than one happening for every day of the year. That compares with 337 in 2018; 346 in 2017; 382 in 2016; 335 in 2015 and 269 in 2014, the first year the GVA kept records.
The three worst US shootings of 2019 took place in El Paso, Texas, Virginia Beach, and Dayton, Ohio, which killed 22, 12 and nine people, respectively. “This seems to be the age of mass shootings,” commented USA Today in an online report.
Note that the ChiComs’ “report” happily uses that incendiary “age of mass shootings” pull quote from the McPaper (spouted by some obscure academic), but ignores the fact that the very same article indicates the US experienced not 415 mass shootings last year…but 33.
And somehow Beijing’s busy fabulists missed reports such as this one — from Public Radio International, no less — pointing out that mass shootings are not, in fact, increasing in the US at all. Probably just an oversight.
Whatever. The good news is that most Americans have no time for agitprop issued by authoritarian foreign countries and they discount it if and when they may run across it. But in the mean time, let’s take a moment to thank America’s anti-gun advocacy industry for its diligent efforts to crank out plenty of “analysis” and “statistics” that hostile foreign powers find so decidedly useful. We’re sure they appreciate your efforts.