It was a “The Pigs are Flying” moment after The Washington Post, the newspaper that has never found a gun control policy it did not fawn over, took up a gun control claim the Biden administration loves to repeat and determined it to be false.
To be clear, Glenn Kessler’s The Fact Checker couldn’t bring itself to award any Pinocchios – not one – to the false claim, but its thorough breakdown and analysis of the claim left nothing misunderstood. Saying that “Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children” is patently “Not True.”
We won’t hold our collective breaths for The White House to issue a formal statement acknowledging their repeated lie. Instead, we’re assuming President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, White House officials and gun control activists will simply continue repeating the false claim. And notwithstanding The Washington Post’s fact checking, this lie will likely continue to be uncritically reported as “fact” by the mainstream media.
Still, having The Washington Post take up the claim and acknowledge it is false should be deserving of at least a little praise.
Favorite False Claim
President Biden has repeated the claim often as he pushes again and again for more gun control. He began his campaign for the presidency in 2019 by calling firearm manufacturers “the enemy.” He now uses the “firearms are the leading cause of death for children” to push ever more restrictions on the Second Amendment while saying little to nothing about holding violent criminals accountable, let alone calling out soft-on-crime prosecutors who let those same criminals back out on the streets to commit more crimes.
Vice President Harris recited the false claim in two recent events in North Carolina and in Washington, D.C. The White House used the false claim as a lede in a recent press release announcing new White House unilateral gun control executive actions.
There’s no telling how often it has been repeated by U.S. Senators, Members of the House of Representatives, governors and any number of other local elected officials and gun control activists pushing the claim as a reason why more gun control is needed.
CBS Evening News ran a segment repeating the claim. So did ABC News.
Repeating the claim doesn’t change the fact that it is false.
“When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades,” The Washington Post reported. “In the interest of accuracy, it would be better for White House officials to refer to children and teens when citing these reports. When all motor vehicle accidents are counted, then motor vehicle deaths continue to exceed firearm deaths for children — defined as people under age 18 — whether or not infants are included.” Better? How about true.
Debunked Immediately
The claim in question came about as a result of a faulty study published by the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention in April 2022. That study included Americans aged 18 and 19 years old – adults – in the data set as well as manipulated motor vehicle crash data to assert firearms became the “leading cause of death among children and adolescents” in 2020. NSSF debunked the study when it was published in April 2022.
In his dissection of the misleading study, NSSF’s Salam Fatohi summarized the ruse, writing, “Since at least the 1990’s, gun control advocates have used this trick of including adults in the data set to inflate the number of ‘children’ to evoke an emotional reaction from readers of these studies to sway public opinion in favor of their agenda.” That’s exactly why the claim is still repeated so often today.
In The Washington Post analysis, The Fact Checker even included a White House spokesperson admitting this was their angle all along and that The Washington Post regularly uses the same tactic.
“A White House official said it is standard practice for such research reports to include 18- and 19-year-olds in the data. He noted that The Washington Post, in writing about one of these reports, used ‘children’ in the headline, even though the report covered gun deaths of children and adolescents.”
Spreading the Truth
Following The Washington Post’s admission that the claim is false and the data had been manipulated, a handful of news sites took notice and highlighted the debunking.
Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms posted about the Fact Check, noting “Washington Post: Guns AREN’T the Leading Cause of Death for Kids.”
“Among the left, the Post is still one of the gold-standard publications that can and should be listened to. The Washington Post declined to give any Pinocchios, which is what they use to rate claims, but they do a pretty good job of dismantling the study cited by anti-gun politicians like the vice president,” Knighton wrote. “Whether someone wants to take our word about the issues with the study, though, is now irrelevant. It’s entirely likely they will listen to The Washington Post about guns and child deaths. They won’t, however, like what they see.”
At Hot Air, John Sexton wrote about it as well. “It has become commonplace for the White House and left wing commentators to claim that gun violence is the number one cause of death for children,” Sexton wrote. “Ultimately, Kessler doesn’t give this misleading claim a rating… It would also be nice if fact-checkers and reporters would point out how carefully massaged the data behind these claims are when the claims are made instead of waiting most of a year to explain it.”
Dan Zimmerman at Shooting News Weekly also covered The Washington Post’s admission. “After much prefatory throat-clearing about the amount of ‘gun violence’ in this country…, Kessler finally concludes with this gem when it comes time to award the Pinocchios: ‘In the interest of accuracy, it would be better for White House officials to refer to children and teens when citing these reports’… It must have physically hurt him to write even that much.”
The firearm industry takes pride in our efforts to use data and facts in our initiatives to reduce unintended firearm tragedies as much as possible and to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not possess them. We’ve been gratified to play a role in having that number reach historic lows in the past years and will continue to help reduce firearm tragedies even lower, especially among America’s children.
The Biden administration and The White House ought to ditch the junk science lies and instead focus on Real Solutions® to reduce criminal firearm violence. After all, President Biden complimented the firearm industry’s efforts in the past, that is before deeming the industry “the enemy.”
Lie, damn lies and false statistics…
That said we need to learn to use emotion in our arguments.
No matter, their stupid and gullible supporter will believe anything
Especially, since first attending the liberal/progressive educational indoctrination system. Formally known as Public education. Beginning in the 70s.
It started much earlier, there were glimpses of in the 1950s. It was out in plain view in many college campuses at that time.
We need to learn how to win. Republicans can’t find their principles until it’s time to help the Democrats. That’s when they love to stand on “principle.” The party needs a deep cleanse.
quit voting for Republicans. they have done zero to save our republic.
From lesser to greater it’s “Lies, damned lies, and the solemn word of a Biden.”
The stated number one goal of the people who hate the “military industrial complex” has always been, the total destruction of the firearms industry.
That has been their goal since the Great War of 1914.
The WaPo isn’t calling the statement “a lie” because they contend that it is only “inaccurate.” The ComPost isn’t advising against using the misleading claim, they’re only advising Zho BaiDeng to modify the characterization:
“In the interest of accuracy, it would be better for White House officials to refer to children and teens when citing these reports.”
Biden has told lots of lies to push his gun-control narrative – and the idiots eat it up as though its gospel as they practice their ‘delusional cult religion’ of anti-gun.
Firearms NOT Leading Cause of Death Children and it’s not even CLOSE!
There is nothing that isn’t reported with slant, bias, ignorance or even deliberate deceit.
The various tribes just glom onto whatever BS dispenser triggers their confirmation bias and dismiss everything else.
Politicians and news fall into one of two categories: either they think you’re stupid or they themselves are stupid. In either case they should not be trusted.
RE: “Saying that “Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children” is patently “Not True.””
The problem with the above is it leaves the concocted buzzwords “Gun Violence” standing when Violence is Violence. People who criminally misuse firearms will criminally misuse bats, knives, fists, feet, vehicles, etc. And by the same token people who criminally misuse bats, knives, fists, feet, vehicles, etc. will criminally misuse firearms. You cannot let Gun Control zealots sneak by with anything so every word they say has to be scrutinized.
And what Gun Control zealots can never ever debunk even though the lowlifes have tried is the despicable History of their beloved Gun Control….
“SENSITIVE PLACES” 2A FIGHT: KANSAS CITY SHOOTING PROVES GOVERNMENT WILL NOT PROTECT YOU.
The terrible events of criminals shooting over 20 people at the KC Chiefs Super Bowl celebration teach Americans that even if hundreds and hundreds of police are present, YOU ARE STILL YOUR OWN FIRST RESPONDER. Mark Smith Four Boxes Diner analyzes the available information.
Visa, Mastercard, American Express Will Now Start Tracking Gun & Ammo Purchases.
The out of control paranoia of the Far Right Nut Cases makes them grasp at straws just like a drowning man.
In reality the warped Far Right would claim victory if Auto deaths were say 4,000 a year for children and gun deaths for children were 3,999. Its “sick” logic that cannot see the forest for the trees. In other words the Sick Far Right will scream “Losses can never be to high for childrens gun deaths” and it is the price we pay for “zero” gun control to satisfy the sickness of our paranoia of racism, xenophobia, and hatred of all things Liberal and the fear we may have to pay a penny higher in taxes for sane Liberal Social Programs that the entire rest of the civilized world has had for decades i.e. Universal Health Care.
“Firearm deaths we haven’t made much progress on, in fact it increased in recent years. And we have had a decrease in motor vehicle deaths,”.
Premature deaths from guns expose another toll of the firearms crisis
According to a separate study, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths for more than 60 years. But over time, cars have become safer and driver education has improved. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others have pushed for better child safety in cars, taking a scientific approach to the problem, Carter said.
“We can do the same thing with firearms. We just haven’t been able to do that in the same amount of years yet,” he said. “It takes time to figure out what the underlying issues are with the problem and then finding the solutions.”
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children
Stop running your yap and come and take them then, commie. Let’s all see how that works out for ya.
Joe Biden has never made a statement that was completely factual in his life.
Win or lose it is past time state lawmakers addressed the Discrimination that remains inherent to this day with an agenda called Gun Control…
Off topic while on target…Recall obama and his marxist democRat ilk taking old cars and trucks off the road and making the motors non rebuildable? IMO…The same sick mindset during the time included hospitalized elderly, etc.
Nonetheless the EU tyrants are after the shade tree mechanic et al and the piston engine. Rest assured people across the pond are no lightweights when it comes to fixing cars and motorcycles. In fact if not for help from a UK based blog a friend’s Lotus Elon would not have been repaired even after 3 local shops tried. Make no mistake about it…the same scum after your 2A Right are not going to stop there…
elan.
Maybe it was just a brilliant car, so he named it Elon…
Anyone can learn to work on Colin Chapman’s prodigy, they just need to invest in Whitworth hammers and learn to swear like our old pal ” The Slimy Limey “… bloody fokkers.
As always we get the usual crap from the disarmament industry/grifters that some ban or law or restriction of rights will somehow prevent idiots and criminals or those with evil intent from finding and using whatever weapons or improvised devices to cause mayhem or death. Never mind even countries like China have mass murders and other crimes that result in deaths of innocents. Or they forget criminals, by definition, ignore the law.
Unless and until the person or persons who are the violent actors are removed from society, and have to face real consequences for their violent crimes nothing will change.
So now we know where Zimmerman landed after the change in ownership. It would seem that this is a new site just established this year.
Lies are all the fascist left has.
The very term “gun” violence is misleading, as no gun has ever gone on a shooting spree. A person may go on a murderous spree of violence, but a gun never does. And a fairly often that person was prohibited from possessing a gun. And frequently the government is the proximate cause of the person prohibited from having the gun being able to attain it. Recalling the Cruz murders of students at that Florida high school, the FBI had two creditable warnings about Cruz in the month before the violence, but a mentally disturbed young man bought a gun legally. The school and the Sheriff had worked to keep the calls to the school off the records, where he was protected from being in the NICS database and which would have prevented Cruz from buying a firearm. That is the norm, not the exception.
Super Bowl Parade Shooting: Why Blue Cities Are The Problem, Not Red States.
Children, adolescents, adults…
They are all people, and when shot, they are all just as dead.
And deaths from firearms are outpacing motor vehicle deaths:
“In just over a decade, the number of states plus the District of Columbia where gun deaths exceed motor vehicle deaths has increased from just 13 in 2010 to 35 in 2020—a jump of 169 percent. Complete state-by-state tables showing firearm deaths and rates and motor vehicle deaths and rates for 2010 and 2020 are contained in the analysis below.“
https://vpc.org/regulating-the-gun-industry/gun-deaths-compared-to-motor-vehicle-deaths/
I’ll take intentional or accidental for $200, Alex.
I vote miner is a communist moron for $1, after all he is worth that much for comic relief.
What a shock, seeing a comment from miner in a story about disingenuously manipulated statistics. Notice that suicides, accidental deaths, and intentional self defense deaths are included. Also, the number of airbags in the average vehicle has at least doubled since 2010 and forward collision and pedestrian automatic braking has become standard equipment in a majority of new vehicles. I’ll bet the ” statistic ” that you are touting will include a larger number of states in it again when updated, due to safer cars and unsafer dem controlled cities.
L3ftists always fudge the numbers. It stops the bearer of bad news being either sent to the gulag or being put up against the wall as a “wrecker”.
It is why economic performance indicators from China cannot be relied on. They’ve even admitted to fudging the numbers to appease their masters in the CCP executive committee.
The USSR would have dodgy numbers reported which then went into state planning. No wonder the country barely limped along in the Brezhnev era to the fall.
Welcome to l3ftist fantasy land. The manipulations in 1984 barely touch the surface.
@Miner49er
“Children, adolescents, adults…
They are all people, and when shot, they are all just as dead.
And deaths from firearms are outpacing motor vehicle deaths:
‘In just over a decade, the number of states plus the District of Columbia where gun deaths exceed motor vehicle deaths has increased from just 13 in 2010 to 35 in 2020—a jump of 169 percent. Complete state-by-state tables showing firearm deaths and rates and motor vehicle deaths and rates for 2010 and 2020 are contained in the analysis below.“
“District of Columbia” yet another democrat run death factory. Thanks for substantiating my post.
VPC = Violence Policy Center
Here are five things you can do right now to help stop gun violence.
1. Contact your elected representatives and demand that they support and advocate for effective gun violence prevention legislation. Call your U.S. Senators and Representative via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them that you SUPPORT a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
2. Make an online tax-deductible contribution to the Violence Policy Center.
Or, engage your friends to take a stand against gun violence. Encourage family and friends to support the VPC by setting up your own fundraiser on Facebook: click “Select nonprofit” and search “Violence Policy Center.
3. Join a local gun violence prevention organization. Visit States United to Prevent Gun Violence, the national umbrella organization for state gun violence prevention organizations to find a group in your state.
4. Write a letter to the editor in your local paper in support of gun violence prevention. Or use social media to support the Violence Policy Center’s efforts to stop gun violence. Visit the Center’s Twitter feed or our Facebook page for tweets and postings detailing the facts about gun violence, as well as effective solutions.
5. Host your very own evening of information and action to educate your friends and community about gun violence while helping support the Violence Policy Center. For an easy how-to guide, simply click here.
“Your comment is awaiting moderation”
VPC you say?
The VPC informs the public about the impact of gun violence on their daily lives, exposes the profit-driven marketing and lobbying activities of the firearms industry and gun lobby, offers unique technical expertise to policymakers, organizations, and advocates on the federal, state, and local levels, and works for policy changes that save lives.
The VPC has a long and proven record of policy successes on the federal, state, and local levels, leading the National Rifle Association to acknowledge the Center as “the most effective … anti-gun rabble rouser in Washington.”
Contact your elected representatives and demand that they support and advocate for effective gun violence prevention legislation. Call your U.S. Senators and Representative via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them that you SUPPORT a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Ah yes, the VPC, where just like peter pan’s good friend Tinkerbell you can still be a child until your twenties.
I hope that you know that was a fairytale, don’t you, even though both completely ignore the existence of black kids.
Come take them
I have always thought Abortion was the leading cause of death for children.
maybe biden will fall on his sword!
2nd attempt to post
The out of control paranoia of the Far Right Nut Cases makes them grasp at straws just like a drowning man.
In reality the warped Far Right would claim victory if Auto deaths were say 4,000 a year for children and gun deaths for children were 3,999. Its “sick” logic that cannot see the forest for the trees. In other words the Sick Far Right will scream “Losses can never be to high for childrens gun deaths” and it is the price we pay for “zero” gun control to satisfy the sickness of our paranoia of racism, xenophobia, and hatred of all things Liberal and the fear we may have to pay a penny higher in taxes for sane Liberal Social Programs that the entire rest of the civilized world has had for decades i.e. Universal Health Care.
“Firearm deaths we haven’t made much progress on, in fact it increased in recent years. And we have had a decrease in motor vehicle deaths,”.
Premature deaths from guns expose another toll of the firearms crisis
According to a separate study, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths for more than 60 years. But over time, cars have become safer and driver education has improved. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others have pushed for better child safety in cars, taking a scientific approach to the problem, Carter said.
“We can do the same thing with firearms. We just haven’t been able to do that in the same amount of years yet,” he said. “It takes time to figure out what the underlying issues are with the problem and then finding the solutions.”
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children
We don’t have a gun problem. We have a particularly problematic demographic at work in this country. Without that demographic, the U.S. gun homicide rate falls below that of Finland, Austria, France and Canada. That demographic has a gun murder rate of 19.8 per 100,000. The U.S. White gun murder rate is 1.7 per 100,000.
3rd attempt to post in 2 days
The out of control paranoia of the Far Right Nut Cases makes them grasp at straws just like a drowning man.
In reality the warped Far Right would claim victory if Auto deaths were say 4,000 a year for children and gun deaths for children were 3,999. Its “sick” logic that cannot see the forest for the trees. In other words the Sick Far Right will scream “Losses can never be to high for childrens gun deaths” and it is the price we pay for “zero” gun control to satisfy the sickness of our paranoia of racism, xenophobia, and hatred of all things Liberal and the fear we may have to pay a penny higher in taxes for sane Liberal Social Programs that the entire rest of the civilized world has had for decades i.e. Universal Health Care.
“Firearm deaths we haven’t made much progress on, in fact it increased in recent years. And we have had a decrease in motor vehicle deaths,”.
Premature deaths from guns expose another toll of the firearms crisis
According to a separate study, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths for more than 60 years. But over time, cars have become safer and driver education has improved. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others have pushed for better child safety in cars, taking a scientific approach to the problem, Carter said.
“We can do the same thing with firearms. We just haven’t been able to do that in the same amount of years yet,” he said. “It takes time to figure out what the underlying issues are with the problem and then finding the solutions.”
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children
Ok, dumbass, why don’t you retards go after a real problem? Fentanyl is killing people at a rate of over 100,000 a YEAR. Firearm-involved deaths are chumpchange in comparison. So, it really IS about control with you clowns, isn’t it?
Biden is a pathological liar who stands out even among Democrats, who lie most of the time. If he says it’s daytime, you better get your flashlight because it’ll be dark when you look for yourself. He has made up more fake stories of his accomplishments and the things he claims to have done than the last five presidents added together and he has done it for his entire career as a do-nothing politician.
He can’t have done much, seeing as he’s never had a private sector job.
4th attempt to post in 2 days
The out of control paranoia of the Far Right Nut Cases makes them grasp at straws just like a drowning man.
In reality the warped Far Right would claim victory if Auto deaths were say 4,000 a year for children and gun deaths for children were 3,999. Its “sick” logic that cannot see the forest for the trees. In other words the Sick Far Right will scream “Losses can never be to high for childrens gun deaths” and it is the price we pay for “zero” gun control to satisfy the sickness of our paranoia of racism, xenophobia, and hatred of all things Liberal and the fear we may have to pay a penny higher in taxes for sane Liberal Social Programs that the entire rest of the civilized world has had for decades i.e. Universal Health Care.
“Firearm deaths we haven’t made much progress on, in fact it increased in recent years. And we have had a decrease in motor vehicle deaths,”.
Premature deaths from guns expose another toll of the firearms crisis
According to a separate study, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths for more than 60 years. But over time, cars have become safer and driver education has improved. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others have pushed for better child safety in cars, taking a scientific approach to the problem, Carter said.
“We can do the same thing with firearms. We just haven’t been able to do that in the same amount of years yet,” he said. “It takes time to figure out what the underlying issues are with the problem and then finding the solutions.”
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children
And right there at the end of asshole Dacian’s post — is the lie, repeated:
“Firearms leading cause of death in children” — “but such fatalities for those 1 to 19 years old jumped nearly 30%”
Will you folks learn that Republicans are just as much a problem? We need to push for a return to representation. There is a pending constitutional amendment to give us one representative per 50k people so we can have a say. We also need to repeal the 17th so that Senators can be held accountable. You guys need to run for office as well!
Going by the data from Guttmacher and the WHO if abortions were counted as ‘deaths’ they would be by far the number one cause of death in earth. 73 million per annum worldwide quoting the WHO. The next ‘leading cause of death’ is heart disease at 18 million per year, not even close.