Do the enemies of firearms freedom ever get tired of manipulating data to further their civilian disarmament agenda? No. No they don’t. Because the facts are not on the side of gun control. So…the facts must die. A slow, lingering death, I might add. For example . . .
Vox’s very first stat — on America mass shootings in “public, populated paces” (?) vs. a carefully-picked selection of foreign countries — doesn’t reveal the criteria for a mass shooting and excludes gang violence and terrorism from the totals. So they’re just comparing psycho killer mass shootings.
And no wonder. The November Paris terrorist attacks left 130 people dead, just three shy of the total attributed to the U.S. and 129 more than the number “1” written next to France. Oh wait, the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in January of the same year left 11 dead. Mort la difference!
Oh, and what about Norway? Not on the chart. Maybe that’s because the Norway mass shooter killed 77 people. And we’re just :36 seconds into this piece of anti-gun agitprop. Hang on. I thought terrorist attacks were excluded from the totals. So why does Vox include a sound bite from President Obama on the San Bernardino terrorist attack? Was that just workplace violence, too?
And then we get the news that the U.S. has the highest suicide rate of “the ten countries ranked on human development by the U.N.” Hello? What about Japan? Or all the other “developed” countries that outrank the U.S. on suicide rates, including India, Russia, Japan, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Iceland and . . . wait for it . . . France.
Look! There’s Norway in the suicide chart! So Norway’s in when it suits Vox and out when it doesn’t. Cherry pick much? Another chart: the rate of firearms-related homicides in the U.S. is increasing! Only the rate hasn’t fluctuated much: between 6 and 8 per 100k. Context people. Context.
And on and on the Vox video goes, through no less than 18 charts. Including the revelation that “young black men” account for the lion’s share of firearms-related homicides. But let’s not talk about gang violence, right?
This kind of cherry picked data can prove just about anything. In this case it proves that the anti-gunners ain’t got game. So they play games with the numbers. Interspersed with emotionally charged videos designed to draw attention away from Vox’s intentional distortions.
Not to belabor the point (much), correlation does not equal causation — especially when the facts used to establish the relationship are molded, massaged, manipulated and stretched to breaking point.
“America doesn’t have a gun problem,” Vox concludes, suddenly returning gang-related homicides to the equation. “It has several of them.” That much is true. But don’t be fooled.
“Gun violence” is not America’s biggest problem, nor are we alone in the world — “developed” or not — in experiencing firearms-related homicides. But American citizens enjoy more legally-guaranteed individual liberty than any other country in the world. And our gun rights protect those freedoms. And that’s the truth.