The Patriot Post® · Guns Don't Commit Homicide; Violent Thugs Do
If you have seen any of the Democrats’ Leftmedia headlines this morning, you know that the CDC released a study on “Firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates” for 2020. A quick search finds hundreds of headlines asserting, “Gun homicides spiked 35%,” or some variation on the theme that guns committed the crimes. You know, because it’s a “gun problem.”
For the record, the CDC is the primary repository for national mortality data, and despite the CDC’s politically adulterated and grossly flawed COVID death data, in “normal” years the CDC has done a reasonable job of accumulating data on deaths. One would think homicide data should be maintained by the Department of Justice, but the FBI’s annual crime data is deeply flawed and has been for years.
Thus, as our analyst Thomas Gallatin noted previously, predictably, under the Biden/Harris regime, the CDC has increasingly become a political agenda enforcer. The regime has now charged the CDC with a key role in solving the “gun violence epidemic.”
Of the latest data dump, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky declared, “The tragic and historic increase in firearm homicide and the persistently high rates of firearm suicide underscore the urgent need for action.” Walensky previously said: “Something has to be done about [gun violence]. Now is the time — it’s pedal to the metal time.”
(Note: Firearms used for suicide represents 54% of all deaths involving firearms. The Left’s support for assisted suicide is in conflict with their support for gun control.)
While the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control director, Debra Houry, insists that advocating for political agendas is something the “CDC does not do and has never done,” that assertion has been blown apart in the last two years.
Recall that Biden has repeatedly claimed our nation is besieged with an epidemic of “gun violence” given the surge in criminal violence.
Our nation is besieged with an epidemic of cultural violence, most of it urban, which is the direct result of generations of failed statist Democrat policies that have eroded our culture from top to bottom. Demo policies have created generations of poor Americans and enslaved them on urban poverty plantations in every major city nationwide — modern-day plantations that are the locus of much of our nation’s cultural devolution. The devastating consequences of the institutionalization of poverty play out in an endless loop of daily violence.
The fact is, violent crime is a culture problem, not a gun problem, but for Demos, suggesting there is a culture problem would undermine their entire political platform.
What do we know about murder in the most recent year with complete data, 2020? According to CDC and FBI data, homicides jumped 30% to 21,570, which coincided with the first year of the government-mandated ChiCom Virus pandemic shutdowns. That is 4,901 more than in 2019, and a larger percentage increase in more than a century. Firearms were involved in 77% of homicides, though rifles and so-called “assault weapons” were involved in less than 3% of homicides.
Despite the sharp increase in 2020, homicides remain 22% lower than in 1991 and about the same as 1996, though incoming data from 2021 indicates that murder in big urban centers remains high. Indeed, the latest ranking of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world includes four U.S. cities: St. Louis (#14), Baltimore (#23), Detroit (#44) and New Orleans (#50).
According to the latest FBI data on “mass shootings”, which it defines as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area,” there were 38 victims in 2020. There were 43 victims in 2021, and including Buffalo and Sacramento, there have been 30 victims this year.
To what does the CDC attribute the significant increase: “The COVID-19 pandemic might have exacerbated existing social and economic stressors that increase risk for homicide and suicide, particularly among certain racial and ethnic communities.” In other words, “increased risk” where the vast majority of violent crime occurs in any year.
The problem with that conclusion is that there was little change in 2020 suicides in which the deceased used a firearm. So what could have caused the surge in homicides?
What the CDC did not mention, first and foremost, is that guns don’t commit homicide; violent thugs do.
The study does not take into account the fact that 2020 was the year Demo hate-hustlers launched their BIG “Systemic Racism” Lie, fueling a violent summer of rage featuring their Marxist Black Lives Matter radicals and their so-called antifa movement fascists — and they cheered them on. It only tangentially references “strains in law enforcement-community relations.” This was all orchestrated just ahead of the 2020 election with the intended results.
The CDC also did not mention the Demos’ defund-police movement, which is clearly linked to surging violence and has also resulted in a violent war on cops — police assaults and killings are already up 43% this year, over 100 officers have been shot in the line of duty this year. (We post a tribute to all LEO’s KIA on our End of Watch page.)
Apparently, promoting “gun violence” is, in effect, a Democrat Party policy — bloody fodder for its efforts to undermine the Second Amendment, the biggest obstacle to its lust for power and control.
Meanwhile, 107,000 Americans who died from drug overdoses last year – a lot of those drugs, and the criminal thugs muling and selling them, arrived thanks to Biden’s open border policy – which hit a new monthly record of 234,088 in April. In other words, the murder rate is almost 80% less than the overdose rate. Maybe the CDC should pay some attention to our southern border…
Finally, while I expect the Demo MSM to parrot Demo propaganda about “gun homicides,” I expect better out of conservative media. But the Beltway echo-chamber groupthink inevitably works its way into the right side of the ledger.
To that end, the otherwise straight-thinking editors at The Washington Times led the day with “CDC reports gun homicides spiked,” and the story read more like it had been written by their counterpart scribes across town at The Washington Post. The Times article was replete with references to “gun homicides,” but no mention of “criminals” or “assailants.”
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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NOTE: The First Civil Right is To Keep and Bear Arms. It is, as James Madison’s Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story, rightly defined it, “the palladium of the liberties of the republic,” the ultimate assurance of all other rights.
All defenders of American Liberty and its foundational guarantor, the Second Amendment, should be prepared to articulate and refute the rhetorical gun control agenda disinformation propagated by Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists. See these updated Footnotes for key points of rebuttal: Firearm Fiction v. Facts.
Only law-abiding citizens abide by the law. Only outlaws perpetrate acts of violence. Making good people helpless won’t make bad people harmless.
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