By Donald Jeffries
The recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton have triggered an increasing barrage of anti-gun propaganda. Along with the persistent pleas of politicians, celebrities, and “journalists” that “we have to do something,” the myths of increasing gun violence continue to be perpetuated.
Lost in the shuffle over the emotion-driven coverage of shooting incidents in schools and other public places is the fact that gun homicides have actually been declining steadily for decades. Firearm deaths have plummeted from a high of seven per 100,000 people in 1993 to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2010, a decrease of 49%, according to the Pew Research Center. The Crime Prevention Research Center found that, contrary to the constant drumbeat in the press, the United States trails many other nations in the annual death rate per million people from mass shootings. Data from 2009-2015 revealed that Norway, by a wide margin, leads the world in this dubious category. America ranks 11th, behind countries like Serbia, Macedonia, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. In mass shooting frequency rates, the United States ranked even lower, at 12th. Investor’s Business Daily noted in response, “Yes, the U.S. rate is still high, and nothing to be proud of. But it’s not the highest in the developed world. Not by a long shot.”
The misinformation peddled by the mainstream media on this subject is contradicted by the facts, and largely due to the work of University of Alabama professor Adam Lankford. Lankford doesn’t hide his agenda, which is the same agenda nearly everyone in public life appears to have: to limit and eventually outlaw individual gun ownership.
“The difference between us and other countries, [which] explains why we have more of these attackers, was the firearm ownership rate,” Lankford has declared. “In other words: firearms per capita. We have almost double the firearm ownership rate of any other country.”
Lankford’s study purported to show that this country has produced more mass shooters than anywhere else since 1966. Economist John Lott’s research contradicted Lankford’s findings, which appeared not to have honestly tabulated mass shootings under his own criteria of “four or more people killed.” Lott told television reporter John Stossel that Lankford was guilty of “academic malpractice.” Lankford’s flawed, to put it kindly, research has been disseminated for years by a state-controlled media anxious to peddle any anti-firearms news.
Second Amendment stalwarts have noted for years that gun control doesn’t work; violent criminals tend to buy their weapons illegally, and there has always been a thriving black market for them. Studies have shown that states with the strictest gun control laws do not have lowered rates of gun violence. The Crime Prevention Research Center concluded that, “Once one accounts for the average pre-existing differences in homicide and suicide rates across states and the average annual changes in those deaths from year-to-year, stricter gun laws are associated with more total deaths from homicides and suicides.”
Since at least 2013, Chicago has earned the embarrassing distinction of being the nation’s murder capital, according to FBI statistics. Once this became public knowledge, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy— an avid gun-control advocate and opponent of Illinois’s concealed carry law—began holding regular press conferences in which he displayed guns seized by Chicago cops, which amounted to some 5,095 in the first 37 weeks of 2013, while lecturing the public about crime and gun control.
Not sensing the irony of him echoing the perspective of gun rights advocates, he also bemoaned the fact that while many guns were being seized, those possessing them were often released. “We seize nine guns for every one that the NYPD seizes,” McCarthy declared. “That’s not success that we’re talking about. We’re talking about the fact that they shouldn’t be here in the first place and when we arrest those people—they don’t go to jail.”
Even Barack Obama was forced to grudgingly admit that his former home state was producing “the equivalent of a Newtown every four months.” Chicago has some of the most onerous gun laws in the country, like other high-crime-rate areas such as New York City and Washington, D.C.
Considering how tyrannical those leading our government have grown, it is more essential now than ever that we heed the words of founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that . . . it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” Our most maligned founder also declared, “The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.”
As Jerry Brown once noted, when he was far saner, the people must have the right to bear arms as long as the police and military have them. And that’s the essence of the Second Amendment.
Donald Jeffries is a highly respected author and researcher whose work on the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations and other high crimes of the Deep State has been read by millions of people across the world. Jeffries is also the author of three books currently being sold by the AFP Online Store.
