The original source is shrouded in history, but someone of note once said there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
In other words, the intellectually dishonest will use piles of raw numbers to justify virtually any position while making it seem like serious research. The anti-gun lobby is frequently high on this dubious listing, and the Violence Policy Center (VPC) is near the top.
Headline-only readers would assume a dark reality that is not factual
The group recently released its annual “report,” and this one was a chart topper. Its headline: “More than 3,350 Non-Self-Defense Deaths Involving Concealed Carry Killers Since 2007.”
A casual reader might reasonably assume that these lawful gun owners by day are violent perpetrators by night who fill body bags with their victims. That is patently false.
First, remember that this sweeping claim covers two decades, making the annual figure roughly 180 fatalities. And that’s not even the smoking gun to the falsehood perpetuated by the VPC and its cohorts.
Anti-gunners’ numbers simply do not hold up under scrutiny
Approximately 65% of this total, or 2,185 of these deaths, were by suicide.
To be crystal clear, there is an obvious mental health crisis in this country that is not being addressed, and each of these fatalities is a tragedy that should never happen.
But these acts are inflicted by individuals who are concealed carry holders upon themselves, not some random acts of violence that terrorize the citizenry as the VPC would have you believe.
Also telling is the number of these lethal incidents that also do not involve violence from another. These include accidental shootings, the shooters in murder-suicide cases, and even dozens more that are unresolved and presumably still under investigation.
Simple math rewrites the VPC claim to roughly 40 such incidents annually. Not a perfect world, but very far short of the patently misleading 180 deaths advertised by this anti-gun group.
To be even more transparent, more than 20 million Americans have valid carry permits. Under the microscope, this salacious claim is nothing more than clumsily misleading data spread for a partisan political agenda.
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