Barack Obama is going to be so very sad. After all he loves giving those speeches condemning gun owners and lamenting the rise in gun-related deaths, and he makes them each time there is a mass shooting. In his most recent lecture on the evils of gun ownership, he even confessed that he was being political.
All the more reason for him to ignore a disquieting new Pew Research survey and hope others will follow his lead. The data show:
Between 1993 and 2000, the gun homicide rate dropped by nearly half, from 7.0 homicides to 3.8 homicides per 100,000 people. Since then, the gun homicide rate has remained relatively flat. From 2010 to 2013, the most recent year data are available, the number of gun homicides has hovered between 11,000 and 12,000 per year.
Luckily for Obama, there is some “good” news in the report, though it’s not clear how he can exploit it:
By contrast, a significantly higher – and growing – number of gun deaths were by suicide than by homicide, and this has been true throughout the past two decades. For example, while the gun suicide rate has declined overall since 1993, in recent years it has risen, from 6.3 per 100,000 people in 2010 to 6.7 in 2013.
The nation’s overall gun death rate has declined 30% since 1993. This total includes homicides and suicides, in addition to a smaller number of fatal police shootings, accidental shooting deaths and those of undetermined intent. For example, in 2013 there were 467 fatal police shootings, up from 333 in 2009. [Emphasis added]
Perhaps because of the liberal propaganda, the public hasn’t noticed the decline.
A July Pew survey reported that 50% of adults believed that it’s more important to control gun ownership, while 47% said it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns.
The July survey also found that Americans strongly support a variety of specific gun control measures, including expanded background checks (85%), laws to prevent people with mental illness from purchasing guns (79%) and creation of a federal database to track all gun sales (70%). A smaller majority (57%) support a ban on assault-style weapons.
Based on the truth about gun violence perhaps its time for the liberals to stop their hyperbolic propaganda.
Mass shootings are awful, especially when they involve children. But these stats indicate the way to prevent these horrors is not to take away guns from law-abiding gun owners. They aren’t committing crimes.
Cross-posted at The Lid
