Michael Bloomberg's Super Bowl ad, which presents the Democratic presidential contender as a brave advocate of public safety who is not afraid to take on "The gun lobby," claims "2,900 children die from gun violence every year" in the United States, which is not true.
Bloomberg's campaign cited Everytown for Gun Safety, a Bloomberg-backed group, as the source of the number used in the ad. "Annually," the organization said in June 2019 fact sheet, "Nearly 2,900 children and teens are shot and killed." The ad changed "Children and teens" to "Children," presumably because that makes the deaths more shocking, strengthening the emotional case for the gun control policies Bloomberg favors.
According to to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FactCheck.org notes, the average number of firearm-related deaths involving Americans 17 or younger from 2013 through 2017 was about 1,500, roughly half the number cited by Bloomberg.
Nearly two-fifths of those deaths were suicides, meaning the number of minors killed each year by "Gun violence," as that term is usually understood, is about 73 percent smaller than the figure cited in Bloomberg's ad. The case highlighted by the TV spot does not actually fit into any of these categories.
"Ask any grieving parent whose 18- or 19-year-old son or daughter was shot and killed, and they will tell you they lost a child," a Bloomberg campaign spokesperson told Fox News in defense of the ad. "There are simply too many of these deaths, and Mike has a plan to prevent them with common-sense gun safety laws." Everyone is somebody's child, of course, so by this reasoning all firearm-related deaths involve children.
Leaving aside Bloomberg's slippery numbers, how well do the "Common-sense gun safety laws" he supports address the problem exemplified by George Kemp's death? Many of Bloomberg's ideas, such as banning "Assault weapons," passing more "Red flag" laws, and closing the "Boyfriend loophole," have nothing to do with cases like this.
Finally, Bloomberg supports allocating "At least $100 million annually for local violence intervention programs," which might make homicides like this less common if those programs are effective.
https://reason.com/2020/02/02/michael-bloombergs-claim-about-children-killed-by-gun-violence-is-off-by-73/
Bloomberg's campaign cited Everytown for Gun Safety, a Bloomberg-backed group, as the source of the number used in the ad. "Annually," the organization said in June 2019 fact sheet, "Nearly 2,900 children and teens are shot and killed." The ad changed "Children and teens" to "Children," presumably because that makes the deaths more shocking, strengthening the emotional case for the gun control policies Bloomberg favors.
According to to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FactCheck.org notes, the average number of firearm-related deaths involving Americans 17 or younger from 2013 through 2017 was about 1,500, roughly half the number cited by Bloomberg.
Nearly two-fifths of those deaths were suicides, meaning the number of minors killed each year by "Gun violence," as that term is usually understood, is about 73 percent smaller than the figure cited in Bloomberg's ad. The case highlighted by the TV spot does not actually fit into any of these categories.
"Ask any grieving parent whose 18- or 19-year-old son or daughter was shot and killed, and they will tell you they lost a child," a Bloomberg campaign spokesperson told Fox News in defense of the ad. "There are simply too many of these deaths, and Mike has a plan to prevent them with common-sense gun safety laws." Everyone is somebody's child, of course, so by this reasoning all firearm-related deaths involve children.
Leaving aside Bloomberg's slippery numbers, how well do the "Common-sense gun safety laws" he supports address the problem exemplified by George Kemp's death? Many of Bloomberg's ideas, such as banning "Assault weapons," passing more "Red flag" laws, and closing the "Boyfriend loophole," have nothing to do with cases like this.
Finally, Bloomberg supports allocating "At least $100 million annually for local violence intervention programs," which might make homicides like this less common if those programs are effective.
https://reason.com/2020/02/02/michael-bloombergs-claim-about-children-killed-by-gun-violence-is-off-by-73/
No comments:
Post a Comment