Politifact issued an October 25th report showing a central component to Michael Moore’s argument for repealing the Second Amendment was “mostly false.”
On October 4, Breitbart News reported that Moore called for the repeal of the Second Amendment and urged that it be replaced with a 28th Amendment that would tie gun ownership to military service rather than individual liberty.
One of Moore’s central reasons for doing this was his claim that working-class Americans are not really in a position where they need a gun for self-defense anyway, especially when they are in their homes. Moore said, “People who die from a home invasion make up a sad but minuscule .04 percent of all gun murders in the US. And over a third of them are killed by their own gun that the criminal has either stolen or wrestled from them.”
Politifact weighed this claim and found that Moore’s figure of “.o4 percent” lacks substantiation. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Shannan Catalano believes Moore got the figure from her but did so without understanding that it was “only a side note in her larger report from 2010.”
Interaction with Catalano also revealed problems with another of Moore’s assertions: namely, his claim that a third of the people killed during a home invasion are actually killed with their own gun. Catalano did not know any figures that substantiated Moore’s claim nor did Duke public policy professor Philip Cook.
Cook said, “I’m quite sure that it’s not part of any of the standard databases. So it must be a one-time study by someone, probably of limited scope.”
Politifact summarized their findings by noting that no outlet, “including federal agencies that track crime, could independently verify Moore’s figures about the owner of the weapon used in those crimes the way he claimed.” Because of this, they rated Moore’s claim “mostly false.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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