Nancy Pelosi Swells Gun Violence Deaths by 66 Percent

In a press conference held the day after Democrats passed legislation to criminalize private gun sales House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) swelled gun violence deaths by 66 percent.

On February 27, 2019, Breitbart News reported that House Democrats easily passed their gun control. Yahoo News reported that the legislation passed by a vote of 240-190, with eight Republican Congressional members voting with the Democrats.

On February 28, 2019, Pelosi praised the passage of the legislation, which expanded background checks to “include online sales and gun show sales as well.” Pelosi claimed that “90 percent of the American people support background checks, even members of the NRA.” But she did not provide any studies or surveys to support that claim.

Ironically, on February 20, 2019, Breitbart News reported that over 92 percent of NRA members opposed criminalize private gun sales via universal background checks.

Yet Pelosi continued, claiming that “43 children or teenagers die from gun violence in our country [each] day.” Again, she provided no substantiation for this claim.

It is common for Democrats to lump children and teenagers together when talking about gun deaths, because that allows them to couple deaths resulting from gun violence and street crime in with the accidental gun deaths of children ten and under. However, even when these numbers are combined they come nowhere close to Pelosi’s claim of 43 deaths from gun violence each day.

For example, on January 31, 2014, Breitbart News reported CDC numbers showing that more children ten and under die from fire and water than from guns. Figures for the year 2010 showed the number of children unintentionally killed in fire-related deaths was over seven times higher than the number of children killed in unintentional gun-related deaths, and the number of children killed in unintentional drowning deaths was sixteen times higher than the number of children killed in unintentional gun-related deaths.

Moreover, the number of gun-related deaths each year are largely suicides, not gun violence deaths. Therefore, if the overall number of firearm-related deaths for the entire population for a given year was 30,000, that would be 10,000 deaths by gun violence and 20,000 in which guns were used for suicide.

Universal background checks will do nothing to keep non-criminals from purchasing guns for suicide.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.