During a September 25, gun control rally on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi swelled “gun violence” deaths by 66 percent.
Pelosi noted that the House passed universal background checks over 200 days ago, then said, “Every day since then, on average, 100 people are killed by gun violence, 47 of them children or teenagers.”
She is getting her figure of 100 firearm-related deaths from 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers. Those showed 39,773 deaths, which CNN reported as the highest level of firearm-related deaths in 40 years.
Pelosi seized on that high level and now claims “100 people killed by gun violence,” on average, each day.
However, the truth is that 66 percent of those who die in a firearm-related death do so via suicide, not “gun violence.” Actually gun violence deaths normally range somewhere between 11,000 and 11,500 or 11,000 and 12,000 a year.
We saw this same tactic used when Hillary Clinton was running for president. She claimed “90 people a day die from gun violence” when, in reality, 66 percent of deaths were suicides.
And while the left tends to push more gun control as a way to reduce suicides, the Chicago Tribune‘s Steve Chapman notes that suicides in stringently gun-controlled Japan are far higher than those in gun-friendly U.S.A. Because of this, Chapman contends that more gun control is not the solution.
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.