Our own leaders did this to us.
“I told you so” doesn’t even begin to cover it here: https://t.co/9JFn85I24i
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 21, 2021
U.S. law bans ‘gain of function’ research here, because it’s so dangerous. So….Fauci figured out a way to fund China so it could be done there.
Of course with my cynical side wondering how much money Fauci was able to siphon off into his own pockets.
Let us now praise Jennifer Rene Psaki—English major, sorority girl, mother of two. Let us praise her seemingly endless supply of monochrome crew-neck blouses and pencil skirts, the way she peels her mask off after striding to the lectern. Jen Psaki has been briefed by her 11 staffers; she has had her coffee (and her bagel, if it’s Wednesday); she is freshly armed with the latest talking points and she is not going to take any of your guff today.
Jen communicates just how on top of things she is by nodding ceaselessly throughout every question, interjecting an “uh-huh” or a “yep” to show she has not been caught off guard since the last clause of the reporter’s sentence. This is a patented bobblehead technique she perfected as a commentator at CNN in between the Obama and Biden Administrations. What she is saying or listening to is less important than what she is communicating with her demeanor at all times: that she is serious, that she is informed, that she is the adult in the room.
We have all met someone who behaves like this: someone who has done the homework and wants you to know it. Someone whose politeness is so aggressive that it can only be read as a kind of challenge. Jen Psaki dares you to find her off-putting. Why would you? She is smiling. She even had a joke written down that she made at the appropriate juncture. See? It says “laughing time” right here in the schedule from 5:01 to 5:03 PM.
Then laughing time is over, and it is time for the lies and the jabs and the polite little smirks. Jen Psaki is frankly disappointed that you would stoop so low as to question Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s right to paternity leave during a supply chain “crisis.” It’s not really a crisis, anyway: “people have more money, expendable resources, more people are working than they were a year ago.” The economy is getting built back better, says Jen, and our ports runneth over. What are you, some kind of Peloton slut who can’t wait five extra months for your new treadmill?
This is what Trump’s critics meant when they said we needed to restore “civility” to the White House: they meant we need the right kind of disdain for the right kinds of people, expressed in the right kinds of ways. Gone are the mean tweets, the off-color jokes, the rough pugilism. Now instead we have Jen Psaki, sneering avatar of an aristocracy that regards working Americans as less than dirt. People are straining to put food on the table and gas in their cars; they increasingly fail to see the point in going to work at all. Psaki’s response is that of the anointed class she represents: shut up and take it.
We are ruled over by a cabal of solipsists who feel outraged that the regressive pigs in flyover country express any opinions at all—about the fruits of their labor, about the security of their nation, about the health of their bodies. Their response is that we should “lower expectations” for affordable food, “welcome competition” from a rapidly arming China, and “follow the advice of health experts” on pain of unemployment.
Who can forget the treacly grin with which Psaki invited us to “stay tuned” for Biden’s forthcoming vaccine decree? She delights in her role, which is to act out the revenge fantasies of all who felt wounded in 2016 by the mere suggestion that their virtue is less than immaculate. We have to reckon with the fact that Psaki, loathsome though she may be, is doing her job exactly as intended. Her affronts are outrageous only to the people who already hate her: from her target audience they elicit shouts of “YAS Kween” and “drag him!” She is not slipping up when she insults your intelligence and riles up your countrymen against you, when she lies unblinkingly out in the open and defies you to do anything about it. That is her job, and she is good at it. She is doing exactly what she was put there to do.
No one with a spine should take instruction on “civility” from such a feckless cretin or anyone who enjoys her act. If we are to re-learn civic excellence, it will not be from a movement whose moral framework consists of slander and self-satisfaction. Remember that in 2022 and 2024 when they call you a fascist or a bigot or a domestic terrorist or whatever: these are people who think Jen Psaki is a good person. Their opinion about your morals literally doesn’t matter at all.
Illinois Supreme Court shoots down Cook County’s tax on firearms and ammo.
Thursday, Oct 21, 2021
* Background…
The Illinois Supreme Court this year will decide whether a Cook County tax on firearms and ammunition is unconstitutional on grounds taxes can’t be levied on items that allow people to exercise their “fundamental” rights.
The state’s high court last week heard arguments on a case where Cook County has twice been victorious in lower courts.
In 2012, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a $25 tax on firearms, followed a few years later by a per-cartridge tax on centerfire and rimfire ammunition.
The plaintiff in the case, “Guns Save Life”, a non-profit best known for erecting pro-gun signs on the side of highways, argues the intent of the tax was to make it more difficult for Illinoisans to purchase guns and violates their Second Amendment protections.
* The Illinois Supreme Court voted 6-0 to toss it out with Justice Anne Burke not taking part in the decision…
Gun-Shy Writer Has Second Thoughts About Defenselessness
Since the start of the pandemic and the corresponding Great Gun Run of 2020/2021, we’ve seen millions of Americans embrace their Second Amendment rights for the very first time, and not all of them are conservatives worried about their individual freedoms being taken away. There’s been a rise in the number of self-described liberals with a growing interest in gun ownership over the past 20 months or so as well, including Samuel Ligon, a novelist and teacher at Eastern Washington University.
Ligon recently wrote about what drove him to take class on basic firearms handling as he debated buying a gun, and as it turns out, it was conservative 2A activists that had the biggest impact on him.
This was a few months after the BLM demonstrations in Spokane, Washington, when the militia was out at night with their guns and camouflage costumes. Kate and I saw them on TV and Twitter, in Spokane and all over the West, men with assault weapons ready for war.
I’d seen them in Olympia, too, armed citizens asserting their rights. The third-grade teachers would usher their students back to the buses, their Capitol tour abruptly over. This was before the Capitol grounds were fenced, before people started shooting each other during weekend protests. In August, Kate and I saw a guy at the Country Store shopping with his wife and toddler with a gun on his hip, a posture I found idiotic, intimidating, infuriating. He was why I wanted to go to gun school. I hated him for walking around like that.
I didn’t tell Kate I was going for weeks, and when I did tell her, she didn’t say much. In fact, she didn’t say anything. I considered canceling, but it had been so hard to get a spot. Everyone wanted to go to gun school. The pandemic — or something worse, whatever it was that had been tearing us apart for years — was working our fear, making some of us conclude that we might have to shoot somebody soon, which is what we mean when we talk about self-defense.
For Ligon, it was the armed response to the “demonstrations” that made him want a firearm for protection, but for many others, it was the riots, looting, and violence in cities from coast-to-coast that made them think about their Second Amendment rights for the first time in their lives. And even after the riots and demonstrations subsided, the violence has remained. Ligon doesn’t say anything about the crime rate in Spokane influencing his desire to own a gun, but homicides in the city doubled in 2020 compared to 2019, and I don’t think the “militia” was responsible for any of them.
But it wasn’t just Ligon who was interested in picking up a firearm. His brother told him he’d bought a gun. His brother-in-law admitted he’d bought a shotgun, though he hadn’t yet purchased any shells.
Guy got lucky.
If you’ll look close, he actually missed the grab on the first try and robber #1 kept the gun. If your average crim wasn’t a rank amateur, a coward and the guy not accidentally – or not – clobbered him with that gallon of whatever, that could have gone ‘south’ really fast
Former Marine veteran stops Chevron robbery in Yuma Arizona– pic.twitter.com/fJ4tnQu1Pk
— ₩₳Ɽ ₱₳₮Ⱨ (@WarPath2pt0) October 21, 2021
In other words, the NRA’s attorneys would rather have the organization dissolved than reformed.
NRA’s Lawyer Responds to Rocky Marshall’s Move To Intervene
Here is the NRA’s opposition to allowing Rocky Marshall to intervene in the suit to dissolve the NRA. Marshall’s arguments included that the court should not dissolve the NRA if it finds that things are corruptly run: it should remove the “leadership” and order new board elections, from which past directors (unless they had tried to do the right thing) would be excluded.
Would this be in NRA’s best interests? Assuredly. It’d only become a consideration if the judge concluded that NRA was being run so corruptly it deserved to be dissolved, and then it would give him an out short of dissolution.
NRA’s attorneys of course oppose it. Better to have the organization terminate than be reformed! A few quotes from the opposition (important portions bolded)
P. 17: “Movant’s [Marshall’s] proposal would frustrate the wishes of, and prejudice, the very members he seeks to represent by cancelling their democratically elected choices that comprise the current Board. Indeed, every Board member currently serving has been elected or reelected since 2018, when whistleblowers within the NRA came forward to raise concerns about mismanagement and wrongdoing by former officers of the Association and by certain former vendors. In fact, almost one-third of the current Board of Directors, or 21 of 75 members, are new Board members elected since 2018.
In reality, no officer of the Association controls the Board of Directors, but rather, the executive leadership of the Association answers to the Board.”
“At this year’s Fall Board of Directors meeting held in Charlotte, North Carolina on October 2, 2021, the Nominating Committee submitted to the Board the names of Wayne LaPierre for the office of Executive Vice President, Sonya Rowling for Treasurer, and John Frazer for Secretary. . . . Mr. LaPierre was reelected by the Board of Directors, receiving 44 votes, with 2 votes cast for Movant. Ms. Rowling and Mr. Frazer were reelected without opposition. The results of the election obviously reflect the Board’s considered judgment as to the direction the Association has taken since 2018.”
“the events of the recent NRA Annual Meeting of Members held in Charlotte on October 2, 2021, shows the degree to which members have robust opportunity to be heard under the NRA’s Bylaws and democratic governance.”
Enough. The Attorney General must be happy with this position. NRA’s attorneys are telling the court that, if it finds corruption, it’s corruption that the board and the members find acceptable and do not wish to change. The only conclusion the court could then reach would be: then dissolve the corporation. The whole thing is incurably corrupt; it’s the only thing left to do. If the board and even the members are happy with the corruption, and refuse to deal with it, what else can the court do?
The Attorney General likewise opposes Marshall’s motion. We talked to an attorney friend, who has long been associated with NRA, and he pointed out “She’s arguing that Marshall should be permitted to argue a derivative action, seeking damages for the NRA from LaPierre and the others, but that Marshall shouldn’t be allowed to defend NRA against dissolution, to argue that the court should give a lesser remedy if it finds things are completely corrupt. She knows where Marshall poses a danger to her plans. That NRA is taking the same side as her tells you a lot. The Association’s attorneys don’t want something that poses a danger to her plans. It poses a danger to theirs, too. The only question is, what those plans are.”
BLUF:
The public is not rendered “safer” when citizens are disarmed, but rendered only more vulnerable to (and powerless against) those who would do them harm.
11 More Reasons Biden Administration Is Wrong About Onerous Gun Restrictions
The Biden administration last month filed a brief encouraging the Supreme Court to uphold New York City’s de facto ban preventing ordinary citizens from carrying firearms in public.
The administration argued that an onerous “good cause” requirement—giving the city’s police department unmitigated discretion over citizens’ exercise of a fundamental right—is a perfectly reasonable regulation.
This court brief is just one of several high-profile actions taken this year by the Biden administration that underscore its lack of commitment to taking the Second Amendment seriously.
New York City’s law, one of a myriad of serious burdens placed on New Yorkers’ right to keep and bear arms, prevents the vast majority of residents from being able to meaningfully protect themselves in public when the government fails to do so. And the government often fails to do so.
In fact, almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes an article monthly underscoring some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place.
The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in August. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.)
Just remember, American kids are kind, but German kids are kinder.
That is all.
We now return you our regular programming.
October 21
1096 – The Seljuk Turks defeat in detail the ‘People’s Army’ of the First Crusade at Helenopolis in Bythnia.
1097 – The ‘Princes Army’ of the First Crusade, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV of Toulouse, begin the Siege of Antioch.
1512 – Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg.
1520 – During is voyage of circumnavigation, Ferdinand Magellan discovers a strait near the lower end of South America now named after him
1774 – The flag of Taunton, Massachusetts is the first to include the word “Liberty”.
1797 – The 44 gun U. S. Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
1854 – Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.
1861 – Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops at Ball’s Bluff Virginia in the second major battle of the war.
1867 – The Medicine Lodge Treaty is signed by southern great plains indian tribes requiring them to relocate to reservations in western Oklahoma.
1879 – Thomas Edison applies for a patent for his design for an incandescent light bulb.
1944 – During the Allied invasion of the Phillipines at Leyte, the first kamikaze attack damages HMAS Australia.
The city of Aachen -Aix-la-Chapelle- site of Charlemagne’s Court falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, the first German city to fall to the Allies during World War II
1959 – President Eisenhower approves the transfer of all US Army space-related activities to NASA
1983 – The definition of the meter is redefined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
Paper may not stop bad guys, but LEAD sure will.
Man killed in Casselton shooting broke into woman’s apartment despite restraining order,
CASSELTON, N.D. — A Fargo man who was fatally shot early Monday morning, Oct. 18, in a Casselton residence broke into the home where he had threatened to kill his girlfriend a week earlier, according to court documents and law enforcement.
Cass County Sheriff Jesse Jahner identified 58-year-old Randell Ray Burton as the man who was killed Monday at 15568 37th St. SE. Edwin Charles Kester Jr., 54, called 911 to report that he shot Burton at the apartment, Jahner said during a Tuesday news conference.
The address of the shooting matches Club 94, a bar and grill just north of Interstate 94. Though the apartment was connected to the bar, Club 94 bar was not involved in the shooting, Jahner said.
Burton broke into the home moments before Kester shot him with a revolver, Jahner said. The apartment belonged to a woman who shared an “on again, off again” relationship with Burton, according to court documents that detailed domestic violence and terrorizing charges against Burton.
I wonder why…………..
OSHA Instructs Federal Agencies Not to Record COVID Vaccine Side Effects
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration [OSHA], which falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor [DOL], is instructing federal agencies not to record adverse reactions or side effects from the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden mandated the shot for all federal workers and contractors. He did the same in September for private companies with more than 100 employees.
“Are adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine recordable on the OSHA record keeping log?” the frequently asked questions section for COVID-19 states on OSHA.gov. “DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination at least through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.”
Cover-up. Same government forcing vaccination through private employers, doesn’t want you to know the fallout. “Follow the science” they said … https://t.co/iNeIQkbA0J
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) October 19, 2021
Observation O’ The Day
“Normally in establishing a police state, one first moves to ensure that the police favor the regime. Crapping all over them instead is a novel tactic.”
After spending 2020 calling police “systematically racist” and trying to get them defunded (mainly so they could get their fingers on that money, suddenly it’s 2021 and Democrat-run cities and counties suddenly need police to be their vaccine enforcers. And police aren’t having any of it.
Take deep blue Chicago for example:
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has foolishly put herself—and the safety of the people of Chicago—in a game of chicken, with at least half the police force ready to defy her vaccine mandate and be sent home from work by City Hall without pay, rather than comply.
“She wants to play a game of chicken. Well, we’re in a semi. And she’s in a Smart Car. And she wants to play chicken?” said Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara told me on Thursday. “That’s her decision.”
I figure Chicago’s little Napoleon in pants suits caves by Friday. As I type this on Thursday evening, Chicago aldermen are calling, saying she’s already blinking on her threats of “no vaccine, you’ll be sent home without pay.”
FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE: She blinked. She did cave. After her repeated threats, she won’t withhold their pay and send them home if they don’t comply with her vaccine mandate. Lori, that’s no way to play chicken or poker. Her chicken little game has come home to roost. Cops have had enough. Now she’s pouting, driving up the ramp of the chicken coop in her little clown car.
If she didn’t cave, victims of weekend violence would blame Lightfoot because she put her ego ahead of public safety. The smart play was to cave and call it something else. Her media friends can spin it. She can even call it victory, if she wants. But she caved. And that weakens her even more.
(Hat tip: Rick Moran at PJ Media.)
Unions for police and corrections officers are suing over vaccine mandates in Allegheny County:
Across Allegheny County, public employees are fighting vaccine mandates but none as hard as those in law enforcement, which has suffered some of the highest losses from the disease.
The unions representing the county police and the corrections officers have gone to court to block the county’s order that all employees be vaccinated or be fired.
According to the National Fraternal Order of Police, 743 police officers have reportedly died of COVID-19, but while the FOP is encouraging officers to get vaccinated, the union opposes mandates, calling vaccines a personal health decision.
Seattle police are bailing as well:
The leader of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which represents over 1,300 officers of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), is calling the COVID-19 vaccine mandate the latest in a long list of betrayals by the city of Seattle.
SPOG President Mike Solan said city leaders could accommodate officers who don’t want the shot and keep the city safe, but they are choosing not to do that. With just days until the mandate takes effect, Solan said now is not the time to force a vaccine on officers as the police department already faces a staffing crisis.
“Crime is surging in this city. Our community is demanding more police officers to answer the 911 calls, and the fact we’ve already lost close to 350 police officers because of the politicians’ political betrayal,” said Solan.
Solan said that before George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in May 2020, city officials called SPD a “model department” when it came to police reform. But he said the tables turned after Floyd’s death with some city leaders demanding massive cuts to the department.
Now, Solan wants Mayor Jenny Durkan to do what some other cities have done and allow officers who don’t want to get the shot the option to wear masks, get tested regularly for COVID-19, and not have their assignments changed.
“For some reason, this mayor is refusing that, which I think is unreasonable and is void of common sense,” said Solan.
It’s only illogical if you haven’t been paying attention. Every knee must bend to the holy demands of the Party and the State. Heresy against the narrative cannot be tolerated.
Los Angeles sheriff Alex Villanueva already announced that he was refusing to carry out the county’s mandate.
What happens to Democrat-run municipalities when the police refuse to carry out unconstitutional mandates?
Like many Democratic plans to immanentize the eschaton, they don’t seem to have thought a lot of the intermediate steps through…
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules that the plaintiffs have standing to bring a preemption lawsuit against Harrisburg’s gun laws, even though they were not charged with violating them
FIREARM OWNERS AGAINST CRIME; KIM STOLFER; JOSHUA FIRST; AND
HOWARD BULLOCK v CITY OF HARRISBURG MAYOR ERIC PAPENFUSE; AND POLICE CHIEF THOMAS CARTER
“We affirm the Commonwealth Court because we conclude Appellees have standing to bring this declaratory judgment action before the City enforces the challenged ordinances against them.”
From the personal collection of “The Gunny”, R. Lee Ermey
Auction of Firearms, Antique Guns & Swords. Film, Television and Other Memorabilia.
Joe Biden Plays the ‘Inside Game’ Because He Doesn’t Have an Outside Game.
Over at Politico, Christopher Cadelago and Marianne Levine offer the latest excuse for Joe Biden going quiet in public, in this case on the reconciliation-bill fight on Capitol Hill: He’s busy playing the inside game!
As Democrats on Capitol Hill brace in anticipation of a brutal midterm, Biden is spending an extraordinary amount of time and political capital behind the scenes to convince them to rally around a common framework for social and climate spending. His congressional huddles have accelerated, from phone calls on the White House veranda to one-on-one and group meetings — including two high-stakes Tuesday sit downs with moderates and progressives. He’s dialing up old friends to take their temperature about how his presidency is really fairing far beyond the Beltway. White House aides, in their own recent conversations with nervous allies, have repeatedly cited the flurry of presidential calls as a sign itself of Biden’s commitment to getting the bills over the finish line, at times bristling at claims that he hasn’t been involved enough. But Biden’s hours and hours of meetings don’t just reflect the precarious moment in which his presidency finds itself. They underscore the heavy reliance his White House has placed on an inside game, rather than the bully pulpit, to dislodge recalcitrant holdouts and move their agenda.
Note, just as an aside, how “a brutal midterm” for congressional Democrats is already a baseline expectation the authors don’t need to explain or justify. Why is the White House at pains to stress how much Biden is doing privately? Because he’s not out there convincing the voters to put pressure on Congress:
As Biden has worked on lawmakers in private — sometimes not putting a hard stop on his schedule so as not to stifle progress — he’s largely, though not entirely, resisted riskier public pressure campaigns that could backfire and are viewed as against his nature. Often, Biden has had just a single public event each day. Occasionally, there’s been no public interfacing at all. Eight times since Labor Day, the daily guidance issued by the White House has included only private meetings with Biden. . . . While Biden has held public events around the agenda, he has not done a formal press interview on it since Labor Day.
This is, I suppose, the spin you need to cover over the problem: Public arguments by this president don’t help. They persuade nobody of anything.
The bully pulpit has been reduced to a walker. Nine months into his tenure, Biden is already a spent force that nobody listens to. In terms of his influence, he went directly from honeymoon to lame duck. It is still likely that the Democrats will pass something this year — and whatever they pass, Biden will sign, and everybody knows it, so his actual leverage is zero. It would truly be a political catastrophe for Biden, having invested so much of his presidency in these spending packages and so much of his image in being a guy who can get deals done on the Hill, if he comes up completely empty. But regardless of what gets passed, it is already apparent that Biden talking to the voters or answering questions from reporters would only make things worse. About the only thing Biden accomplishes these days by appearing in public is convincing people he’s still alive.
And there are still 39 more months of his term to go.
When dishonesty is their stock in trade, it’s only logical to conclude these people want to disarm you because they want to do something they know they would likely be shot for.
Everytown Lies Their Tongues Off With Claim on Child and Teen Deaths
Everytown is one of the largest deep-pocketed anti-Bill of Rights organizations out there. They do serious lobbying and litigation. Their “reporting” arm is The Trace, a publication whose bias should be obvious from who is buttering their bread.
Everytown has a documented history of lying to advance their cause. Those of us on the pro-Rights side are jaded by their behavior, but if you thought that their boldness and daring in peddling falsehoods had peaked, you would be wrong.
Back in August, Everytown posted the following tweet:
“Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens in America ages 0-19. Our kids shouldn’t have to die like this.”
Really? Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens in America? That sounded off, so I went straight to the motherlode of statistics: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has a page where you can get detailed information on Leading Causes of Death and Injury.
Trying to get a quick answer, I checked out their “Ten Leading Causes of Death and Injury” infographic images. For both 2018 and 2017, the top cause of death is “unintentional injury,” not firearms, as Everytown claimed above. So, I dug in further to see if Everytown’s claim was buried somewhere, and it was all just a misunderstanding. For both 2018 and 2017, the top categories of “unintentional injury” were dominated by traffic accidents, drowning, and suffocation. So, again, I decided to give Everytown the benefit of the doubt and dug into an even smaller subset of “violence-related injury deaths.” And yet again, for both 2018 and 2017, I found that the top causes were dominated by traffic accidents, drowning, and suffocation. Firearms were clearly not the “leading cause of death” as Everytown claimed.
But what if the infographic images were not providing the accurate picture because the range of years covered (2017-18) was too narrow?
So, to be sure, I ran a custom report on the “Ten Leading Causes of Death.” This report includes all the data available from 2001–2019. Once again, I didn’t see firearms as the leading cause in the report data. Drilling down, the same pattern of traffic accidents, drowning, and suffocation persisted. For the 15-24 age range, poisoning made a cameo; diving into that revealed that drug overdoses are listed as poisoning and were the leading cause of death in the poisoning category.
What if the above report was inaccurate because the age groups were too broad? After all, the CDC’s 15+ range went from 15-year-olds all the way to 24-year-olds.
So, I ran another custom report, this one covering data from 1999–2019. (Note that this custom report was not available for 2001–2019.) Under the “Advanced Options,” I was able to set a custom age range from “<1” to 19, which was the age range that Everytown claimed in their tweet. Yet again over this 20-year period, unintentional injury deaths (184,060) – the top cause – were almost 3.5 times higher than homicides (53,628), and almost twice as high than homicides and suicides (44,595) combined. Homicides and suicides included all means, not just those committed using firearms. Again, this report didn’t substantiate Everytown’s claim. Out of curiosity, I limited the age range from “<1” to 17, because 18- and 19-year-olds are voting-age adults; homicides and suicides dropped even lower with these criteria.
I still wasn’t giving up on Everytown; what if I messed up somehow and Everytown was actually correct. So, I ran a final report with the data the CDC has going back to the 1981–1998 period. And yet again, unintentional injury deaths (257,110) vastly outnumbered homicides (60,768) and suicides (38,215); note that the homicide and suicide numbers include all means, firearms, cutting instruments, blunt objects… you name it.
Based on the CDC’s reports and readily available infographics, I was not able to substantiate Everytown’s claim. If Everytown has any data that’s not conjured out of thin air, they need to come clean and disclose it. Until then, their deliberate misinformation needs to be stopped by those of us on the pro-Rights side, using free speech and facts, not by calling for censoring or silencing them.
