{"id":81272,"date":"2022-05-20T12:51:48","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T17:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81272"},"modified":"2022-05-20T12:51:48","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T17:51:48","slug":"81272","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=81272","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Debunking lawmaker’s claim of 9,000 murders with ghost guns<\/a><\/p>\n

Illinois passed its ban on so-called ghost guns and now it has been signed into law. The damage has been done.<\/p>\n

In a report on the new law, an opponent of homemade firearms\u00a0had some interesting thoughts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

One of those proponents is Pamela Bosley, who co-founded the organization\u00a0Purpose over Pain<\/a>,\u00a0which aims to help raise awareness of gun violence, host community events and provide parents of children killed by gun violence with crisis support.<\/p>\n

Bosley started the group after her son Terrell was shot and killed in 2006.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can take these guns and you can purchase them online, you can purchase them in the store, you can put them together and you could shoot any of us,\u201d said Bosley on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The bill,\u00a0HB 4383<\/a>, was passed in the final hours of this spring\u2019s legislative session on 31-19 and 66-36 votes in the state Senate and House,\u00a0respectively. The legislation was sponsored by Sen.\u00a0Jacqueline Collins<\/a>\u00a0and Rep.\u00a0Kam Buckner<\/a>, both Chicago Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this year alone, ghost guns have claimed more than 9,000 lives,\u201d said Collins.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Really? That\u2019s a pretty bold statement.<\/p>\n

Especially since a previous report about Illinois\u2019s proposed law\u00a0gave a much different number<\/a>, citing just 325 homicides with such weapons since 2016.<\/p>\n

But homicides are increasing, apparently, so maybe she\u2019s privy to some numbers the media hasn\u2019t seen? It seemed highly unlikely that they skyrocketed quite that much, but stranger things have happened, so I thought I\u2019d take a look and see what I could find.<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t a lot of sources for running totals on gun-related homicides in this country, so I had to go to the Gun Violence Archive. While I often criticize their methods with regard to mass shootings, there\u2019s not a lot of monkey business they can play with murders.<\/p>\n

The problem is that it\u2019s unlikely they track it by weapon type. Still, 9,000 murders with \u201cghost guns\u201d seemed awfully high. Maybe if I just looked at the percentages, I could get an idea as to whether Collins had a clue what she was talking about.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for her, GVA only reports 7,325 gun-related, non-suicide deaths in 2022 so far. That includes confirmed defensive gun uses (438 of them), which drops the number down to below 6,900. It also includes 552 accidental shooting fatalities.<\/p>\n

That leaves just a smidge over 6,300 murders\u00a0in total<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0so far in 2022. Now, these aren\u2019t the official numbers, but they\u2019re as good a snapshot as anyone is going to find at this point in time. If anything, with GVA\u2019s biases, you\u2019d expect the numbers to be a bit on the high side compared to the real numbers.<\/p>\n

So how in the hell could \u201cghost guns\u201d claim 9,000 lives this year alone when there are nowhere near that many lives claimed by guns\u00a0at all<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Look, you can make whatever arguments you want about \u201cghost guns.\u201d You\u2019re entitled to your own opinions. What you\u2019re not entitled to are your own facts.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers can make honest, good-faith mistakes, but there should be some way to tell that it was a mistake. Instead, what Collins told the media appears to be nothing more than an outright fabrication.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In short, it looks like she\u2019s lying and the Illinois media isn\u2019t interested in fact-checking her on this.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debunking lawmaker’s claim of 9,000 murders with ghost guns Illinois passed its ban on so-called ghost guns and now it has been signed into law. The damage has been done. In a report on the new law, an opponent of homemade firearms\u00a0had some interesting thoughts. One of those proponents is Pamela Bosley, who co-founded the … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-goobermint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81273,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81272\/revisions\/81273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}