The surge in homicides and violent crime in cities that are mostly run by Democrats reflects poorly on the party. So naturally, they want to make the issue about guns, even though the data doesn’t support their contention.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki refused to say that the United States has a crime problem, telling reporters that “certainly there is a guns problem.” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy insisted that it is “not a coincidence” that gun sales and gun deaths both rose in 2020.
Gun sales increased in 2020 by 40%.
Gun deaths increased in 2020 by 30%.
That’s not a coincidence.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 25, 2021
Of course, Murphy is right about the raw statistics, but his inference is pure fallacy. Crime did not increase by 50% in the last two months of 2008, when gun sales increased by 50%. Crime did not increase by 51% in summer 2012, when gun sales increased by 51%.
Gun sales are constantly surging, yet the homicide rate fell throughout the 2010s as gun ownership steadily increased. Gun manufacturers doubled their annual output from 2009 to 2013 as former President Barrack Obama unwittingly became the best gun salesman in the country, yet homicides and violent crime declined.
In his fog of confirmation bias, Murphy is probably also confusing cause for effect. According to a study released by the Department of Justice in 2019, only about 7.5% of criminals who use firearms during their crimes do so with guns purchased at gun stores. It is far more likely that gun sales were a response to the spike in homicides, not the cause of them.
Homicides spiked first in March, when the pandemic began, and then again in June, after the unrest spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement. Gun sales similarly spiked in March before shattering records in June. It’s not crazy to guess that people decided that self-defense should be a priority while watching the soaring homicide rate and the riots that consumed major cities.
Of course, Democrats have no answer to the crime problem they are helping create. So now they are out to kill two birds with one stone. They obfuscate the issue of surging violent crime in Democratic cities, and meanwhile, they scapegoat law-abiding gun buyers. It’s not going to work, but it’s fun to watch them pull out all of the rhetorical and statistical stops to shift the political winds.
It’s no coincidence that Murphy, one of the nation’s biggest empty grandstanders on the issue of gun control, is trying to push such a narrative. It’s also no coincidence that the White House is leaning into it when the issues of crime and Democrats “defunding the police” will be big in the 2022 midterm elections. But this transparently weak argument won’t make gun control happen, and it won’t stop the crime wave hitting Democrat-run cities in the defund the police era.
