The mainstream media has a truth problem. Well, specifically, a lack of truth problem, especially when it comes to firearms. Like anti-gunners in general, the mainstream media tries to show gun ownership in the worst possible light, implying that legal gun owners are all would-be mass shooters, and that mass shootings (which they blame on legal gun owners) are rampant.
The problem with those ideas is that they just aren’t true.
First, if legal gun owners are simply would-be mass shooters, why haven’t all legal gun owners simply flipped out and started shooting? If legal gun owners were the cause of gun violence, that violence would be rampant all across the U.S., especially in rural areas where per capita rates of legal gun ownership are higher and there are less gun control laws. But rural areas don’t have mass shooting problems.
Secondly, mass shootings in the U.S. are nowhere near as bad as the mainstream media wants to pretend, and that evidence comes from the FBI themselves. Lee Williams writes,
According to a recently released report from the FBI, there were far fewer mass shootings over the past four years than were reported by the Gun Violence Archive, a private nonprofit that provides the data cited most often by the mainstream media.
The FBI found that while active shootings are increasing, they are not nearly the threat the Gun Violence Archive and the media would have you believe.
Williams continues:
By comparison, the Gun Violence Archive, or GVA, excludes nothing, even if the shooting is gang or drug related – the two main causes of most violence in the country today.
As Williams points out, when this information is not clearly communicated in the media’s reporting, the average person doesn’t get a clear understanding of the situation which is this: if you aren’t doing illegal things, you have a very low probability of being involved in gun violence in America.
And we all know why they don’t clarify this information in their reporting: it doesn’t fit the narrative.
