"Gun Violence" as a Rhetorical Trick in the Gun-Control Debate

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Mises: "Gun Violence" as a Rhetorical Trick in the Gun-Control Debate

2 HOURS AGO Ryan McMaken

In its most recent attack on gun ownership, The New York Timeswent out of its way to confuse gun homicides with homicide in general. As I noted here, this is a rhetorical trick used to mask the true homicide rates in other countries in order to make the United States look like an outlier.

 

Another trick employed by gun control advocates is to lump gun- inflicted suicides in with gun homicides as in order to inflate the total number of "gun violence" events.

This tactic was employed by CNN after the Orlando shootings, as can be seen in this video. The host, Carol Costello, states "more than 100,000 people are victims of gunshot wounds." Costello reports that the number is "stunning" and clearly believes 100,000 to be a very large number. Note that Costello does not present the number as a percentage or ratio. If she did, she'd realize that 100,000 people (in a country of 318,000,000) is 0.03 percent of the population. Moreover, the way it's phrased might lead viewers to believe that Costello is talking about 100,000 fatalities.

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