No, our crime issue is not a 'guns issue'
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.
