When a politician accuses America’s millions of lawful gun owners of having a “death cult mentality,” it’s tempting to not take them seriously. But when that politician is “hell yes we’ll take your AR-15” Beto O’Rourke, a person Joe Biden said he’d appoint to “take care of the gun problem,” it is worth taking his disturbing view of America very seriously.
Here’s what O’Rourke had to say on MSNBC: “These are the same people who want us to accept that more people, including children, will die of gun violence this year in America than in any other developed country, bar none. It’s just the price of quote-unquote freedom in this country. And in some ways, they’ve almost won that fight. If you look at the gun laws that are on the books—and the gun laws that should be on the books and aren’t in this country—in some ways we have tacitly accepted this historic, tragic level of gun violence in America that continues to rise. We saw that just over the weekend in many American cities. It’s that same kind of death cult mentality that asks us to accept one quarter, 25%, of the world’s COVID cases—one quarter, 25%, of the world’s COVID deaths—though we represent only 4% of the globe’s population.”
We’ll leave O’Rourke’s COVID-19 statistics to other reporters. His “death cult mentality” view of America’s gun owners, however, needs to be shown for the coldhearted political spin it is.
America’s vast, law-abiding, mainstream and growing gun culture is simply embracing their constitutionally protected right, a natural right, to protect themselves and their loved ones. This isn’t, at its basis or in practice, a negative thing, and it certainly is not a “death cult.” It is about self-empowerment, responsibility, and fun gatherings at ranges and for competitions across this great nation.
Neither O’Rourke, nor Biden, will ever admit this in front of a camera, but this massive—as in 100-million-plus—portion of the adult population in America is made up of safe and very peaceful citizens.
Despite O’Rourke’s disparagement of American gun ownership, violent crime has been declining for roughly 30 years. Murder, in general, is a fairly focused problem in the United States, as vast swathes of the country experience few to no murders. Murder is predominantly a chronic problem in certain urban areas in this country.
“In 2014, the worst 2% of counties accounted for 52% of the murders. Five percent of counties accounted for 68% of the murders. Even within these counties, there are large regions without any murders,” says John Lott, founder and CEO of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Though people, such as O’Rourke, like to repeat “statistics” that are created and pushed by groups like Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, the truth is it is difficult to compare murder rates in various nations, as different countries record them in vastly different ways. Many don’t even separate out murders committed with firearms.
“The popular press likes to compare crime rates in different places at the same point in time,” says Lott. “Gun-control advocates often compare the U.S. and the United Kingdom (U.K.), pointing out that the U.K. has both stricter gun control and lower homicide rates than does the U.S. Omitted is the fact that the U.K.’s homicide rate rose after its gun-control laws were enacted.”
Also, the U.K actually doesn’t count murders in the same way the FBI does. Often, murders in the U.K. are not counted unless someone was apprehended and convicted of the murder; whereas, the FBI counts unsolved murders in the year they occurred. There are many other discrepancies and differences in how the U.K. and the U.S. create these statistics.
“The countries with the highest homicide rates don’t even report firearm homicides, and these same countries have very strict gun-control regulations,” says Lott. “In Brazil, there are only 330,000 licensed firearm owners in a country of 152 million adults, just 0.22 percent of the adult population. But Brazil has a homicide rate that is more than five times that of the U.S. Only about 1% of Mexican adults legally own a gun, but Mexico has a homicide rate that also dwarfs the U.S. rate.”
Though anyone who takes a real look at these numbers has to notice the problem isn’t guns, but rather is criminal behavior related to many other factors, politicians like O’Rourke and Biden insist if they simply could disempower individual Americans by disarming them—thereby leaving us vulnerable to armed criminals—then somehow murder rates in the areas of America where they are a real problem would fall.
They say this even though these murders are generally being committed by people who cannot legally own guns.
Such is the dishonesty of O’Rourke and Biden. They want the voting public to believe that legally armed Americans have a “death cult mentality.” They want power so they can outright take away this freedom, and they are willing to say anything to get it.
