At Townhall: Mike Bloomberg is running two misleading gun control ads during the Super Bowl

Feb 3, 2020 | Featured

Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed at Townhall.com that starts this way:

Mike Bloomberg is running two misleading gun control ads during the Super Bowl. One ad focuses on the 2007 Trolley Square Mall shooting in Salt Lake City, Utah where five people were killed. The other ad greatly misstates the number of children killed by firearms each year, while also overlooking the true cause of these deaths.

Each 60 second ad apparently costs about $10 million. But that’s only a fraction of the $248 million that the ten-week-old campaign has spent on campaign ads.

In one ad, Kait Hinckley talks about how the Trolley Square shooter killed her 15-year-old sister and permanently disabled her mother. But like 94 percent of all successful mass public shootings, the attack occurred in a gun-free zone. The Trolley Square Mall contained clearly-posted signs that prohibited people from carrying permitted concealed handguns.

Fortunately, an off-duty police officer was carrying his gun. He did so in violation of the posted signs.

Ken Hammond, an off-duty officer from Ogden, Utah, was on a different floor and at the opposite end of the mall. It took him three minutes to arrive at the scene, at which point he cornered the gunman and exchanged fire until other officers arrived. “There is no question that his quick actions saved the lives of numerous other people,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank said.

Incredibly, Hammond endured lengthy hearings and had to pay hefty legal fees. His career as an officer was on the line. While Hammond eventually kept his job, his ordeal is likely to make others think twice now about ignoring gun-free zone prohibitions. 

Unlike Bloomberg, the Trolley Square Mall learned its lesson and took down the gun-free zone signs after the attack. If only someone had been even closer to the attack, then perhaps Hinckley’s sister and mother might have been protected, 

In December, a concealed handgun permit holder was able to stop an attack even more quickly at the West Freeway Church of Christ near Fort Worth. But Bloomberg was dismissive: “It may be true that someone in the congregation had his own gun and killed the person who murdered two other people. But it’s the job of law enforcement to have guns and to decide when to shoot. You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place.”

In recent years, civilians have stopped dozens of such attacks in churches, businesses, movie theaters, restaurants, and malls. The only exceptional aspect of the West Freeway case was that the permit holder’s actions actually garnered some national attention, unlike the vast majority of these heroic acts. None of the problems that Bloomberg seems to fear — permit holders shooting bystanders or being shot by arriving police — occurred in any of those cases.

A second Bloomberg ad is another emotional one-minute spot in which Calandrian Simpson Kemp recalls her son’s death from a gunshot. No details are provided on that particular case, such as whether it was a gang shooting. The ad, however, is emblazoned with the claim: “2,900 CHILDREN DIE FROM GUN VIOLENCE EVERY YEAR.”

Unfortunately, Bloomberg’s ad doesn’t provide a source for this claim. From 2013 to 2017 — the most recent five years for which data are available — total murderssuicides and accidental deaths of non-adults averaged 1,900 per year. This is not an insignificant number, but Bloomberg’s figure is off by a thousand deaths a year. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

johnrlott

1 Comment

  1. soljerblue

    Bloomberg is like every other gun grabber — you could be pardoned for thinking he’d rather see more bodies than fewer because higher numbers support his argument. And the way things are with the nomination nonsense, this guy could wind up as the Democrats’ candidate for president. Talk about a kick in the head!

Archives