Choose Your Own Crime Stats is a video that went viral back at the end 2012. It is a no nonsense look at the fact that media and political sources willfully obfuscate and oversimplify crime stats to serve their end goal. In this instance, gun control.
The video is over 8 years old but the information is still valid, more valid now than even then perhaps.
Why is it valid?
1985-2019 
2009-2019
Violent crime is staying down from where it was, from the early 90’s peak, even prior to the peak. And comparatively, its similar today as when the video emerged.
Homicide specifically is trending the same way.
All of this violent decline continued after 2004, when the assault weapon ban was removed. The trend is still declining. But you wouldn’t believe it to listen to the gun control proponents.
Let’s take a look at those post AWB statistics. The one Biden so proudly implemented. Shouldn’t there have been a spike? A return to blood in the streets with the flood of ‘assault weapons’ coming forth?
Nope, violent crime still in decline…
In fact, only one violent category increased. Sadly, that category is rape. But that is a category outside traditional ‘gun violence’ parameters. A firearm may be used in the commission of the rape, but it then also becomes either an aggravated assault or homicide.
NOTE: The criminal definition of rape underwent a change in 2013, which does account for the spike. However, we do see nearly parallel increases in the overlapping four years and we can infer from that the likely rates under the expanded definition for the other years. Roughly 35% above the old definition to meet the new one.
“Mass Shootings”
The tweety politicos and media aren’t talking about rape, nor about violent crime as a whole. They are talking about “Mass Shootings” and that is a term they choose specifically for its imagery. However, the crime space they are covering with the definition is borrowing heavily from inner city crime, domestic violence, escalated fights, and other offenses to pad their numbers.
34 Mass Attacks does not sound as terrifying as 424 “Mass Shootings” and gun controllers know it. This is why, like Assault Weapon, they use a vaguely defined term.
in 2019, the working definition of a Mass Attack covers: 34 incidents of mass attacks – in which three or more people, not
including the attacker(s), were harmed – that were carried out by 37 attackers in public spaces across the United States
between January and December 2019. In total, 108 people were killed and an additional 178 people were injured. -MAPS 2019
Mass Shooting covers roughly any incident in which 4 or more people where shot and has no specific definition.
Gun controllers are inferring Mass Attacks in Public Spaces, which are attacks like Boulder, Parkland, Fort Hood, Las Vegas, etc. These attacks shock the moral conscious of the public, they are brutal and nonsensical from any rational view point.
But in 2019 there were only 34 such attacks, and only 24 involved firearms. Only 6 of those involved a long gun, one involved handgun and long gun. One was confirmed a shotgun meaning a rifle of any type was present at only 6 of the 34 total mass attacks. Of those 24 firearm attacks, at least 10 of the attacks were known prohibited persons or in illegal possession. Of those, 2 were minors in possession, the remaining were prohibited adults who could not legally purchase or possess a firearm. Meaning gun laws failed to apprehend/intercept 10 illegal persons and they failed to stop 14 people who had no record to be suspicious of in the first place. No law would have or did prevent these attacks despite multitudes in place.
Of the 24 attacks involving firearms, 17 involved only handguns. And yet we are after the AR-15, why? Also why is there such disparity between the 24 mass attacks involving firearms and the 424 (or 434 via Wikipedia, may be a typo) “Mass Shootings?” Why lie about them? Why obfuscate the number so radically? Why pretend there are so many more “mass shootings” than there when the implication you are going putting forward is a mass attack?
For the same reasons any problem gets blown out of proportion, money. Attention equals money, it equals funding both directly and indirectly. It means policy ‘wins’ and ‘doing something’ to combat gun violence and all that buzzword jazz. It means money in reelection war chests and self congratulations.
It means control, and of course they will lie to get it.
