Michael Bloomberg is out with a new ad highlighting that there have been 263 school shootings since President Trump took office in January 2017, and he’s placing the blame squarely on Trump for his unwillingness to act.
21 students are shot every day—because of Trump’s unwillingness to act. Between protecting the NRA and our children, he's made his choice. Which is why we need to beat him. pic.twitter.com/qUXTKxXWow
— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) December 16, 2019
Where does Bloomberg get his numbers? Probably from Everytown for Gun Safety, the organization he founded and largely bankrolls.
But you might remember back in 2018 when the Washington Post committed an act of journalism and fact-checked Everytown’s numbers (they’d claimed there’d been 18 school shootings between January 1 and Feb. 14, 2018). “It is a horrifying statistic. And it is wrong,” wrote the Post.
The thing is, you have to remember what Everytown considers a school shooting. A kid shooting a BB gun at a bus window was a school shooting. An adult man who committed suicide in his car in the parking lot of a building that used to be a school was a school shooting. A gang-related shooting in a school parking lot at midnight is a school shooting.
Bloomberg’s ad ends with Waukesha High School, and Cam Edwards, editor of Twitchy sister-site Bearing Arms, added some much-needed context.
Bloomberg included an incident at Waukesha High School where a student was shot by a school resource officer after pointing what appeared to be a real gun at a student’s head. Other incidents include gang and drug related shooting during non-school hours. 1/ https://t.co/5pJF6Y56qf
— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) December 17, 2019
Bloomberg’s idea of “gun safety” is taking young minority males and “throwing them up against the wall” to frisk them in the hopes of finding a weapon.
Then, if one is found, he wants those young men to go prison for several years for a non-violent possessory offense. 2/
— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) December 17, 2019
And of course Bloomberg’s only answer is to go after legal gun owners, rather than address the staggering rise in school violence, which more often than not doesn’t involve a gun at all.
Just an awful ad from an awful candidate. 3/3
— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) December 17, 2019
Dana Loesch had some issues with the ad too.
Most of which is driven by gang violence. Not sure how that is Trump’s fault. https://t.co/Skytq8JRbi
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 16, 2019
BTW — while Bloomberg fudges stats on older teens and gang violence re: homicides with illegally possessed guns, remember that Dems voted down an attempt to include gang members in the red flag system they want to impose on you: https://t.co/O3ehicEI6h https://t.co/i8tdauZ46I
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 17, 2019
Loesch writes at her website:
He purposefully says “students” to intimate that madmen are targeting kids at schools when in reality, every available statistical resource from BJS to FBI Uniform Crime Reports to countless pediatric surveys (like this one) show that the tragedy is due to older teenagers involved in gang activity and suicide. While this doesn’t subtract from the unfortunate loss of life, it is an important distinction. Bloomberg conflates this point and carefully omits this important detail.
Instead of examining why it seems that youth today have a shorter fuse (or examining at closer detail how they obtained their illegally possessed firearm, either through the black market or by stealing it from somewhere, including their parents — which then existing negligence laws may come into play with additional charges), Bloomberg chooses to bizarrely … blame Trump.
Included: Dems are pro red-flagging you but against red-flagging the gang members driving the homicide rate for which you are blamed. https://t.co/E5NuIu8UOA
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 17, 2019
Anyone surprised? Really, anyone?
— Bob Thornburgh (@KJ5IK) December 17, 2019
You could have stopped at Bloomberg misleads…
— Minuteman Shirt Company (@MinutemanShirts) December 17, 2019
Nobody cares what Bloomberg thinks. He’s just wasting his money while he drinks his small sodas
— JeffColey (@JeffColey7) December 17, 2019
In the meantime, the latest spending bill expected to pass Congress includes $25 million for “gun violence research” by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health.
BREAKING NEWS: Gun violence prevention research funding I requested for the @CDCgov and @NIH has been APPROVED in end-of-year budget talks.
This is the first funding like this in 20 years, and it will help keep our families whole.
Read more⬇️https://t.co/yxqD6ZhuQl
— Rep. Lucy McBath (@RepLucyMcBath) December 16, 2019
Related:
'GOOD WORK'! WaPo 'completely CRUSHES' Everytown's bogus school shootings stat https://t.co/qhmBqaY8Jd
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) February 15, 2018
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