Anti-Gun Group “Everytown” Deliberately Misrepresents Gun Death Data

Gun control advocates play very fast and loose with the data around gun violence, and if you aren’t trained on how to decipher and interpret statistics you may easily fall for their misrepresentations of the facts.

Recenty, the anti-Second Amendment activist organization “Everytown” To do this, I used Instagram.

“Guns are the #1 killer of college-aged people in America” They wrote just days after the school closed. Shooting Three students died at Michigan State University. This is a horrifying statistic that you will find hard to believe. It gives the impression that campus shootings are responsible for all of these deaths.

Good thing that isn’t actually true.

I tried to find the data they referred to in the fine print at bottom of the image. Notably, they included no actual links or web addresses—and that’s probably because, as best I can tell, they don’t exist.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Wonder Online Database does provide Information on the underlying causes of deaths, but it doesn’t offer an age-based breakdown of that data:

So I kept looking. On another part of the CDC’s website, I found an age-breakdown for causes of death with Information Through 2018. Everytown’s image claimed their data came from 2021.

Still, it’s hard to imagine there would be a tremendous change in causes of death over the course of three years, and the old data set indicates the leading causes of death for 15-24 year olds were unintentional injuries, suicides, and homicides (in that order).

This is supported by others Research I found this online.

These are just a few of the many tracks. It’s important to remember that it is much rarer for a young person to die in general than it is an older one. It’s also less likely a young person will die from an actual health issue. So, it isn’t surprising at all that the leading causes of death are related to tragic events, accidents, suicides and homicides—especially when you remember that younger people make riskier decisions and are far more likely to be Get involved a higher rate of violent crime than any other age group. (This is because the prefrontal cortex, which controls decision making skills, isn’t fully Form Up to age 25

Does this mean that there is a mass wave of gun violence targeting youth? Hardly.

This data shows that violence and injuries are responsible for less then 10% of all deaths in America.

Everytown was able to alter the data to support their claim that guns pose the greatest threat to college-aged students.

Gun control supporters use the oldest trick in the book to pretend that there is more gun violence in the country than it actually is. This is because they lump suicide deaths in alongside homicides. More than half of Americans believe that there is more gun violence in the country. die Suicide is the leading cause of gun-related death. 3 percent of gun deaths are classified under the heading of “other” (which would also include accidents).

Suicide is a terrible act. Those who try it with guns are more likely than those who choose other methods. It is misleading to equate these deaths with mass shootings and homicides. They aren’t the same thing.

Furthermore, data doesn’t suggest that suicidal individuals simply give up when they are unable to access a gun. 

Japan, for example, has the Second While industrialized nations have the highest suicide rate, they also have the lowest suicide rates. Strenuous gun controls. All handguns are prohibited. Only shotguns or air rifles are permitted. Suicide prevention is vital, but gun control does not solve the problem.

Everytown claims that guns are the ‘leading’ cause of death among college-aged kids they are lumping in deaths by suicide and accidental events (like a hunting accident) with homicides and mass shootings—all while working to convince you there is an epidemic of the latter when, as previously pointed out, homicide is actually the third leading cause of death in this age range.

These occurrences are still extremely rare in a country that has 330 million citizens, despite the fact that they have been broken down by category. Keep in mind that I was able to find data for a much wider age range than Everytown claimed (15-24 vs. 18-25) and the numbers still showed 12,044 deaths from accidental causes, 6,211 suicides and 4,607 deaths from homicides.

This country does not have a gun violence epidemic. If anything, there is a mental health epidemic and those who need help the most aren’t getting it because people with an agenda like Everytown are trying to use their plight to ban guns vs. expanding education and care.

This is fear mongering from a group determined to take away your ability of defense. It’s important Americans learn to dig into data like this so we can put this kind of manipulative tactic to bed.

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