Bloomberg Website Blames ‘High-Caliber’ Handguns for (Nonexistent) Rise in Gun Deaths

Authors Current Events Jordan Michaels

Here’s a story for you.

Middle-aged “suburban dads” pretend they’re Navy SEALS by purchasing “high caliber” handguns. Those dads subsequently sell those “high-caliber” handguns at gun shows to illegal gun runners. Those gun runners “flood” the streets of cities across the country with those “high-caliber” handguns, and more people die because “high caliber” handguns are more lethal than .22s.

Sound plausible? I didn’t think so either, but that’s exactly the story The Trace wants its readers to believe.

The Trace—an “independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization” funded by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund (ha!)—ran an article this week linking the prevalence of 9mm and .45 caliber handguns to a supposed rise in firearm lethality.

The article, titled, “America’s Obsession with Powerful Handguns is Giving Criminals Deadlier Tools,” contains a shocking amount of misdirection, so you have to cut through unnecessary descriptions of gunshot wounds and concealed carry law to get to the meat of their argument.

It boils down to two sets of statistics.

First, the authors cite a data set they “obtained” from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that indicates a rise in the number of 9mm and .45 caliber handguns recovered from crime scenes. The Trace doesn’t reveal the locations of those crime scenes or the size of the data set. They also (conveniently) don’t provide a link or PDF document to the data itself.

They simply say that “police” have been recovering more “high caliber” handguns over the past few years. The reader, apparently, is to assume these numbers come from police departments all across the country, but the article never actually specifies.

recoverdguns

(Photo: The Trace)

But for the sake of argument let’s say their data is legitimate.

Their next set of hard evidence is meant to convince readers that the increasing prevalence of “high caliber” handguns is resulting in more lethal shootings (i.e., more people are dying from gunshot wounds than in previous years).

The article cites two studies. The first was conducted at Denver Medical Center from 2000-2013 and found that the number people admitted to the emergency room for gunshots who died from their wounds increased by six percent every two years.

The second study was conducted by the Baltimore Sun and found that one in three shooting victims now die in the city, up from one in four a decade ago.

That’s it. Based on this evidence cherry-picked from two random cities, The Trace wants its readers to believe that more people are dying from gunshot wounds, and middle-aged “suburban dads” with Glock 19’s are to blame.

toptentraced

Large caliber weapons? Really? According to who? Seems to me that like they do with “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines they’re they’re just making stuff up! (Photo: The Trace)

Here’s a statistic for the folks at The Trace: from 1993 to 2014, firearm-related homicides have dropped by more than half (7 – 3.4 per 100,000 people). That statistic truly describes the state of “gun crime” in the United States, but does it get even the briefest of mentions in The Trace’s article? Nope.

The anti-gun industry is grasping at straws. They know it; we know it. And articles like this only serve to emphasize the fact that they don’t have a leg to stand on.

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  • Sam Bowles December 19, 2016, 5:33 am

    Has anyone searched the Wiki leaks for Bloomberg and Clinton emails?

  • Mike Watkins December 10, 2016, 1:48 pm

    What is that saying? “Any caliber is fine as long as it begins with a 4 or a 5.”

    Here’s another saying: ” anything that comes with the name “Bloomberg ” attached is bound to be stupid garbage.”

  • Ed December 9, 2016, 1:44 pm

    interesting second chart. that term “large caliber” should send shivers down the spines of all the libtards. But what do they mean by large caliber? the .357 and .38 are the same diameter and similar weights. these are also pretty mush the same diameter as the 9mm and .380 which are only ever so slightly smaller. what the hell are they talking about? more Bloomberg bullshit.

  • Larry December 9, 2016, 12:17 pm

    Like everything else the Bloomy group comes out with, this is just more total BS. The little old 22 caliber pop gun has killed more civilians that any other caliber weapon in existence.

  • mb December 9, 2016, 9:53 am

    And the gun caliber responsible for more deaths? not .45, not .357…. just little old .22.

  • 50bmg api December 9, 2016, 9:40 am

    Ted Nugent was treated very harshly when he CORRECTLY identified the Talmudic hoard as the driver for ALL anti-gun agenda(s).

    This is the same hoard that was foaming at the mouth when Trump won!!

    • Arik December 9, 2016, 10:05 am

      That is singling out one specific group of people, Jews, as being the driving force behind it, thus, yes, antisemitic. And you are embarking on the same train with your comment. How many Democrat Jewish legislators in the Congress, as all of the Democrat Party is knee-jerk anti-gun? This “president” is [half] black and anti-gun. There are plenty pro-gun Jews, and Jews that voted for Trump. Sadly, the majority is what you stated, anti-gun DemocRATS, but that does not entitle you to lump together all of us.

      • mark December 9, 2016, 12:21 pm

        Hi, I have to agree with Arik. Yes, I am Jewish,American, pro gun and voted for Trump. I served in the IDF (you would be surprised how many Americans served in the IDF). Every Jewish person I know is pro-gun. I live in rural area but most people including Jews live in urban areas. Since most folks in urban areas dont like guns, are Democrat (which dont like guns) it may be that Jewish people fit the majority of urban Democrats. However, there are many groups of all races, creeds and religions that fit the profile of urban Democrats. Please keep that in mind when trying to single out any one particular group. I will do the same. Thanks

        • perlcat December 9, 2016, 2:46 pm

          Exactly. I am not a group; I am an individual. I know democrats who are very reasonable, intelligent people who just happen to have a different view of government. To lump them together with the raving loonies like Bloomie just creates a divide that cannot be bridged. People like Hillary found out the hard way that when you tar a lot of good people with the “deplorable” brush that they find someone else to vote for. Don’t make the mistake of driving potential allies away.

          • sudon't December 10, 2016, 8:13 am

            Right. I’m a liberal – which is why I support liberal gun laws. A lot of people, especially many so-called liberals, seem to have forgotten that it was liberals who traditionally supported gun rights in this country. This makes sense because “more rights for more people” is exactly what liberalism is supposed to be about.
            I think what many of the anti-gun articles show is that disinformation cuts both ways. It’s not only the Right that is susceptible to fake news, although admittedly, much more of it comes from that direction. People simply don’t cast a critical eye on articles telling them what they want to hear. And it’s the failures of our education system that has led to an electorate unable to discern between actual news, and B.S.

      • 50bmg api December 10, 2016, 10:32 am

        Aah yes, flushed out the (((rat’s nest))) I see! Lol

        The ZOG will be changing, 2016 will be the year to remember for generations to come bubbies…

    • 50bmg api December 10, 2016, 10:42 am

      Aah yes, it look like I flushed out the (((rat’s nest)))! LOL

      The ZOG will be replaced by the rightful owners. 2016 will be the year to remember for generations to come bubbies…

  • fred December 9, 2016, 8:39 am

    Is “The Trace” going to make it onto the ‘fake news’ lists the leftists are floating around post-election?

    Will Google, Facebook, and Twitter start filtering them?

    (yeah, ha ha ha!)

    • perlcat December 9, 2016, 2:48 pm

      They don’t mind their own “fake news”; it’s a medical syndrome much like falling in love with the smell of their own farts.

  • Ken Sparrow December 9, 2016, 8:32 am

    What a load of BS in 2015 we had two people in our family killed in their own home not by some high caliber gun but a .22 cal gun. You don’t need a 45.40,9mm to kill someone

  • Thor's Hammer December 9, 2016, 7:39 am

    ANY ascription to the views of Bloomberg lack any basis in reality. If there is any person currently living in any large metropolitan area in the US that believes their lives would be safer if guns were banned, let them hold forth and compare the figures of…..let’s say Chicago for instance, and total the number of legal versus illegal firearms incident to acts of gun violence in that city. The numbers will chill you and, if not convince you, will, at the very minimum, show exactly how fatuous the entire “ban handguns” movement is. The only real difference between ignorance and stupidity is ignorance CAN be cured. Stupidity, not so much.

  • Barry December 7, 2016, 9:28 am

    This is just global warming style BS.

  • TheGunnyRet December 7, 2016, 4:45 am

    As always the Liberal Marxists Left contort words and facts to suit there agenda…
    The Noise is getting louder by the minute…
    There rejection by the recent election results has proven how desperate they have become…

  • Dilligaf December 7, 2016, 12:13 am

    Bloomberg is so anti-gun, he will say anything to try and scare Americans (just like the liberal controlled news media) into thinking his way without one shred of fact, evidence or proof. This guy just really needs to GTFO

  • Will Drider December 7, 2016, 12:05 am

    Pure ignorance pathedically promoting anti gun propaganda. WTF Is a high caliber handgun? I actually found the Article. They do address velocity and diameter, they just picked a bad term for what they were trying to discribe as a “more leathal” cartridge/handgun. To be fair, there was a lot of factual information. There was also a lot of inaccuracies, historical hearsay and conclusions that could not be correlated or substantiated without a wild ass guess that there was a direct relationship.

  • ev December 6, 2016, 11:35 pm

    How is a 357 a “large caliber” pistol but a .38 isn’t? Maybe because nobody would believe that a 9 is a “high power” round and their data makes no sense if they can’t add 9mm.

  • John Yossarian December 6, 2016, 9:32 pm

    “Let them tote 12 gauges”, says Shannon Antoinette of Everytown for Gun Stupidity. “0.730 inches ’tis not a high caliber!”

    • Aardvark December 9, 2016, 12:40 pm

      And then follow Biden’s lead and just “shoot through the door” when someone knocks.

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