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July 6, 2015
Parroting Propaganda Earns Sen. Murphy Four Pinocchios
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has proven once again that he is truth-challenged when it comes to firearms facts. His anti-gun rhetoric has gotten so carried away that the Washington Post Fact Checker gave him four Pinocchios for a recent statement he made.
In a speech on the Senate floor on June 24, Murphy said, “Since Sandy Hook there has been a school shooting, on average, every week” – a statistic the Post called “eye-popping.” The Post reported that Murphy got his data from the “school shootings” report released in 2014 by none other than former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety. This is the same report that news outlets quickly deemed bogus due to its misleading numbers and overly broad definition of “school shooting.”
As the Post explained, “There are many ways to define school shooting. But applying the “reasonable person” standard, as is the standard at The Fact Checker, it is difficult to see how many of the incidents included in Everytown’s list — such as suicide in a car parked on a campus or a student accidentally shooting himself when emptying his gun and putting it away in his car before school — would be considered a ‘school shooting’ in the context of Sandy Hook.”
But Murphy wasn’t done yet. In the same speech Murphy also said, “In the years since [Sandy Hook], these mass shootings have become as commonplace as rain storms.” His egregious rhetoric puts his credibility into question, and makes it clear that Murphy is playing politics. His goal is to resuscitate the failed Obama/Bloomberg gun control agenda that was rejected by his Senate colleagues in April of 2013.
It’s time for Murphy and other lawmakers to stop accepting made-up “statistics” from anti-gun advocacy organizations. His energies would be far more usefully deployed if he joined NSSF in our commitment to fix the National Instant Check Background Check system so that those who are disqualified from firearms possession by mental health issues are prevented from gaining access to firearms.
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