Sins of Omission: Why Are Gun Control Operations So Intellectually Dishonest?

These are tough times for America’s gun control industry. They lost one of their most dedicated compliant political champions when what’s left of Joe Biden shuffled off to Delaware in January. As Joe haltingly climbed onto the Acela for that choo-choo ride home, the White House Ministry of Gun Control that he created as a sop to his string-pullers in the civilian disarmament industrial complex, closed up shop and its employees went back to their jobs working for anti-gun orgs across the fruited plain.

Meanwhile, as part of the prior regime winding itself down, the compliant functionary who the oatmeal-brained old man installed at the top of a weaponized ATF (and who oversaw the persecution of lawful gun dealers, yanking hundreds of federal firearms licenses, and unilaterally redefined what a firearm is and who is considered “in the business” of selling guns) got while the getting was good.

Possibly even worse for the cause of civilian disarmament, the entire Department of Justice is now under new management. Not only did the bad orange man issue an executive order instructing the executive branch to protect Second Amendment rights, but the newly-installed head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has signaled that she intends to treat the Second Amendment as — hold on for this — a civil right.

So…long story short…these are indeed trying times for those who toil in the fields of hoplophobia. And that may explain why the intern who runs Giffords’ social media accounts thought they could get away with a claim like the one in the tweet at the top of this post.

According to something called Ideastream Public Media, “community organizers” — the number of which you can probably count on both hands — “rallied at Cleveland City Hall Wednesday to call for a restoration of federal funding for gun violence prevention programs.”

TRANSLATION: The spigot of federal tax dollars that’s been funding these oh-so-important-and-effective “gun violence” interdiction programs is being shut off, threatening the slush fund that’s been supporting their anti-gun lobbying for God-only-know-how-long.

The U.S. Department of Justice said the cuts to the Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, totaling an estimated $180 million so far, are designed to eliminate government waste.

Among the groups present at Wednesday’s event was Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance, a violence interruption nonprofit, which said it recently lost a $2 million federal grant — most of which was unspent.

Legacies Empowered, another nonprofit in attendance, provides job training and mental health programs, including for those affected by gun violence.

“Funding for our organizations, [that’s] more people we can impact,” said Chardé Hollins, executive director of Legacies Empowered. “So when we are defunded, it impacts the amount of reach that we can have to save lives.”

Exactly how those millions of (as yet) unspent dollars have been “saving lives” wasn’t immediately clear. But it’s not the overblown claim of the community organizers that caught our eye. It was the statistic Giffords used in their tweet in an attempt to sound the alarm and instill fear and loathing.

Gun deaths in Cleveland were at a 5-year high in 2023. The DOJ’s response? Pulling funding from life-saving CVI programs. This is abandonment, not public safety.

That sounds really bad. Things must be rough in Cleveland. But why did Giffords cut off that 5-year period they cite in 2023? Surely there’s more current data available.

Maybe it has something to do with this:

The city of Cleveland saw a dramatic drop in homicides in 2024, according to numbers provided by the city’s data dashboard.

As of Tuesday, the city’s total for 2024 was 105 homicides. That is well-below the recent high of 180 in 2020 and the 2018 total of 116.

Is it possible that Giffords was unaware that someone had toted up the number of homicides in Cleveland for 2024? Why, it’s almost as if Giffords intentionally excluded the 2024 numbers to make the violence problem in Cleveland look worse than it really is.

Oh wait…don’t look now, but the numbers for 2025 are even better, at least so far . . .

Cleveland police have investigated 15 homicides through the first quarter of the year, the lowest number in that time period since 2016.

This year’s total is a 48% decrease from the same time last year, when 29 were recorded. In 2022 and 2023, the city had 36 slayings during the first quarter in each of those years.

If only Giffords had known. Surely having the complete information would have changed the hysterical picture they were trying to paint of the “gun violence” problems in Cleveland.

Or not. Maybe — just maybe — Giffords doesn’t really have a vested interest in showing significant the reductions in homicides over the last 15 months.

After all, like all anti-gun orgs, Giffords went all apoplectic in June of 2022 over the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which promised to make it easier for average Americans to carry a firearm. They shrieked . . .

Six unelected judges—three of whom were nominated by President Trump—just issued a decision that will drastically affect the safety of a large swath of the US population. The gun lobby wants a world where everyone is carrying guns, but more guns in public will only escalate gun violence, leading ever more people to feel unsafe in their own communities. Some of those people will then buy guns, which in turn will further escalate the cycle of violence. 

Yet the descent in to anarchy they foretold didn’t take place. Giffords’ prediction of spiraling violence and streets running ankle-deep with blood didn’t pan out. At all. Not even in a deep blue urban environment like Cleveland.

You know what else happened in June of 2022? This . . .

Ohio’s permitless carry law kicked in just 10 days before Bruen was handed down. So not only did SCOTUS affirm individuals’ right to carry a gun (by outlawing may-issue permitting schemes), but Ohio’s legislature eliminated the need to ask government for a permit altogether. That made it easier than ever for Clevelanders to carry…exactly what Giffords feared most. And eighteen months later, crime began to drop.

Remember, though…correlation doesn’t equal causation. Far be it from us to claim that the elimination of artificial barriers to armed self-defense in Ohio resulted in significantly safer city streets and fewer violent crime victims. No, we’re not saying that at all.

But we’re not not saying that, either.

 

[h/t Rob Romano]