‘Tis the Halloween season of fear and disguise, and, in step with the holiday, the gun control ghouls are embracing a familiar tradition of their own. When facts aren’t quite frightening enough, firearm prohibitionists often manufacture their own phantoms.
While most Americans are gearing up to enjoy a little harmless costumed fun, anti-gun groups like Everytown for Gun Safety and their cohorts are busy dressing up horror stories aimed at scaring more suggestible Americans into surrendering their Second Amendment rights. Unfortunately, these stories don’t disappear after October 31st, often continuing to haunt Congress, statehouses, courtrooms, media stories, TV shows, and other venues nationwide.
Fear has long been the gun control weapon of choice. Lately, they have been dusting off some of their favorite spooky stories heading into Election Day. Leading this year’s parade of manufactured horrors is the Great Suppressor Scare, conveniently timed with historic federal efforts to roll back burdensome regulations of the National Firearms Act.
Rather than acknowledging the legitimate use of these hearing-protection devices, gun banners are resurrecting familiar Hollywood-inspired myths, conjuring up images of stealthy assassins operating undetected with sinister instruments of stealth. According to Everytown’s latest whopper, the deregulation will “allow people with dangerous histories to buy silencers without background checks.”
Never mind that under ATF’s enforcement pause on certain provisions of the NFA, suppressors remain subject to federal regulation as “firearms” under the Gun Control Act, including, yes, background checks for retail sales. But Everytown goes on, warning, “The Trump Administration could bring us back to the days of Al Capone, when silencers and short-barreled shotguns were used in organized crime to terrorize the public.”
In fact, as we’ve reported, the nationwide violent crime rate is at a historic low under the Trump administration. When facts fail to generate enough fear, Everytown and its cohort are perfectly willing to substitute a little timely fiction.
No anti-gun horror story would be complete without a shocking collection of spine-chilling “statistics” on firearm-related crime. Groups like Everytown and Giffords cook up numbers into political ammunition like witches making an enchanted brew.
Last month, the Giffords PAC announced an $800,000 advertising investment in Florida, as part of their $10 million dollar investment into anti-gun candidates nationwide, targeting U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna. Their ads featured the thoroughly discredited scare line, “Guns are now the leading cause of death among children and teens.”
As always, selectively stripping critical context from data does nothing to advance an honest debate on important public safety issues. Instead, the real trick is their distortion of reality to substitute fear-driven narratives on issues that are far too important to be reduced to politically convenient talking points.
There will assuredly be more scary stories to come. With the United States Supreme Court set to weigh in poised to rule on so-called “assault weapons” bans and more states pursuing restriction on so-called “ghost guns,” the gun control debate is once again filled with ominous labels pulled straight from a Halloween movie script. Everytown’s latest $3 million ad buy in various states warns, “MAGA extremists even want to flood our streets with deadly assault weapons.” Talk about apocalyptic imagery set for a Halloween horror story!
While these are all scary terms in search of a scary story, the scariest trick of them all could be right around the corner in electing politicians that make it their job to convince Americans to give up rights over fictitious monsters.
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