Republicans have demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to accept America’s mass shooting pandemic as the price for maintaining the sanctity of the Second Amendment. While they won’t say that out loud, what they are always eager to talk about is their claim (false) that the murder rate is much higher in blue states with strict gun laws than in red states where gun-toting is encouraged and extolled. Like the fascist dictators they admire, they believe that if they shout this untruth loudly and frequently enough, it will take firm root in the minds of the MAGAverse.
It turns out, however, that according to FBI statistics, red states lead the nation in murder rates. The top five most murderous states, per 100,000 residents, are Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri, all states that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. In fact, in 2020, per capita murder rates were 40 percent higher in states won by Donald Trump than in those won by Joe Biden. Eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.
Fox News and other extreme right-wing media outlets constantly blame the rise in murders on Democrats, screaming that they are soft on crime, so what can the public expect of these “thug-huggers?” This is nothing more than yet another bare-faced lie perpetrated by the relentlessly lying media mavens of the hard right. Like Lt. Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) in A Few Good Men, the pretend journalists of the reactionary right “can’t handle the truth.”
The conclusion from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports is that strict gun control measures, while not perfect, work to keep murders by gun down. Red states with lax gun safety measures in place suffer more homicides than blue states.
Unfortunately, you won’t hear this from red state governors and attorneys general. They continue to broadcast the lie that their states are safer than blue states. Moreover, they claim—again falsely—that big cities (the majority of which are Democratic) have higher crime rates and shooting incidents than their less densely populated, more rural jurisdictions. Once again, the FBI data tells a different story. Rural America is no safer than its urban counterpart.
It’s a shame and a disservice that the mainstream media does not constantly call out the lies being spread by the Republican message machine and its Fox News propagandists. These perpetrators of deceit have absorbed the lessons of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf and Nazi mouthpiece Josef Goebbels to the effect that “if you tell the big lie often enough, people will believe it.”
Harriet Hageman, the newest Trump toady, who defeated Liz Cheney in Wyoming’s Republican primary, was quick to follow the Trump-Fox-Goebbels pattern: She claimed that Cheney never called her to concede, whereupon Liz released the recording of her concession call.
How unfortunate it is to live in a world where truth has a difficult time catching up with incessant falsehoods.
Dick Hermann
August 19, 2022
It turns out, however, that according to FBI statistics, red states lead the nation in murder rates. The top five most murderous states, per 100,000 residents, are Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri, all states that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. In fact, in 2020, per capita murder rates were 40 percent higher in states won by Donald Trump than in those won by Joe Biden. Eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.
Fox News and other extreme right-wing media outlets constantly blame the rise in murders on Democrats, screaming that they are soft on crime, so what can the public expect of these “thug-huggers?” This is nothing more than yet another bare-faced lie perpetrated by the relentlessly lying media mavens of the hard right. Like Lt. Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) in A Few Good Men, the pretend journalists of the reactionary right “can’t handle the truth.”
The conclusion from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports is that strict gun control measures, while not perfect, work to keep murders by gun down. Red states with lax gun safety measures in place suffer more homicides than blue states.
Unfortunately, you won’t hear this from red state governors and attorneys general. They continue to broadcast the lie that their states are safer than blue states. Moreover, they claim—again falsely—that big cities (the majority of which are Democratic) have higher crime rates and shooting incidents than their less densely populated, more rural jurisdictions. Once again, the FBI data tells a different story. Rural America is no safer than its urban counterpart.
It’s a shame and a disservice that the mainstream media does not constantly call out the lies being spread by the Republican message machine and its Fox News propagandists. These perpetrators of deceit have absorbed the lessons of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf and Nazi mouthpiece Josef Goebbels to the effect that “if you tell the big lie often enough, people will believe it.”
Harriet Hageman, the newest Trump toady, who defeated Liz Cheney in Wyoming’s Republican primary, was quick to follow the Trump-Fox-Goebbels pattern: She claimed that Cheney never called her to concede, whereupon Liz released the recording of her concession call.
How unfortunate it is to live in a world where truth has a difficult time catching up with incessant falsehoods.
Dick Hermann
August 19, 2022
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