- Blog
The Big Lie: Debunking the Gun Lobby's Dangerous Lies
Share
As Election Day quickly approaches, misinformation is already flooding our social media feeds and TV broadcasts. But the NRA has gotten a head start by spewing lies for decades. Do these sound familiar?
“More guns make us safer.”
“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to a firearm”
“A good guy with a gun is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun.”
“The Founding Fathers never wanted gun control.”
That’s right, they’re all flat out lies. Gun manufacturers and lobbyists have recited them over and over and over with no regard for their baselessness. While these lies increased gun sales and profits, they also fueled gun violence. Despite the growing death rate, pro-gun extremists peddled these lies so much, so matter-of-factly, they seemed believable. And we don’t blame you if you didn’t realize they were lies! They’ve come to define the way our society thinks about firearms, gun violence, and the Constitution. But that doesn’t make them true.Â
To fight for a future free of gun violence, we have to know what our enemies are saying and know how to call out their lies. This is the year to reject misinformation and play the game by our own rules. The NRA, the Federalist Society, and the gun rights extremists may be loud, but we’re louder. The sound of our movement will drown out their lies. Here are just a couple of the gun industry’s Big Lies, and the truth behind them.
Lie #1:
”More guns make us more safe.”
Truth:
When guns are widespread, gun violence—and deaths—increase.
If more guns made us safer, the United States would be the safest country in the world. But we’re not. Guns kill tens of thousands of people in America each year, and gun violence has mounted to the number one killer of kids and teens. This is a public health crisis and, despite what the gun lobby tells you, we can’t solve it by throwing more guns into the mix. As Americans have steadily bought more guns in recent decades, mostly for self-defense, gun deaths have also increased.
Shocker: The NRA lied. Having a handgun in the home makes someone:
7x
more likely to be shot by an intimate partner
6x
more likely to be threatened by a weapon rather than defended
3x
more likely to die by suicide
2x
more likely to die by homicide
The facts don’t lie—having a gun does little to effectively defend yourself and actually endangers you and your loved ones.
Even when firearms are truly used for “safety,” too often, it does far more harm than good. Policies like stand your ground laws encourage vigilantism and disproportionately harm Black and brown people. The Center for American Progress estimates that nine times as many people report being victimized with a gun rather than being protected by one. That’s reason enough, but consider this scenario, too: If you were drunk at a bar and got in an argument, or got caught in a fender bender that turns into a shouting match, would you rather leave with bruises or a bullet wound? The presence of a deadly weapon like a gun escalates situations, turning would-be nonviolent confrontations into deadly fights.
Lie #2:
”The Second Amendment is and always has been about an individual right to a firearm.”
Truth:
Until the NRA pushed their lies on the Second Amendment, courts agreed it only protected gun ownership of a “well regulated militia.”
The first-ever Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment—in United States v. Miller (1939)—found that the amendment says the exact opposite of what the NRA claims: It exclusively protects gun ownership of a “well regulated militia”—and not an individual right. Unless we’re talking about participation in a civilian-based army, the Second Amendment simply doesn’t protect the unlimited right to bear arms. That was the case for 200 years until the NRA’s lie made its way into the courtroom. It actually wasn’t until 2008 that the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller redefined the Second Amendment, drastically expanding its definition from a “well regulated militia” to the current interpretation of an individual right to bear arms.Â
Gun lobbyists and their politician puppets love to argue that common-sense gun safety laws have no “history or tradition.” But in reality, it’s an individual right to guns that we can’t find in history textbooks. For too long, the gun violence prevention movement has played on the NRA’s terms, allowing their erroneous interpretation of the Second Amendment to persist. We shouldn’t lose sight that the individual right to bear arms is a modern invention crafted by the gun lobby.
More Big Lies
It’s far from inevitable that almost 50,000 Americans lose their lives to gun violence each year. Lifesaving, common sense laws could stem the violence. But gun lobbyists and manufacturers care more about earning a pretty penny than protecting our lives, and far too many politicians are willing to accept their blood money. But we call BS and will continue to expose the architects of the lies fueling the gun violence epidemic.Â
In upcoming blogs, we’ll expose the NRA’s manipulation of culture, money, and facts to fundamentally redefine gun ownership and the Second Amendment to create the modern day gun violence epidemic we all live under now. Next, we’ll expose The Federalist Society, an extremist law group spouting dubious legal theories on gun laws, and threatening to pull the carpet out from under laws that are saving lives right now.