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The NRA's Tweet After The Michigan Shooting Proves It's Removed From Reality

by John Haltiwanger
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The NRA has the worst timing.

Almost exactly a month after the Orlando shooting, less than a week after two black men were gunned down in Louisiana and Minnesota and five police officers were killed in Dallas, and within hours of a shooting that left at least three dead in Michigan, it tweeted stats from a conservative news outlet about gun violence.

It is true that gun violence, overall, has declined since the 90s (which is linked to an overall decline in violent crime).

But mass shootings are on the rise, and gun violence is still clearly a major problem in the US as it continues to claim over 10,000 lives per year. This doesn't even take into account the more than 20,000 individuals who commit suicide with firearms every year.

Simply put, the NRA continuously fails to paint a comprehensive and accurate picture of gun violence in the US, which was once again on display on Monday afternoon.

This was also apparent following the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile, a black man in Minnesota who had a valid permit to carry a gun and was shot right after reportedly informing a police officer he had a weapon on him.

But the NRA, which famously champions people's gun rights in the wake of almost any highly publicized shooting, didn't address the incident publicly until a day and a half after it occurred.

Comparatively, it took the NRA just several hours to issue a public statement on a shooting that claimed the lives of five police officers in Dallas.

There is an apparent double standard in terms of how the NRA responds to shootings. In other words, it appears the NRA only cares about the gun rights and lives of a certain demographic of Americans.

Meanwhile, the organization remains content to mislead the public about the actual level of gun violence in the US.

Here is the truth:

The US ranks number one in firearms per capita worldwide -- guns are ubiquitous in this country. America also has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate in the developed world.

The fact of the matter is where there are more guns there is more death.

Guns killed more people in the US in the past half century than all the wars in American history -- that is an actual fact.

The narrative the NRA continues to push is not only fallacious, it's dangerous and an insult to the victims of gun violence.