Reality Check: Fact-Checking Piers Morgan's Anti-Gun Claims
Last week, RealClearPolitics posted video of WXIX-TV's Ben Swann, a local reporter in Cincinnati, giving the "politically incorrect truth" about the Second Amendment. In his "Reality Check" segment on the local news, Swann explained the right to bear arms in a historical context.
On Tuesday's broadcast of WXIX-TV's local news, Swann used his segment to fact check the heated debatebetween gun control activist Piers Morgan and gun rights activist Alex Jones.
There is one particular stat that Morgan has been citing for weeks, and it was the center of his argument while debating radio show host Alex Jones on Monday night, according to Swann. Morgan continues to claim that gun deaths have dropped dramatically since they banned guns nearly 15 years ago.
SWANN: The U.S., despite being number one in gun ownership, is number 28 in gun homicides, with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people. Of course, Piers Morgan isn't calling for the U.S. to be more like El Salvador and Honduras; he's calling for us to be more like Great Britain. So what do the numbers look like there?
The U.K. has the second highest overall crime rate in the E.U. The U.K. has the fifth highest robbery rate, the fourth highest burglary rate. But more importantly, the E.U. named Britain as the most violent country in the E.U. In the U.K., there are 2,034 per 100,000 people. That puts it way ahead of even South Africa with a rate of 1,609 per 100,000 people. In the United States, we're not even in the top 10. The U.S. has a violent crime rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents.
So what this means for you is that while people like Morgan insist that the U.S. can learn from Britain -- well, maybe we can? But we might learn is that violent crime is not the result of a gun or any tool, it is the result of the heart of men and women. And that is Reality Check.
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