The New York Yankees hit a foul ball on Friday when it decided to go full-woke anti-gunner in the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The baseball team decided it would be a good idea to capitalize on the national debate over firearms by posting a series of virtue-signaling tweets giving statistics on deaths resulting from gun violence. But it was what they left out that was most telling about their Twitter campaign.
It started with an announcement made earlier in the day. “In lieu of game coverage and in collaboration with the Tampa Bay Rays we will be using our channels to offer facts about the impacts of gun violence,” the Yankees said in a statement posted to its Twitter account on Thursday.
What followed was a day full of tweets designed to scare people into supporting the Democrats’ gun control agenda. Here is a small sampling:
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) May 26, 2022
58 percent of American adults or someone they care for have experienced gun violence.
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) May 26, 2022
Firearms were the leading cause of death for American children and teens in 2020.
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) May 26, 2022
Each year, more than 4,100 Latinx people die from gun violence in the U.S. and 13,300 are shot and wounded.
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) May 26, 2022
Every three hours, a young Black man dies by gun homicide.
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) May 26, 2022
Sounds pretty horrible, doesn’t it? Almost makes you want to institute a nationwide gun buyback program. In fact, I’m sure if we show these tweets to the criminals who illegally own the firearms that are used in the vast majority of gun crimes, they would gladly give up their pistols and rifles.
But it wasn’t what the baseball team posted that was important. It was what they did not post. At no point in their social media diatribe did the Yankees mention mental health or the conditions that lead to gun violence in the places where it occurs the most: Democrat-run cities.
The Yankees also failed to mention the fact that despite having so many scary-looking guns, the United States does not lead the world in gun violence. Breitbart News reported:
Limiting the comparison of the U.S. and other countries on the basis of this one category allows gun control proponents to sidestep the opportunity to contrast the U.S. and its next-door neighbor, Mexico. (On August 17, 2016, Breitbart News reported that although Mexico had “restrictive” gun control — including comprehensive background checks — it still had a homicide rate over five times higher than the rate in the U.S.)
Additionally, if you abandon the limited comparison of “high income” countries and simply look at gun violence around the world on a per-capita basis, it is quickly apparent that the U.S. record is not as dismal as some would have us think.
Even Politifact acknowledged that the U.S. ranks 20th in the nations with the most gun violence. This means 19 countries have a much higher rate of gun violence than America.
The Yankees also seem to have forgotten to include the inconvenient factoid I mentioned earlier: The overwhelming majority of gun crimes are committed using guns that were obtained illegally. In fact, even The Washington Post acknowledged that gun crimes committed with legal weapons made up less than one-fifth of all gun crimes.
This means the left’s favored gun control laws would do next to nothing to prevent these crimes from occurring. What makes this especially apparent, given the fact that the only gun legislation leftists are proposing has nothing to do with curbing the proliferation of illegally-owned firearms. Instead, they are seeking only to restrict gun ownership among responsible American citizens.
Quite curious, isn’t it?
But wait! There’s more!
Also missing from the Yankees’ Twitter rant was any mention of Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) — situations in which an individual uses a firearm to defend themselves or someone else. These instances occur far more frequently than crimes and suicides committed using firearms. There have been a myriad of studies measuring the frequency of defensive gun uses.
The most conservative estimate is 60,000 incidents in which someone is forced to use their weapon in self-defense. The highest is 2.5 million. I won’t bore you with the details, but if you want to know more, I wrote about it previously.
But we know exactly why the Yankees and their comrades in the anti-gun lobby declined to mention these other helpful factoids about guns and gun violence, right? They are not trying to get to the bottom of gun violence in America – they are trying to advance an agenda. They want fewer Americans owning firearms, period. It does not matter to them if it makes people less safe. If it makes them feel good, they are on board regardless of the actual impact it will have.
