David Barton,
Pseudo-historian and professional liar for Jesus and the gun lobby
Pseudo-historian and professional liar for Jesus and the gun lobby
Long-time readers of this blog may recall how David Barton went on American TV to try to fool Americans into believing the US Constitution was taken 'verbatim' straight from the Bible and so America should be a Christian theocracy, by lying about what was in the Bible - a tactic that depends on the fools he dupes taking his word for it and not fact-checking his claims.
Religious right-pseudo historian David Barton insists that gun control will not lessen the death rate in the U.S. because England does not "allow guns and they've got a knife death rate higher than we have in some of our major cities." pic.twitter.com/BOEdBrV7Op
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) December 17, 2021
Not only does he appear to be unaware that the UK is not just England (a common enough mistake American's make, but a curious degree of ignorance for someone who poses as a historian!), and guns are banned throughout the UK; he is also lying about the knife death rate in the UK. According to a freely available House of Commons Library research briefing, in the year ending March 2021, there were just 224 homicides involving sharp instruments (including broken bottles) in England and Wales. The worst area was the area covered by West Midlands Police, which includes the major industrial cities of Birmingham, Coventry, West Bromwich, and Wolverhampton where the knife crimes in total, not just deaths, stood at 156 for the same year.
By contrast, according to a 2021 CNN analysis of 40 US Cities:
The rise in violent crime is an epidemic that is happening "all across the country," said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and a result of three major factors: the impact of Covid-19 on communities and first responders, the fallout of the social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, and the surge in gun sales since the start of the pandemic.In other words, the knife-related deaths in England and Wales (awful though they are), far from being what David Barton lied about, are at levels of which those trying to reduce US gun deaths in the USA can only dream. By contrast, the number of gun deaths in UK is minuscule compared to those in the USA with total anula gun deaths in the entire UK being well below those in an average US city in a month.
At least nine major cities have broken their previous annual homicide records with about three weeks left to go in 2021. There have been 513 homicides this year in Philadelphia, higher than the previous total of 503 in 1990. There have been 230 homicides in Indianapolis, breaking the previous record of 215 set just last year.
These increases are not isolated to any particular region of the country. Other cities with record homicide totals include Louisville, Kentucky; Columbus, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Rochester, New York; and Portland, Oregon. Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Nashville are also on pace to reach record homicide numbers by the end of the year.
Los Angeles recorded 352 homicides so far this year, and Chicago has seen 756, with year-to-date increases of 12% and 4% respectively. In Houston, homicides are up 18% from 2020.
Barton's chosen platform from which to lie to America is a right-wing evangelical Christian channel which laughably describes itself on its website as:
VICTORY News is here to bring you daily news you can trust—always delivered in a spirit of faith. Stay informed and encouraged with faith, facts and freedom!As 'Christians' they would know the power of truth to 'set you free' and so they also know that lies achieve just the opposite. The last thing they want their dupes knowing is the truth when, as a recent Pew Research survey showed, affiliation to the protestant churches in the USA, including the white evangelical churches, is collapsing at an accelearating rate and unaffiliated ('None') numbers are doubling every ten years. They know the only way to keep the faithful inline and paying their tythes is to keep them fooled and enslaved by believing the lies they pump out.
And David Barton knows that too. He also knows how it would hit the profits of the gun industry and so the size of their donations to right wing political causes such as the Repugnican Party if gun sales were curtailed and controlled - which is why he went on a right-wing Christian TV 'news' channel to lie to Americans and probably why the right-wing Christian TV 'news' channel invited him on to lie to Americans.
When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that needs people to believe falsehoods
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