This is a bit rich.
The same day PolitiFact declined to flunk Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren for lying about the death of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checker also awarded a right-wing activist a “mostly false” statement for a factually true statement.
With a press like this, what need is there for the Democratic Party to hire spokespersons?
Former Major League Baseball player Curt Schilling claimed on social media that law-abiding gun owners stop crimes “2.5 million times a year per the [Centers for Disease Control].”
Though his sourcing is incorrect, the number he cites is not a mere fabrication. It is based on a well-known study.
The 2.5 million figure comes from a 26-year-old survey conducted by Florida State University criminal justice professor Gary Kleck and his colleague Marc Gertz. They surveyed a random sample of adults, asking them whether they had used a firearm in the past year to protect themselves or property, “and how they had used it,” PunditFact, which is a property of PolitiFact, notes.
However, even acknowledging that the figure cited by Schilling is based on actual research, PunditFact gives the former ballplayer a “mostly false” rating anyway.
His sourcing is incorrect and some experts disagree with his number anyway, says the fact-checker.
Remember: This is the same group that claimed this week it could not give Sens. Harris and Warren a bad grade after they lied and said a Ferguson police officer “murdered” Michael Brown. You may recall PolitiFact said this week of its refusal to correct the Harris/Warren lie: “Because the significance of Harris’ and Warrens’ use of the word is open to some dispute, we won’t be rating their tweets on the Truth-O-Meter.”
It is good to see PolitiFact has got its groove back.
“The number of such instances is not known, and no estimate has been done by the CDC,” the fact-checking group said of Schilling’s tweet. “A report requested by the CDC cites various studies, including one by a Florida State University gun researcher based on a 1993 survey which estimates that people use guns about 2.5 million times per year in self-defense, when they believe a crime is being committed.”
It adds, “That study did not try to determine whether the people in those instances were actual gun owners or whether they were law abiding during the incident. But the researcher says studies as recently as 2018 have produced estimates as high as 6.1 million.”
The group continues, explaining its “mostly false” rating by noting that “other gun researchers” simply disagree with the 2.5 million figure. Oh, OK then.
Schilling’s “statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False,” PunditFact notes.
I suppose now is a good time to note that the CDC did, in fact, conduct its own surveys between 1996 and 1998 on defensive gun uses. When analyzed in conjunction with Kleck’s 1993 study, those large-scale CDC surveys, which were limited to four to seven states as opposed to all 50, “indicate likely over 1 million defensive uses of guns” a year nationally, Reason magazine reported.
Does this mean PunditFact gets a “mostly false” rating of its own for claiming “no estimate has been done by the CDC”?
(h/t Stephen Gutowski)
