Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
During an interview with USA Today, published this week, musician Dave Matthews blasted people who say “it’s the guns.” Matthews offered no ideas or policy solutions while he pushed for politicians to do something while also saying, “No one is coming for your guns.”
Matthews said, “I’m so stunned by the ability of our leaders to be able to convince us that we’re powerless in the face of gun violence and that the vulnerability of innocent people in this country is a sacrifice we have to make if we want to be truly American. It’s so mind bogglingly cruel. It’s insanity.”
He added, “I have no idea how people can stand up and say it’s ‘not guns’ and ‘it’s not the NRA,’ it’s just mental health.”
Matthews talked about having friends who own guns and keep guns in their homes, but he claimed that even those gun-owning friends want to figure out a way to control who can and cannot own a gun. He added, “No one is coming for your guns.”
But it seems fair to point out that someone is going to have to come for the guns of some people, if Matthews’ friends’ desires for only certain people to possess guns becomes a reality.
Matthews noted, “I don’t like being afraid of my children being murdered at school. I’ve had to deal with my kids being at university when there is a shooting and they’ve lost friends. If we can just shout about weird things, politicians don’t have to sit down and figure out solutions to real issues like health care and gun violence. That kind of madness of distraction makes me crazy.”
While focusing on mass shootings, Matthews did not mention that such incidents comprise a minute portion of gun deaths in America.
For example, Mayors Against Illegal Guns claims there were “56 mass shootings that occurred in 30 States during the 4-year period from January 2009 through 2013″ and on March 26, 2023, FOX 17 noted Moms Demand Action volunteer Christian VanEyl saying, “Mass shootings are only less than 2% of the gun deaths in the United States.”
A February 3, 2022, Pew Research analysis of gun deaths in the U.S. points out that “mass shooting incidents in the U.S. account for a small fraction of all gun murders that occur nationwide each year.”
On the other hand, over 2,700 people were killed in gang-street crime shootings in Chicago during the former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) single term in office alone.