What we’ve been hearing is that gun violence is constantly on the rise. People are being murdered on a scale that blows the mind and as school shootings are increasing, people wonder if their child is going to be shot at school. Well, in my opinion, that fact is absolutely false.

Gun deaths in the United States have been radically declining since 1993. According to the Centre for Disease Control, there were 7 gun-related homicides for every 100,000 back in 1993. By 2013, that number had been cut in half to 3.6 gun-related homicides per 100,000. During that same time period, the number of privately owned firearms in the United States doubled from 185 million to 357 million. So, the number of firearms was increasing in the United States while the number of gun-related homicides was declining. However, everyone in the media seems to claim that more guns equal more crime. Well, those who believe that statement are going to have to explain why more guns do not equal more crime or gun-related homicides. They say that there are about 33,000 gun-related deaths in the United States, but they neglect to show that 2/3 of these deaths are suicides. The vast majority of gun-related deaths are people who are killing themselves.

Where do gun involved deaths take place? Well, the idea from the Left is that states with lax gun laws have higher rates of gun violence and gun crime, which is completely false. Gun-related crime takes place in mostly America’s major cities. Virtually all of these major American cities are all governed by one party and I will let you take a guess at what party that is. Almost 60 percent of American firearm homicides occur in 62 cities of the country’s largest metros. In order of gun violence, gun-related homicide and gun-related death; New Orleans, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, Baltimore, St. Louis, Richmond, Memphis, Cleveland, and Philadelphia, lead the list. That is 9 Democratic mayors and one Republican – that of which being Miami. The single strongest predictor of rates of gun violence and gun-related death is race, unfortunately. It is my belief that, culture has a likelihood of causing homicides and cultures differ obviously. If you look into poor white communities, there’s a higher rate of homicide there as well cultural issues and poverty.

Guns are not the chief reason for gun death. In other words, you need bad people picking up guns in order for guns to fire themselves. Now, people who are responsible and own guns keep them at home locked away. Those guns have not killed anyone and these guns will not pop out of their safes and murder someone in cold blood unless someone makes them do so.

Rifles versus hand guns – people keep talking about banning rifles. The Left is very focused on banning rifles, which is a really interesting thing to do when you think about it, considering rifles are not more dangerous than hand guns. In 2014, there were 8,100 total firearm homicides, 5,500 were committed with a handgun and 248 total were committed with a rifle. You’re significantly more likely to be killed in a gun-related incident from a handgun shot than you are to die from a rifle gunshot. You’re also more likely to die from a blunt object like being hit with a fist than you are to be killed with a rifle. 660 people this year were killed with hands, fists, or feet, kind of like Bruce Lee. The idea of rifles being more dangerous is ridiculous – of course, rifles have a greater muzzle velocity, that’s what rifles are made for – that’s why it’s not predominantly used in crimes.

The idea of school shootings and how school shootings are on the rise is also not true. There was a study that came out pretty recently showing that the number of school shootings has not been climbing the slightest bit. In 2012, according to the gun violence archive, 138 people have been killed in school shootings, which includes the Parkland massacre, and it includes any incident that took place on a school campus during times that students and faculty was on school grounds. Between 15 to 20 people are killed per year on schools’ grounds, which means that 2.6 percent of all youth homicides occur at school. Your child is about 40 times more likely to die by getting into your medicine cabinet or any other household product than they are to be shot at school after you drop them off at school.

According to researchers at North Eastern University, mass school shootings are extremely rare, 4 times as many children were killed in school in the 1990s compared today. This isn’t to make light of anything that happened and this isn’t to say that not every school mass shooting is a tragedy it — definitely is. I know you’ve heard this – there were 18 school shootings, 18 mass shootings in the first 3 months of the new year. It’s not true. It’s just a lie and it’s made up for every town for gun violence. Gun safety put these lies out and it’s just not true. Mass shootings are also not happening that often in the United States. In fact, on a per capita basis, the United States does not rank number one in deaths from mass shootings in the Western World – we rank eleventh. From 2009 to 2015, here are the countries that ranked above the United States in the mass shooting deaths rates per million. Norway, Serbia, and France. In mass shooting frequency, we rank 12th after Austria, France, Switzerland, and Norway.

Here’s the proxy for using mass shootings to discuss this topic anyways. Mass shootings are a really bad way to go about having a gun control discussion because they are not representative of gun violence in totality. The victims tend to be younger and more racially diverse. The perpetrator also tends to be a little bit younger. Most gun murder victims tend to be between the ages of 15 to 35. Two-thirds of those gun violence victims are black in the United States. In mass shootings, it’s racially diverse, so, why are we using mass shootings as a proxy to have a discussion about broader gun violence? It doesn’t make any sense. The media likes to choose really ugly incidents they can focus on so then they can claim that all of us don’t have sympathy for those who were killed in the shooting.

So how do we begin to have conversations about ways to prevent school shootings?