Ignoring Facts: MSNBC’s Hayes Conflates Gun Sales With Murder Spike

Nicholas Fondacaro | July 7, 2021
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***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***

Any gun enthusiast can attest to the fact that since the start of the pandemic, it’s been difficult to find guns and ammunition as sales of both have gone through the roof. Well, MSNBC All In host Chris Hayes continued his anti-gun campaign by trying to conflate “the truly shocking proliferation of guns in the last year” with the spike in the nation’s murder rate. But the facts don’t support his case and even suggest that his argument tapped into the racist roots of gun control.

“But here’s the thing about crime, it is not all the crime that is up,” Hayes proclaimed after mocking Fox News for reporting on the crime wave and suggesting conservatives just wanted to lock people up. “What is indisputable though, is that murder and shootings are up.”

And after citing “preliminary FBI data” that found “the U.S.’s murder rate increased by 25 percent or more in 2020,” Hayes pushed his conflation of the “truly shocking proliferation of guns in the last year, which coincided with this rise in shootings and murder.”

Hayes admitted that his argument was flimsy at best, noting that “the causal relationship is not settled by any means.” But he continued anyway.

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