By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Special to Liberty Park Press
The Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control empire, moved a story Monday that has caused a bit of laughter—actually, a lot of laughter.
“Inflated Claim About Guns and Self-Defense Returns to CDC Website” claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, better known as the CDC, estimates “a range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.”
“The change reflects the Trump administration’s staunch Second Amendment advocacy, putting the president in lockstep with a gun lobby that’s long promoted the idea that a ‘good guy with a gun’ is the only thing that can stop a ‘bad guy with a gun,’” wrote reporter Jennifer Mascia.
Ms. Mascia describes herself as “a senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace. She previously reported on gun violence at The New York Times and was a contributor to CNN’s Guns in America team.”
Whom does Ms. Mascia use to call out the CDC and the Trump administration for publishing this inaccuracy? Well, it’s none other than the Gun Violence Archive and its leader, Mark Bryant.
The Players
You’ll remember GVA, Mr. Bryant and his faulty numbers. He claimed there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses a much narrower and more realistic definition.
When I interviewed him in 2021, Mr. Bryant deflected blame for the media’s overhyping of his overhyped data.
“If the numbers are misleading, the journalist didn’t do their homework, you could make that argument. The media zeroes in on it, not us. At one point we wanted to take mass shootings out of the loop, but the phone started ringing on a daily basis. It’s important to me that we’re not misinterpreted. We’re not anti-gun. Look at our staff, over half are gun owners. I intentionally do not hire from the GVP community. I want researchers — period. We wanted to have an honest set of data, and you can use it how you want,” he claimed.
Mr. Bryant wasn’t the only anti-gunner Ms. Mascia quoted in her story. She also cited an early Trace contributor, Devin Hughes, who runs GVPedia, which she described as “a nonprofit gun violence research outfit.”
GVPedia describes as something else—something completely different. It exists to counter the reporting and hard work of just one person.
“As it currently stands, the project focuses significantly on the work and actions of one individual: researcher John R. Lott Jr.,” GVPedia says on its website.
Just to be clear and so we’re all on the same page, the two entities Ms. Mascia cites to take down the CDC are the bizarre journalistic stylings of the Gun Violence Archive and a website devoted to countering the hard work of Mr. Lott.
Before we get to the substance of Ms. Mascia’s in-depth reporting, you need to recall something she claimed about her employer, the Trace.
She bristled when the Trace was compared to Everytown for Gun Safety, another anti-gun group founded and funded by Bloomberg.
“You know The Trace is not a gun control org. We don’t lobby. We don’t tell readers to support laws. We don’t publish our opinions. We are all journalists. None of us have ever worked in advocacy. Our backgrounds are easily searchable. Why do you persist with this myth?” Mascia wrote on Twitter, now X. “Follow the bios. We all went to journalism school. The facts don’t support your claims.”
Enter Rob Romano, an intelligence associate at the Firearms Policy Coalition.
He examined the IRS Form 990s for the Trace and Everytown and found a stunning similarity. Both nonprofits share the same president, John Feinblatt.
Further examination shows Mr. Feinblatt is also listed as the two nonprofits’ principal officer. The 990s show that the Trace and Everytown also use the same phone number, 646-324-8250. Both nonprofits were incorporated in Delaware, which is known for its stringent corporate privacy laws.
He published his findings in a tweet to Ms. Mascia, stating simply: “The president of your organization is literally the president of Everytown.”
The Play
Mr. Bryant told the Trace reporter that the CDC’s number were “nothing more than gross estimates based on limited surveys.”
Mr. Hughes said they were “politically motivated laundering of disinformation that has become a hallmark of the Trump administration’s approach to all scientific inquiry, and gun violence is no exception.”
After her two journalistic gurus took their shots, Ms. Mascia then admitted that defensive gun usages are hard to track and are not counted by local law enforcement or even the FBI.
As a result, her story completely fizzled and died a quick death.
Takeaways
The Trace has always operated under a series of untruths and misconceptions.
It masquerades as a newsroom solely to provide cover for members of the corporate media who republish their stories as if they’re actual news.
Trace staffers call themselves journalists, some even have journalism backgrounds, but in reality, they’re nothing more than ardent anti-gun activists paid in Bloomberg bucks.
As to its reporting, the Trace has always made false claims. This story is no different. It’s a legacy of its founder, Michael Bloomberg, who claims—while surrounded by his well-armed, professional bodyguards—that we’ll all be safer if we would only give up our guns.
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