Former Vice President Joe Biden’s mid-debate claim that “150 million people have been killed since 2007” by gunfire while he was attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders’ voting record on gun control is being roundly pounded by the press, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) issued a statement declaring, “If Biden was Pinocchio, right now his nose would be about the size of a California Redwood.”
Biden’s gaffe came one day after he referred to himself during an appearance in South Carolina as a “candidate for the United States Senate.” According to the New York Post, “jaws dropped” when Biden made the remark. The debate can be viewed here.
Is this a signal Biden’s gaffes are more than just “old Joe making another mistake?” While the former vice president and former U.S. senator has been dropping embarrassing verbal bombs for years, he seems to be doing it more often now.
As noted by KING 5 News’ fact checkers in Seattle, Biden’s claim Tuesday evening that he wrote the so-called “Boyfriend loophole” legislation was false. What’s worse, he really picked the wrong place to make that claim since the real author is Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who was standing with him on the debate stage Tuesday evening. She was visibly angered and the gaffe opened up one of numerous breakdowns in decorum during a debate that has already been likened to a “clown show.”
The debate performance was so chaotic that in the aftermath, according to Fox News, President Donald Trump tweeted, “Just give me an opponent!”
Eventually, the former vice president conceded the point to his rival, the KING fact checker noted.
Biden has also gotten into the habit of claiming he is “the only one” who has done this or that, and Tuesday evening was no different. As noted by Fox News, “Biden insisted he is the only candidate who can push major gun legislation through Congress if elected.”
According to the Washington Examiner, the Biden campaign said their candidate actually meant to say 150,000 people have been killed with firearms since 2007.
“That number, if it were true,” the newspaper noted, “would be significant as the Census Bureau estimated the U.S. population was 329.45 million in 2019. Fewer than 40,000 people died in gun-related deaths in 2017, which was the highest total since at least 1968, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Even a cursory glance at the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report would show Biden’s claim to be wildly inflated, and when he or any of the other Democrats talk about “gun violence victims,” they habitually lump together suicides, homicides and accidental deaths.
That would have to be the case after Liberty Park Press checked back to 2007 and did some math. Between 2007 and 2017, according to one set of FBI data, there were 103,109 homicides involving firearms.
However, in 2016, the FBI crime report offered some revised homicide data dating back to 2012 and using those numbers, plus the 10,982 gun-related slayings in 2017, the total jumps to 103,501.
By adding data from 2018, the total climbs to 113,766. That’s still a far cry from 150,000, much less Biden’s bogus figure of 150 million. (FBI data for 2019 homicides is not yet available.)
As noted in the Fox News report, “The heavily inflated figure misrepresented gun deaths in America since 2007. From 2007 to 2017, the number of firearm deaths in the U.S. was 373,663. This number includes both violent firearm deaths and unintentional or accidental deaths, according to the Center for American Progress, an organization that promotes progressive values.”
KING5 News said CDC data suggested the number of gun-related deaths from 2007 to 2018 was 413,403.
But CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb’s response to Biden was scathing.
“We saw Joe Biden lose his cool a couple of times on that stage,” Gottlieb said, “but when he blurted that ridiculous claim about gun-related deaths, we wondered if he had lost his mind.”
