In the recent vice presidential debate, Tim Walz made a troublingly disingenuous claim about gun violence research, stating, “And we can start to get data, but here’s the problem, if we really want to solve this, we’ve got folks that won’t allow research to even be done on gun violence.” (57:49 into debate video) Walz’s statement isn’t true and seems more about scoring political points than solving real problems.
Walz’s claim falls apart when we look at the facts. In 2019, the U.S. government gave $25 million for gun violence research. As a governor, Walz should know this. His failure to mention this important funding makes us wonder if he’s trying to mislead people or if he’s not up to date on what’s happening.
While Walz complains about a lack of research, there’s a real problem with hiding data, and it’s happening under leaders from his own political party. Since January 2023, New York City, under Mayor Eric Adams, has stopped sharing information about crimes involving guns. This is strange because the rest of New York State still shares this important information.
New York City’s way of counting gun crimes makes things even more confusing. They only count it as a “shooting incident” when someone is actually hit by a bullet. This means they don’t count times when someone shoots but misses. Because of this, their numbers don’t show the full picture of gun-related crimes.
Here’s where it gets really odd: According to New York State, gun-related violent crimes went up by 15.1% in 2022. But during the same time, New York City said their “shooting incidents” went down by 18.8%. These numbers don’t match up, which shows there’s a big problem with how gun violence is being reported.
This mismatch in numbers does more than just confuse people. It makes the gun violence problem in New York City look smaller than it really is. This makes it harder to solve the problem because we don’t have a clear picture of what’s really happening.
It’s ironic that Walz is calling for more research while big cities like New York are actually hiding important information. This shows how politicians are playing games with a serious public safety issue. While Walz and others claim we need more research, the real problem might be that some places are hiding or changing the data we already have.
This situation shows we need honest and complete reporting on gun violence. Only with accurate information can we hope to make good decisions and create effective plans to reduce gun violence in our communities.
Written by,
Sam Antar
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