While attempting to fact check Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday on his claim that there is no correlation between gun laws and gun deaths, CNN Newsroom host Alisyn Camerota failed to not only consider what Abbott actually said, but cherry-picked her statistics in an attempt to prove him wrong.
During an interview with State Rep. Nicole Collier, Camerota read a quote from Abbott, “One of the things that your governor said on Wednesday was that ‘there are more people shot,’ he said, “’every weekend in Chicago than there are schools in Texas. We need to realize that people who think maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it hasn’t solved it in Chicago and L.A. and New York, it disproves that thesis,’ he said.”
Abbott’s point was about gun violence that occurs so often in Chicago that national reporters have stopped talked talking about it, but a rare school shooting gets all the headlines.
However, Camerota decided to talk about all gun deaths in the entire state, “Actually, he’s wrong, Texas is the state with the highest amount of gun deaths. Here’s the graphic. Texas is number one. Far and away, of all of the states with gun deaths. Then California, Florida, Georgia, Ohio. And so it seemed as though he was casting a lot of blame in different directions, but he wasn’t talking about guns in Texas changing anything.”
All those states are among the most populated in the country, so of course they have the most gun deaths. Additionally, Texas has a gun death rate of 14.2 while Illinois has one of 14.1 according to the same CDC data Camerota cited. The two are 26th and 27th respectively in the nation.
As for Collier, she agreed with Camerota, “You’re right. It’s so callous. That’s a callous deflection on what–what’s– really going on in Texas. In fact, we’ve had several, at least five mass shootings while he has been in charge. So, yes, we need to really evaluate. We don’t need to look anywhere else to see what their violence, what their statistics are.”
There is something about gun control that leads the media to push misleading statistics. Maybe their army of fact checkers can check them on occasion before they go on air.
This segment was sponsored by ClearChoice.
Here is a transcript for the May 27 show:
CNN Newsroom with Alisyn Camerota and Victor Blackwell
5/27/2022
3:16 PM ET
ALISYN CAMEROTA: One of the things that your governor said on Wednesday was that “there are more people shot,” he said, “every weekend in Chicago than there are schools in Texas. We need to realize that people who think maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it hasn’t solved it in Chicago and L.A. and New York, it disproves that thesis,” he said.
Actually, he’s wrong, Texas is the state with the highest amount of gun deaths. Here’s the graphic. Texas is number one. Far and away, of all of the states with gun deaths. Then California, Florida, Georgia, Ohio. And so it seemed as though he was casting a lot of blame in different directions, but he wasn’t talking about guns in Texas changing anything.
NICOLE COLLIER: You’re right. It’s so callous. That’s a callous deflection on what–what’s– really going on in Texas. In fact, we’ve had several, at least five mass shootings while he has been in charge. So, yes, we need to really evaluate. We don’t need to look anywhere else to see what their violence, what their statistics are. Let’s look at us. Let’s find out what we can do and, not and putting more guns in the classroom is not going to help. You know, we need our teachers to teach. We already pay them too little to do too much. And so we cannot put this pressure on them. We need to make sure that we have the funding to provide the resources that are needed to support our schools. This Operation Lone Star that the governor has been promoting, his own program with $3 billion. We could use those dollars to secure the borders of our schools to protect the life and safety of our children.