When millions of viewers tune in to the Super Bowl on Sunday, they’ll be hoping for a unifying, authentic American football experience, hopefully with some hilarious advertisements thrown in for good measure, as has become the norm in recent years. But they’ll also be forced to sit through a highly-misleading gun control advertisement from anti-gun activist and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, who is throwing millions of dollars into advertising in a desperate bid to buy the Democratic nomination.
Of course, Bloomberg has every right to spend his money to spread his views and advocate his anti-gun message. But in this case, the advertisement is extremely misleading overall and downright false in parts.
The Bloomberg commercial uses the sad story of an African American mother who lost her son, a star football player, to a shooting. It then claims that “2,900 children die from gun violence every year,” and that “Mike’s fighting for every child because you have a right to live.”
Where does he get this number of 2,900 children killed every year from gun violence? From an anti-gun group’s misleading study that counted 18- and 19-year-olds as “children.” Gun expert and Washington Free Beacon journalist Stephen Gutowski calculated that when you remove these adults, the true number falls by 50%.
Additionally, the sad story of the young man killed by gun violence is indeed tragic but misleading in this context. George Kemp, the man from the story, was killed at 20 years old, according to Fox News, therefore not as a child. And, it was apparently a gang-related incident. Of course, it’s still sad any time a young man dies prematurely, but the truth of this story is not in line with how Bloomberg portrays it.
Bloomberg also fails to explain how any of his anti-gun proposals would actually stop criminals from killing people. Even a fact-check from the liberal Washington Post found that numerous proposed gun control measures would not have stopped many of the last decade’s mass shootings.
And conveniently omitted from this advert were all the positive aspects of gun ownership in America. Bloomberg’s commercial left out the fact that law-abiding gun owners use firearms in self-defense millions of times annually. The reality of self-defense evidently doesn’t fit his fact-flexible narrative.
Critics have pilloried Bloomberg for this shoddy advertisement, and rightfully so.
An NRA spokesperson said, “Bloomberg cherry-picked aspects of the story to push his agenda. Bloomberg pushes for confiscation of guns and stripping regular Americans of our right to self-defense while he enjoys armed security 24/7. He sees America as his kingdom, and the rest of us as his peasants.” Meanwhile, Reason’s Nick Gillespie lamented the advertisement as a wasted opportunity, pointing out that Bloomberg could have focused on his economic moderation and private-sector experience, concluding that because the candidate instead chose to embrace division and misinformation, he “lost his vote.” Amen to that.
If candidates want to push their anti-gun agenda, that’s their right. But Bloomberg ought to show more respect to Super Bowl viewers than to think they’re so stupid they’ll fall for his falsehoods and shoddy statistics.
