One of the left’s favorite tactics is to tell the masses to outsource their thinking to so-called “experts” rather than using their own faculties for reason. One classic example of this came during the confirmation hearing for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said that she could not define what a woman is because she is not a biologist. This “appeal to the experts” technique is very effective for leftists, who know they control the academic spheres where these elites so often reside.
However, when the science doesn’t match up with the left’s talking points, their “trust the experts” mentality completely goes out the window. Such is the case at the CDC’s gun violence “fast facts” webpage, which once stated that defensive uses of firearms happen between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the United States, “based on a review of various studies.” These studies were sponsored by the CDC itself.
However, the gun control lobby was not happy with that 2.5 million number, so they pressured the CDC to remove their own statistics. Aren’t leftists supposed to trust the experts? Yet, the CDC agreed to the request and quietly removed the number of defensive gun uses from the fast facts page. Thus, statistical evidence was buried so a leftist narrative could dominate.
When pressed for an explanation on why they had so easily capitulated to activist pressure, the CDC weakly explained that they removed the numbers because different studies yield different results, and because of “the desire to keep the fact sheet short and succinct.” These lame excuses do nothing to hide the partisan nature of this move. If every study had to be removed if another study contradicted it, we wouldn’t have any studies left. And while I acknowledge the value of brevity, it is impossible to have an honest conversation about gun violence without talking about defensive gun uses. That’s like talking about curbing knife violence without talking about how we need knives to prepare our food. The next time someone belittles you for not siding with what the experts have to say, remind them that experts can be lobbied just as easily as politicians.
