Mike Huckabee Believes More Guns Would Have Prevented Charleston Shooting

Mike Huckabee is not a man short on opinions, and he recently shared his on the issue of gun control in relation to the tragic Charleston shootings.

The 2016 Republican primary candidate has long supported gun rights, and the deaths of nine Christian church members aren’t moving that position one centimeter.

In fact, Huckabee believes that more guns, not less, would have prevented the massacre from occurring. In a recent interview with Fox News, via Mediaite, he had this to say.

“All the proposals this president and others have put forward on gun control would not have stopped this shooting anymore than it would have stopped Sandy Hook. The one thing that would have at least ameliorated the horrible situation in Charleston would have been that if somebody in that prayer meeting had a conceal carry or there had been either an off duty policeman or an on duty policemen, somebody with the legal authority to carry a firearm and could have stopped the shooter.”

And Huckabee’s supporters believe that he has the empirical evidence to prove it. Conservative blog the Hayride, run by Scott McKay, provided an unsourced chart that showed homicide rates climbed every time tougher gun laws were introduced.

Other commenters pitched in with stats of their own.

“A Congressional Research Service report published in 2013 counted 78 mass-shooting incidents over a thirty-year period in which 547 people were killed.

“That means 78 out of 118,000,000 gun owners (0.00007% of the gun owning population, or seven one hundred thousandths of a percent) are potential mass-murderers.

“On average 20 people a year are killed in mass shootings.

“Cows kill 30 people a year, wasps and bees even more.

“Every day in America, another 28 people die in drunk driving crashes. Every. Single. Day.

“And never forget that governments, primarily ‘redistributionist’ governments, murdered 262 million of their own citizens in the 20th century alone, and that gun prohibition was the first step in all those democides (sic).”

What about reality? Well, Pew Research Center, one of the most respected polling services and statistical sources in the world, stated in a 2013 report that gun homicides were down 49 percent from their 1993 peak.

While that doesn’t prove the other unsubstantiated stats right, it does prove that the gun problem isn’t as bad as it used to be.

But what do you think, readers? Are Mike Huckabee and his supporters right to say the gun control lobby is misguided and that more guns — not less — might have been the best chance of preventing the Charleston tragedy?

[Image via Politico]