Debunking Brian Holmes’ (KTVB) Anti-Gun Blog

Brian Holmes is the worst media personality in the state of Idaho, and it isn’t even close.

You’ll notice I didn’t use the word journalist, because Brian Holmes is not a journalist. He’s far too biased in his work to ever be called a journalist, at least when it comes to his show “The 208.”

There’s nothing Holmes loves more than to attack conservatives, conservative values, and anything that goes against his radical left-wing extremist ideology.

Holmes recently ran another segment on his opinion show in which he targeted the 2nd Amendment with the typical skewed data intended to scare Americans into giving up their rights. In addition to that, Holmes targeted Idaho lawmakers who had made some votes on budget bills that dealt with mental health in an effort to pain them as hypocrites.

It’s no secret that Holmes is itching to get gun control passed in the U.S. and in Idaho specifically. Scroll through his Twitter feed after a public mass shooting and you will see what I’m talking about.

Let me be clear that I don’t believe Holmes, myself, or any sane person wants to see mass shootings happen. Where we disagree is on the solution to fixing the problem.

Gun owners believe mental health is at the center of the problem, along with a lack of God in our country, fatherless homes, and more. Gun grabbers like Holmes believe guns are the problem and that if we just ban guns, it’ll all go away, because people don’t kill if we tell them not to or take away one of their tools to do so.

Of course when Holmes put out his latest blog, he did what all anti-gun media personalities do, by stating that there have been hundreds of mass shootings in the United States already this year.

It’s a common tactic by the gun control crowd after a public mass shooting to cite information from the “Gun Violence Archive.”

First of all, guns don’t commit acts of violence. Evil people use firearms, and other tools, to commit acts of violence, but I digress.

The definition of “mass shooting” by the Gun Violence Archive is far different that that of the F.B.I.’s definition. The GVA definition is four or more individuals who are injured and/or killed in a shooting. The F.B.I. has long used a definition of three or more individuals being killed in a shooting.

But what’s really nefarious about what Holmes and the gun grabbers are trying to do, is make the public think that these very high profile public mass shootings are happening every day in the United States, even “hundreds” of times already this year.

Either Holmes knows he is purposely trying to program Idahoans to think and believe this, or he is too stupid to realize he’s doing it. I’m inclined to go with the first explanation.

Right after the recent mass public shooting in Texas, Holmes put in his article (co-written by Tracy Bringhust),

Last year there were 647 mass shootings in the United States, contributing to 20,200 deaths and nearly 40,000 injuries, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and most are committed using a specific gun, an AR-15.

Holmes wants your brain to associate public mass shootings with every shooting where four or more individuals are injured. If there is a gang shooting, which accounts for most violence committed with a firearm in the U.S. that that’s a high profile public mass shooting. (Suicide counts for more than half of firearm related deaths in the U.S.) Sure, by the GVA’s skewed definition there have been hundreds of situations where four or more people were injured by a criminal. But the belief Holmes wants you to have is that every day these horrible public mass shootings are taking place all over the country, hundreds of times every year, which simply isn’t accurate.

It’s inaccurate at best, and a complete deception on Holmes’ part to write this way without further clarifying what the skewed data means. He knows what he is doing in my opinion, but he doesn’t care, as long as he can turn people against the 2nd Amendment.

According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, ran by Professor John Lott, who the gun grabbers absolutely hate because he dives deep into the data that proves their anti-gun attacks wrong, the number of public mass shootings isn’t even close to what Holmes wants you to believe it is.

Check out this graph that covers from 1998 to 2022 and you tell me what you notice about the number of mass public shootings:

(You can read a lot more research on public mass shootings here from the CPRC.)

Let’s be clear that each and every one of these shootings is a horrible tragedy. No one wants to see loved ones or any innocent people gunned down in cold blood by these evil killers.

However, the average number of public mass shootings in a year is nowhere near the “hundreds” that Holmes wants you to think there is. It’s not even close to that. According to Lott’s data, the number of public mass shootings has increased in the last few years, but nothing like “hundreds” every year as Holmes is claiming.

You see, if Holmes was being honest with his blogging, he would do a story on The 208 every time four people were injured in some sort of shooting.

Does Holmes do any stories on the violence in Chicago anytime there is a gang on gang shooting where four or more people are injured or killed? Or does that not fit his narrative?

The same type of data is used for school shootings, where data from the pro-gun control crowd says there have been “hundreds” of school shootings every year, until you look at the stories they use and realize they call any shooting near a school, a school shooting. But in their efforts, they want you to associate a public mass shooting at a school with any shooting, even a gang on gang shooting, as a “school shooting” even if it doesn’t happen on school grounds or even if it happens after school hours in a parking lot.

Again, all actual school shootings are horrific, and we must do what we can to prevent them, but the solutions to the problem aren’t what liberals like Holmes want to hear.

Another false statement made by Holmes, and he should know better, is that the AR-15 is at the center of the “gun problem” in the United States. The F.B.I.’s own statistics, which aren’t always 100% accurate, show that falsely labeled, “assault weapons” only account for about 3% of firearm deaths in the U.S. 

I won’t go deep into the data right now, but needless to say, rifles are rarely used in most crimes in the U.S. because they aren’t practical. If AR-15’s were banned, a handgun is actually far easier for someone to use, as was the case in the Virginia Tech shooting where several handguns were used to murder more than 30 people. 

A determined killer could easily do more damage with numerous handguns if they knew what they were doing.

That leaves us with the mental health debate. Interestingly, in Holmes’ article it states,

Additionally, according to a study done by the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, people with mental illness make up a very small number of mass shooters.

This is a really fascinating and stupid take from Holmes who actually tried to downplay mental illness as a root problem. What Holmes is trying to do is show that mental illness is not at the center of the problem by citing a study that focuses on diagnosed mental illnesses by mass shooters.

Um, I’m not out on a limb when I say that if you go and kill innocent people in a shopping mall, church, or wherever, you are NOT mentally stable and you are in fact mentally ill whether it’s officially diagnosed or not.

Holmes took issue with every single conservative State Senator in Idaho, calling them out by name, claiming that their votes against numerous budget bills, some which had mental illness funding in them, was somehow hypocritical, if they believe that mental health is the issue.

Perhaps, Mr. Holmes, those State Senators don’t believe government involvement in the healthcare debate on this issue is the solution?

Did Holmes mention that possibility in his video? Nope. He wanted to make sure his viewers knew that these lawmakers didn’t care about mental healthcare because of their budget bill votes. 

The whole segment by Holmes was absurd, filled with half-truths, lies, and should be ignored by anyone who wants an honest debate on the topic.

In the end, the solution to stopping public mass shootings, or any shooting where innocent people are targeted, is by ensuring you can defend yourself and that you are prepared to do so. Additionally, we must ensure that we address mental health in a very broad way.

The problem is, the mental health fix isn’t what liberals are going to want to hear, and the solution will not fix this issue overnight.

America has thrown God out of our lives. As a country, we no longer have a belief in the One who can help us fix this problem. Getting back to God is the biggest and most effective means of fixing the mental health crisis and getting rid of the evil that permeates our society.

Along with God, we must get back to valuing life, caring about those in our community, serving one another, and more.

Additionally, we can’t keep affirming mental illnesses and calling them normal.

I’m not claiming that people with gender dysmorphia are doing most of the public mass shootings, because they aren’t statistically. But if our country can’t even agree now that men who think they are women and women who think they are men aren’t mentally okay, then the bridge to solving this problem isn’t possible.

Remember, while Holmes attacks your right to keep and bear arms, he is defending drag shows where kids are in attendance. That’s who we are dealing with here. That’s the type of person who believes you shouldn’t have a right to defend yourself.

This divide is getting worse and worse and I don’t see it closing anytime soon. My hope though is that we can find some common ground somewhere in helping prevent these atrocities.

In the meantime, you can rest assure that Brian Holmes is nothing more than a left-wing extremist blogger, masquerading as a journalist, and that he is purposefully deceiving you in the 2nd Amendment debate.