On Friday's New Day on CNN, as host Alisyn Camerota confronted the ACU's Matt Schlapp over NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre's speech at CPAC, the CNN host at one point tried to blame Indiana for Chicago's crime problem as the two got into a debate over gun control.
Camerota also complained about LaPierre being "divisive" even though she has on her own show stoked division by defending those who call the NRA a "terrorist group" and by tolerating guests calling the NRA "child murderers" without any pushback.
As Schlapp was responding to one of her complaints that LaPierre was "stoking that division," he recalled that "Where we have the most gun control, we have the highest crime."
The CNN host then jumped in: "That's not true. That's just not true. In Connecticut, after Newtown, they cracked -- they made all sorts of different new laws and measures, and now their crime and homicide rate went down."
It is noteworthy that, if one looks at violent crime statistics over a longer time period -- from 1994 to 2016 -- both Connecticut and Florida have experienced a drop in violent of crime of about 45 percent even though Florida did not pass the types of gun restrictions that Connecticut did in the 1990s or more recently. And as for homicides in Connecticut, there has been a recent rebound in the number of homicides in 2017 over where they were the previous year.
Schlapp responded: "I live in Washington, D.C. I read those statistics in Chicago, and they have the highest incidence of gun control, and it's not controlling crime."
Camerota then moved to blaming Indiana for Chicago failing to keep its own crime down: "Because it's coming in from Indiana where the gun control is lax. You know that."
After Schlapp responded, "You're blaming Indianans for the crime in Chicago? That's not fair," the CNN host returned to complaining about LaPierre's speech:
Is this a moment of unity? Or is it a moment of division? And if it's a moment of unity, why do you have Wayne LaPierre saying that people who want some measure like the kids in Parkland and their parents -- some measure of expanded background checks, that they're trying to take away freedom -- they hate freedom?
