South Carolina Debate: Biden says 150 million Americans killed in gun violence since 2007, that's half the population!
Seven Democratic presidential candidates converged at the Charleston Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina, on Tuesday, February 25, for the 10th debate of this election season and it was quite a noisy affair. The debate took place just four days ahead of the primary in the Palmetto State and a week before the Super Tuesday, March 3.
The common target in the debate was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who is leading the fray after doing well in all three states that have gone to polls so far: Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
Eyes were also on former vice-president Joe Biden who considers himself the favorite to win the SC primary owing to his strong support among the African-American voters who constitute a big chunk of the eastern state’s population. Biden’s lead, however, has come down following Sanders’ impressive run and the former No. 2 in Washington DC made another goof-up during the debate on Tuesday.
The 77-year-old claimed that 150 million people in the country have been killed by guns in the last 15 years or so. Touting his record on gun control, a topic which was widely debated in Charleston, and taking a dig at Sanders, the 77-year-old said: “Imagine if I said we give immunity to drug companies, we give immunity to tobacco companies. That has caused carnage on our streets. One hundred and fifty million people have been killed since 2007 when Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability. More than all the wars.”
If one goes by Biden’s estimates, then it would mean almost 50% of America’s population would have been killed in gun violence. As per the Census Bureau, the US population in 2019 was little over 329 million and 39,773 people lost their lives in gun violence in 2017, the highest since 1968, as per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, beating the earlier record (39,595) registered in 1993.
He meant 150k, says his campaign
Biden’s campaign later clarified his remark to say that the presidential hopeful actually meant 150,000.
“He meant 150k. He’s used that line multiple times before,” the Washington Examiner quoted Biden’s campaign as saying. This is not the first time that the veteran has made such blunders while making a public speech and supporters of the opposition party even mocked him for this.
The former vice president emphasized the efforts towards gun control he has made over the decades, including the 1994 assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill of 1993. He even found himself in an exchange with rival Amy Klobuchar, a senator from Minnesota, over the authoring of law to close the ‘boyfriend loophole’.
When Klobuchar said she was the author of the bill to close the boyfriend loophole that allows domestic abusers to get a weapon, Biden interrupted to say it was him who wrote that law.
The former Delaware senator confused it with the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 and said: "I wrote the bill, the Violence Against Women's Act” when Klobuchar pushed back on his claim of having written the law that closed boyfriend loophole.