Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg's $10 million Super Bowl commercial includes a misleading statistics on violent gun deaths among children, according to Fox News. The network also found that Bloomberg's ad depicted an adult victim of a violent crime as a child.
In the emotionally-charged 60-second Bloomberg spot, Calandrian Simpson Kemp discusses her son's violent death. "On a Friday morning, George was shot. George didn't survive. I just kept saying, 'You cannot tell me that the child that I gave birth to, is no longer here.' Lives are being lost every day. It is a national crisis."
An un attributed statistic then flashes on the screen: "2,900 CHILDREN DIE FROM GUN VIOLENCE EVERY YEAR."
Where did the number come from?
Reporters at Fox found that the source for Bloomberg's data is the candidate's own anti-gun group. A recent report by Everytown for Gun Safety arrived at the 2,900 figure by including teenagers 18 and over in its calculation.
Bloomberg's ad implies the statistic only includes young children, but when the Washington Free Beacon's Stephen Gutowski removed the young adults from the calculation, the total number was cut by nearly half.
The victim was an adult, not a child
While obviously tragic, the Bloomberg ad is wrong to suggest that Kemp's son was a child. According to Texas state appellate court documents obtained by the news network, the shooting victim, George Kemp, was 20-years-old when he was killed.
The Texas court filings state that when police officers arrived at the shooting scene, "they discovered a deceased male, later identified as George Kemp, age 20, lying face down in a pool of blood." Additionally, the documents stated that the death was the result of a "gang-related shooting" where "two groups of young men," including Kemp, had met "for a fight."
None of these details were mentioned in Bloomberg's Super Bowl commercial.
"It is regrettable but not surprising that salient facts didn't make the ad," an NRA spokeswoman told Fox News. "Bloomberg cherry-picked aspects of the story to push his agenda. Bloomberg pushes for confiscation of guns and stripping regular Americans of our right to self-defense while he enjoys armed security 24/7. He sees America as his kingdom, and the rest of us as his peasants."
Meanwhile, a representative from the Bloomberg campaign defended the commercial.
"Ask any grieving parent whose 18- or 19-year-old son or daughter was shot and killed, and they will tell you they lost a child," Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman Julie Wood told Fox News.
The ad is scheduled to be aired after the Super Bowl halftime show at Sunday's game where the Kansas City Chiefs will take on the San Francisco 49ers.
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