USA Today just handed gun owners a rare gift: a self-own admission that their anti-gun stats might not pass the smell test. In a piece by reporter Joey Garrison, they trot out Gun Violence Archive (GVA) numbers—those wildly inflated tallies disputed by every major pro-2A group from the NRA to the Gun Owners of America—while coyly noting they may differ from the FBI or CDC because GVA scrapes data from over 5,000 law enforcement, government, and media sources. Translation: it’s a Frankenstein mishmash of unverified reports, Wikipedia edits, and breathless headlines, not the rigorous, audited federal data that actually tracks crimes. This isn’t journalism; it’s activism dressed as fact, and USA Today’s footnote is their way of whispering buyer beware to readers who might notice the emperor has no clothes.

Dig deeper, and the implications for the 2A community are a goldmine. GVA’s methodology—crowdsourcing from biased media outlets that count suicides, accidents, and undetermined deaths as gun violence—regularly pegs annual firearm homicides at 20,000+, dwarfing the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (around 14,000 in peak years) and CDC’s vital stats (even lower). Pro-gun analysts like John Lott have shredded this for years, showing GVA double-counts incidents and inflates mass shootings to include gang beefs and domestic spats that don’t fit the FBI’s legal definition. By flagging their own disputed source, USA Today unwittingly validates every critique we’ve leveled: their narrative relies on junk data to fuel disarmament agendas. It’s like citing a blog for climate science—sloppy and agenda-driven.

For the 2A faithful, this is rally cry material. Share it far and wide, because it exposes the media’s house of cards. Demand real data from Uncle Sam, not NGO fever dreams, and keep pushing back—our rights don’t bend to bad math. If even USA Today has to caveat their own propaganda, imagine what sunlight does to the rest of it. Stay vigilant, stay armed, and stay winning.