A4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022“He walked it back pretty fast,”
Emmer said, declining to say
whether he asked McCarthy to
dial back his predictions.
Emmer has taken to citing
three statistics for his Republican
colleagues and donors: A gain of
18 seats would give the GOP a
bigger majority than in Gingrich’s
first days as speaker in 1995; a 30-
seat gain would be a bigger
majority than after the GOP’s
historic 2010 gains; and a 35-seat
pickup would create their largest
majority in more than 90 years.
Down in Florida, Emmer
poked fun at Gingrich for his
overly hyped predictions. “He can
use whatever numbers he wants
to use with that big brain,”
Emmer recalled telling his
colleagues.
Aside from his thick head of
white hair, Emmer couldn’t be
more different from the
professorial Gingrich. Emmer, 61,
in his fourth term representing
suburbs northwest of
Minneapolis, presents as a classic
Midwestern backslapping
politician.
His hockey gear from a recent
charity game is splayed all over
his corner office at the NRCC. He
wears a St. Cloud State Universitydifferent in size,” said Kathryn
H. Jacobsen, a professor of
health studies at the University
of Richmond. “That does not
mean that a comparison of
counts is invalid. The counts are
real and true. They are just not
ideal for scientific comparisons.”
She noted that a calculation of
the “burden of disease,” derived
from what is known as a
“proportionate mortality rate,”
might show that firearm-related
deaths among children and
adolescents are even worse than
among the military, given that
only about a fifth of the military
deaths were from hostile action.
“It is not invalid to use counts
in this way — this is not a lie —
but there are better ways to
explain the comparison when
writers or orators have sentences
and paragraphs to work with
rather than short sound bites,”
Jacobsen said.
“We would expect a much
lower rate of gun deaths for
children than police/military,”
said Kathleen Mullan Harris, a
professor of sociology at the
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill and a specialist in
health risks. “Stating these rates
are therefore less meaningful,
whereas the absolute numbers
are pretty astonishing.”The Pinocchio Test
We are often wary when two
very different categories are
compared — in this case, the
large number of children in
school vs. much smaller sets of
active-duty military and law
enforcement. We are also wary
when a single change in the data
set — from age 18 to 17 —
reduces the number enough that
the statistic is no longer correct.
We also do not know for sure
how many military deaths were
by firearms, allowing a more
direct comparison. Clearly, most
law enforcement deaths were
not by firearms.
Biden’s raw numbers add up,
but they are not necessarily
comparable — and the risk of
dying in the military or law
enforcement remains far higher
than in a child’s classroom.
Biden offered a striking
statistic that we no doubt will
hear many times in the coming
months. We can’t award his
statistic a Geppetto Checkmark,
and it’s on the edge of deserving
a Pinocchio (“mostly true”). We
will leave this unrated.people serving in the military
and police — but if someone
wanted to make a point about
the number of grieving families,
the raw count does that.”
“It is (of course) less risky to
be a kid than a cop, but it is still
the case that more kids have
died from firearms than military
and police,” Gary King, a
Harvard University professor
who is director of the Institute
for Quantitative Social Science,
said in an email. “You’d certainly
prefer your children to grow up
in a country where it is less risky
for them than police and
military, but it is also a perfectly
reasonable (alternative)
argument to say that you don’t
want that many children to die
from guns, and ‘that many’ is, by
the comparison with the police
and military, ‘a lot.’ ”
“Epidemiologists usually have
a strong preference for
comparing rates rather than
counts when the populations
being compared are veryit’s about 69; for the 670,000 in
law enforcement, it’s 56. So the
average mortality rate for the
military and police is about 15
times higher than the mortality
rate from firearms for school-age
children.
Of course children, unlike
police officers and soldiers, did
not sign up for the possibility of
being shot at. So that also
needs to be taken into
consideration.
We checked with some
leading experts and asked
whether Biden’s comparison was
kosher. The consensus was that
Biden’s math was acceptable for
the rhetorical point he was
making.
“Both are kosher — but
certainly President Biden used
the raw numbers to make a
point,” said Anne Case, a health
economics expert and professor
emeritus at Princeton University.
“The risk of dying from guns
[which is the mortality rate] is
obviously much higher foraction. It’s unclear how many
hostile-action deaths involved
firearms.
As for law enforcement, many
of those deaths were not by
firearms. In 2020, for instance,
145 were from the coronavirus,
48 were from firearms, 44 were
from traffic-related incidents —
and 172 were from other causes,
NLEOMF said. So only
12 percent died from firearms.
Together, that means the deaths
from firearms in the military
and law enforcement probably
would be no more than about
6,000, bolstering Biden’s point.
Finally, raw death numbers
generally do not tell you much.
What may be more informative
is the mortality rate — the
number of people who died per
100,000 people in that category.
That provides you with the risk
of dying.
For the 58 million school-age
children, that number is 3.67 (or
2.66 if you exclude age 18). But
for the 1.5 million in the military,drop the gun-death number to
28,559 — slightly fewer than
the total for the military and
police.
In fact, 17- and 18-year-olds
make up almost 56 percent of
the gun deaths of school-age
children. The numbers also drop
significantly — 60 percent — if
suicides are removed. There
continues to be debate among
criminologists and public health
specialists about whether
suicides should be counted as
part of gun violence. So that’s
another judgment call.
The military death figures
show that about 22 percent are
suicides.
Moreover, in the military not
all deaths are from firearms.
Deaths by accident exceeded
deaths by hostile action in all
but five of the 20 years. In fact,
over the past two decades,
8,740 service members, or 34
percent, were killed in accidents,
compared with
5,445 (21 percent) in hostile“Over the last two
decades, more
school-aged
children have
died from guns
than on-duty
police officers and
active-duty
military
combined.”
— President
Biden, in a
speech on gun violence, June 2
The president’s speech
advocating for new laws to stem
gun violence included several
statements we have fact-checked
before. But he offered a startling
new statistic that cried out for
an explanation.The Facts
First of all, we should note that
the numbers add up. Whether
they should be added up or if
these are apples and oranges is
another question.
The figure on school-age
children comes from the Centers
for Disease Control and
Prevention, which has an
interactive online database that
provides information on fatal
and nonfatal injuries and violent
deaths. The White House told us
that it defined “school-aged
children” as between 5 and 18
and “two decades” as 2001-2020.
Within those parameters,
searching for death by firearm,
you get 42,507 deaths.
For military deaths for the
same period, we turned to the
Defense Casualty Analysis
System. That database yields
25,527 active-duty military
deaths between 2001 and 2020.
Finally, the National Law
Enforcement Officers Memorial
Fund (NLEOMF) lists 3,
deaths of active-duty officers in
the 2001-2020 period.
Combining the military and
police figures, that’s 29,
deaths.
And 42,507 is larger than
29,110, so, end of story? Not
quite.
First, the number of firearm
deaths for school-age children
drops quite a bit when you do
not include 18-year-olds. There
are, of course, many students
who turn 18 while they are in
their senior year. But they are
also adults who in most states
are able to purchase firearms
such as rifles. So it’s a judgment
call whether to include them.
Removing 18-year-olds wouldB iden’s startling statistic on school-age gun deaths might be misleadingThe Fact
Checker
GLENN
KESSLERJOSHUA LOTT/THE WASHINGTON POST
One of the many items left by mourners in honor of the Robb Elementary School students and teachers killed in a mass shooting are
displayed at the town square in Uvalde, Tex., on June 1. President Biden made a speech the next day advocating for new gun laws.Republicans believe that they
will win some of these big Biden-
margin seats. According to
Emmer, the NRCC has run seven
polls of the most competitive
districts and found that
independent voters and GOP
voters have the same priorities:
inflation, the economy and crime.
Democratic voters, he said,
have focused on climate change
and the coronavirus pandemic as
their top issues.
“The voters are not that
polarized. In fact, Republicans
and independents are almost —
well not almost — Republicans
and independents, the
independents that will determine
who controls the House, are
perfectly aligned,” he said.
Emmer takes a stronger line
against the insurrectionists who
stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,
2021, than most GOP leaders take,
but he believes the ongoing select
committee investigation is not
moving middle-of-the-road voters
who will decide most close races.
“I will tell you from a political
standpoint, we’ve looked at this
across the country. The issues
that matter most to the people out
there are inflation and the
economy,” he said.
It’s clear that Trump remains
such a wild card that many
Republican candidates would
prefer that the ex-president stay
away from their races,
particularly those in the suburbs.
Yet Republicans still can’t say
that out loud.
“He makes his own decisions.
He does his own thing when it
comes to different candidates and
incumbents,” Emmer said of
Trump.
Emmer still remembers the
bitter feeling he had at the first
GOP caucus meeting after the
2020 elections, when, against the
odds, his side gained seats.
If about 35,000 votes had
broken the other way in five races,
Emmer would have delivered the
majority. He didn’t understand
the standing ovation his
colleagues gave him, likening it to
being happy with just getting to
the Super Bowl, like his beloved
Minnesota Vikings, who lost the
big game four times.
“Are they all Vikings fans just
happy to be in the big game? You
lost, you finished second. So the
goal here is to finish it,” Emmer
said.battles mostly take shape close to
the middle of the field, between
the two parties’ 40-yard lines,
maybe even their 45-yard lines.
“The big majorities of the past,
now the next 10 years, they’re
going to be adjusted, probably be
smaller,” Emmer said.
While he wants to set
expectations properly, Emmer is
still trying to build an operation
that can maximize every GOP
opportunity possible.
The NRCC’s target list starts
with 16 districts Donald Trump
won in 2020 but are now held by
Democrats, some of which are
much more GOP-leaning after
redistricting. There are 11 more
seats that Democrats hold in
districts Biden won by fewer than
5 percentage points.
After that, Emmer warns his
colleagues, Republicans are
stretching deep into Democratic
territory: about 17 seats Biden
won by a margin between 5 and
10 points, and another 31 he won
by more than 10 points.
Those “reach” seats will test
just how polarized the electorate
is, because if political minds are
really set in stone, it’s very
difficult to win seats such as those
held by Reps. Katie Porter (D-
Calif.), whose district Biden won
by 11 percentage points, and Raja
Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), whose
district Biden won by more than
15 points.
Yet Emmer touts them as
possible gains, noting that four
years ago they were held by
longtime GOP incumbents.
“These are seats that were held by
Republicans until recently. These
are seats that both candidates ran
as moderate problem solvers who
were going to come to
Washington, D.C., and actually
get something done with
Republicans,” he said, noting that
Porter’s staunch liberal voting
record is out of step with Orange
County.
In the most recent House wave
election, 2018, Democrats gained
more than 40 seats and took the
majority as the independent
voters in the suburbs recoiled
from Donald Trump’s erratic style
in the White House.
According to Cook’s analysis,
Democrats won seven seats in
districts where Trump two years
earlier had won by at least 10
points — five of which
Republicans claimed in 2020.Rep. Tom Emmer
(R-Minn.) knew he
had a problem
when Newt
Gingrich showed
up at the House GOP retreat in
Florida in March.
Gingrich led the 1994 midterm
blowout that helped Republicans
gain 54 seats and their first
majority in 40 years, the type of
midterm result that today’s GOP
lawmakers seemed to think is
possible, given President Biden’s
miserable job approval and
inflation’s continuing to soar.
As chairman of the National
Republican Congressional
Committee, Emmer needed to set
expectations right. “I’m confident
that we’re going to end up in the
majority. But what that number
is, we’ll let the voters tell us,” he
recalled telling colleagues.
He was also trying to explain a
bit of modern political science,
tamping down a building sense of
irrational exuberance among
some Republicans and utter
despair among some Democrats.
There are many more less-
competitive seats now than there
were in the 1990s, before
redistricting turned into a
science.
Plus, voters have grown so
polarized that straight-party
voting has become the norm,
leading to fewer seats that swing
back and forth, according to
Charlie Cook, an independent
election analyst. Republicans
gained more than 10 House seats
in the 2020 elections even as Joe
Biden won the presidential
popular vote by more than 7
million. That historic anomaly left
Emmer on the precipice of the
majority, needing a net gain of five
seats, but it also means there are
few seats for Republicans to win.
“Just as the ‘A’ seat on an
airliner is always a window seat, a
party cannot lose a seat they don’t
have. In modern times, big wave
elections have tended to come
from a party well behind in seats,”
Cook wrote in National Journal.
Emmer blanched in November
when House Minority Leader
Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), after
big GOP gains in Virginia and
New Jersey’s off-year elections,
predicted that this year’s
midterms could be “more
competitive” than the 2010
blowout in which Republicans
flipped 63 seats.NRCC chairman tries to temper GOP confidence in a House rout in the midterms@PKCapitol
PAUL KANEJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
ABOVE: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) meets with students last week on Capitol
Hill. BELOW: Rep. Tom Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, seen
with Rep. Lisa C. McClain (R-Mich.), has tried to tamp down exuberance about the midterms.built a database analyzing 350
unique characteristics of House
races.
Emmer is conservative but not
flamboyant, different from his
predecessor, former
congresswoman Michelle
Bachmann (R), who favored the
ideological warfare of cable news.
After supporting an early lawsuit
contesting the 2020 presidential
election, Emmer voted to certify
Biden’s victory.
But his demeanor belies a
sharp study of history. He
understands how today’s politicalgolf shirt and can rattle off the
hockey’s teams recent history in
the NCAA hockey tournament.
Emmer, in his second term
running the campaign arm,
doesn’t have every name of his
top candidates memorized — “I
forget her name,” he said of one
favored candidate, “what’s her
name?” — and cannot rattle off
every district in contention. He is
not a data maven, a contrast to his
counterpart, Rep. Sean Patrick
Maloney (N.Y.), the chair of the
Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, who onceBILL CLARK/CQ-ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES