CNN host to Muslim-free gun store owner: Do you realize gun deaths 'way outnumber' attacks by Muslims?
CNN host Carol Costello pointed out to a Florida gun store owner who banned Muslims that his effort to save lives would ultimately be ineffective because firearms were involved in tens of thousands more deaths of Americans than Muslims were.
In a video posted to YouTube following a recent shooting at military recruiting offices in Chattanooga, Florida Gun Supply owner Andy Hallinan appeared in front of a Confederate flag and declared that his store was a "Muslim-free zone."
"The goal of the video was to offend as many people as I could," Hallinan told Costello in an interview on Tuesday. "So we could start a conversation about the political correctness that has become overly extreme here in the United States, and causing loss of life that we could prevent if we looked at Islam for what it is."
"We do believe that Islam is evil at its core, and that the Koran is built to establish a one-world order, a caliphate," he insisted.
Costello pointed out that it would be difficult to determine who was Muslim based on a person's name because many of the gunmen involved in Islamic inspired attacks in the United States had names like "Elton Simpson," who attacked the "Draw Prophet Muhammad" cartoon contest.
"Isn't that ineffective, what you're doing?" Costello asked. "That's not going to help anything. It's just going to incite things, don't you think?"
"It's to get the conversation started about Islam, and that the core tenets is to establish a one-world order and do so by violent acts," Hallinan repeated.
"But you do realize that the number of gun deaths in this country, there are many, many killers and they way outnumber Muslim Americans who kill?" Costello pressed. "Way... 190,000 since 2000. There were 37 Muslim-Americans who specifically targeted people because of their political or religious beliefs."
Hallinan, however, argued that "studies show the more trained people [with firearms] per population, the crime rate always goes down."
"One hundred percent of the time," he declared. "It's never been proven wrong."
In an analysis of crime data published last year, Stanford law professor John Donohue determined that the "totality of the evidence based on educated judgments about the best statistical models suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates" of violent crimes.
In fact, researches have said that the theory that more guns equal less crime has been "completely discredited."
Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast July 21, 2015.