FOX BUTTERFIELD, IS THAT YOU? With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat? “A Pew study released Tuesday finds that Americans think gun violence has escalated when in reality it’s way down from two decades ago. The violence has dropped, meanwhile, even as gun ownership has increased.”

UPDATE: Reader Roland Hess writes: “Wouldn’t it be ironic if the imagined threat that Americans were arming themselves against had its roots in a creeping sense of insecurity perpetuated by the gun grabbers as they preach about the epidemic of gun crime? If you keep telling a free people there is a wave of violence just over the horizon, they are likely to take appropriate measures, and those may not square with the solutions preferred by the mandarins.” That would explain the Pew poll showing that most people think gun crime is up when it’s really down. . . .