(NaturalNews) During the second Democrat presidential debate, frontrunner Hillary Clinton made an astonishing – and wholly inaccurate – claim about guns and gun violence.

"Since we last debated in Las Vegas, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns. Two hundred children have been killed. This is an emergency," she said, as reported by The Associated Press.

During the same period, she also claimed that there have been 21 mass shootings, "including one last weekend in Des Moines where three were murdered."

Perhaps because she's a liberal Democrat and former Obama Administration official, Clinton isn't used to being accurately fact-checked by the mainstream media and, as such, she feels she can say just about anything without being challenged.

However, the AP actually did fact-check her, and accurately.

In fact, the AP reported that over the period of time that Clinton referenced:

The Gun Violence Archive has recorded 11,485 gun deaths in the U.S. so far this year, an average of just under 1,000 per month, making Clinton's figure appear to be highly exaggerated. The archive had more detailed data for children and teenagers, showing 70 from those age groups killed by firearms since the Democratic candidates debated Oct. 13 - not 200 as she claimed.

Blame Big Pharma

Asked to explain the discrepancy (the lie, in other words), the Clinton campaign demurred, saying the candidate was quoting 2013 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and 2010 figures from the Children's Defense Fund – which were obviously not from the time frame referenced during her debate. Also, only one person died in the Des Moines shooting, not three.

This is the kind of statistical debauchery Americans who value the liberties and freedoms guaranteed them by the Constitution are used to hearing, especially when the subject is the Second Amendment and liberals like Clinton are doing the talking.

In fact, guns are far from the deadliest thing in American society, and that's not simply a matter of opinion; the government's own statistics bear this out.

"Drug overdose deaths are the leading cause of injury death in the United States, ahead of motor vehicle deaths and firearms (deaths)," the Drug Enforcement Agency announced recently, as cited by CNS News.

In other words, Big Pharma – not the firearm industry – kills the most Americans every year, more than guns and cars combined.

During the most recent year that data is available, 2013, the government found that 46,471 people died from drug overdoses, and prescription painkillers and heroin caused more than half of them.

'We buried a child to drug addition'

"Sadly this report confirms what we've known for some time: drug abuse is ending too many lives while destroying families and communities," Acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg said as he released the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment.

"We must stop drug abuse before it begins by teaching young people at an even earlier age about its many dangers and horrors."

The day before Rosenberg made his statements, Ohio voters rejected a ballot measure that would have legalized recreational and medical marijuana use. However, 23 other states and Washington, D.C., permit the use of marijuana for one of both of those uses (despite the fact that federal law still prohibits the recreational use of marijuana).

That aside, the DEA ranks controlled prescription drugs and heroin as the most significant drug threats in the U.S. But the DEA also views pot concentrates, with potency levels far exceeding those of leaf marijuana, as an "issue of growing concern."

As for the debate over drugs, it has entered presidential politics as well. At a recent GOP presidential debate, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina disclosed that she and her husband, Frank, "buried a child to drug addition."

Sources:

CNSNews.com

Hosted.AP.org

DEA.gov[PDF]

HuffingtonPost.com