How the Mainstream Media Misleads on Mass Shootings

“There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023.” — ABC News

“More mass shootings in U.S. than days in 2023 so far.” — Axios

“There have been nearly 70 mass shootings so far this year.” — Washington Post

These are just a few examples of headlines from mainstream media warning about an unimaginable amount of mass shootings in the country. Anti-gun activists take advantage of this coverage to advance their gun control agenda.

US mass shootings:

2014: 273
2015: 336
2016: 383
2017: 348
2018: 336
2019: 417
2020: 610
2021: 690
2022: 647

In the first seven week of 2023: 67

We don’t have to live this way. This is what no other country does.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) February 14, 2023

This year, there have been 67 mass shootings. Many of them took place in our schools.

We are a sick Nation.

Get sick with
– the epidemic of gun violence.
– politicians who allow people to die.
– more guns than people.

We can’t even protect our children. https://t.co/yQxjNOMQWP

— Jamaal Bowman Ed.D (@JamaalBowmanNY) February 14, 2023

But there’s a problem. The statistics they cite can be very misleading.

They all stem from one source: The Gun Violence Archive. If you think of a “mass shooting,” As we think of Parkland and Columbine, Las Vegas or other high-profile atrocities where gunmen killed many people randomly, we can also picture the Gun Violence Archive. But, the Gun Violence Archive Definitions a mass shooting as any instance where 4 people are shot—not killed.

They call them incidents. no one died As “mass shootings.” This is a misleading statistical sleight o’hand. They’re also including gang violence. This is a serious problem but it’s also undoubtedly an important one. Not What most Americans consider when they think about the definition of a “American”? “mass shooting.”

As Wilfred Reilly Detailed explanation For National Review Gun Violence Archive’s definition of violence is untethered from its actual definition. “mass shooting” Traditionally used in government and criminal statistics

“For basically all of modern history, a mass shooting has had a rather simple definition: a gunman killing multiple people in a public place. Mother Jones, hardly a conservative outlet, describes the standard — per the FBI and most top criminologists — as ‘a single attack in a public place in which four or more victims were killed.’ President Barack Obama revised the standard somewhat in 2013, when he ordered a government investigation into U.S. mass shootings, lowering the cutoff to ‘three or more victims killed’ and causing a slight uptick in recorded incidents. However, both definitions ‘required death’ and were very specifically structured to exclude domestic murder/suicides, gang and Mafia hits, and the like, to focus on a single terrifying event. By the Obama-era definition, there have been exactly 140 true American mass shootings since the 1980s, according to a comprehensive spreadsheet on the Jones website.”

Every mass shooting is tragic. There should be a vigorous debate about gun violence in America, and the best public safety measures to prevent it. However, it is dishonest for Americans to be alarmed with false data to try to make them believe they are on the wrong side.

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