Lies, Damned Lies, and Mass Shooting Statistics
Most of the gun violence data you have seen this week is misinformation from one biased source.
by David Catron
March 31, 2023, 11:02 PM
When a mass murderer shot her way into a Nashville school on Monday and killed six people, most Americans reacted with horror. Gun control advocates, however, viewed it as an opportunity. President Joe Biden, for example, saw the crime as a chance to promote an “assault weapon” ban. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, responded with a call for gun confiscation. The corporate media pitched in with a spate of stories claiming that mass shootings literally occur on a daily basis in the United States.
ABC News, for example, ran a story titled, “There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023, database shows.” In order to take this headline seriously, it’s necessary to believe that more than 90 mass shootings have occurred since the beginning of the year. This is obviously not true, so where did ABC get its information? The referenced database is produced by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a “nonpartisan” organization that compiles data for a large network of gun control advocates. GVA is frequently quoted by major media outlets, including ABC, NPR, CNN, USA Today, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
The Post’s Philip Bump, for example, used GVA data for a Thursday column in which he claims that “the average gap between mass-shooting incidents this year has been about 16.7 hours.” Seem implausible? The FBI has long defined such shootings as “any incident in which at least four people are murdered with a gun.” GVA’s 2023 database contains 13 events that meet this definition, most of which aren’t mass shootings as the term is generally used. GVA’s executive director, Mark Bryant, has promoted restrictive gun legislation since 2018 when he co-wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times containing this excerpt:
More guns mean more crime and more death. Gun possession significantly increases your risk of being killed by someone you know. A gun in the home doubles your risk of homicide and triples your risk of suicide. The presence of a gun increases the lethality of domestic violence. Areas with higher gun ownership see a significant increase in burglary. And states with higher levels of gun ownership experience higher rates of firearm fatalities.more
https://spectator.org/lies-damned-lies-and-mass-shooting-statistics/
