FAKE NEWS: Media uses bogus Everytown for Gun Safety stats on school shootings
The horrific Florida school shooting Wednesday prompted the media to roll out their gun control narrative, but this time they included the debunked stats from Everytown for Gun Safety.
“You know, scenes like these today, shootings at schools, an all-too-familiar sight across this country. This shooting, by one count, the 18th just this year. Multiple fatalities at several of those shootings,” announced anchor David Muir during ABC’s World News Tonight.
photo/ Gerd Altmann via pixabay
That same statistic was echoed on NBC Nightly News with anchor Lester Host: “This horrifying shooting in Florida marks the 18th time gunfire has erupted on a school campus in America just since the start of this year. With more now on these tragedies and images that have become disturbingly common in our country…”
“Perhaps the biggest question: Why is this happening more frequently? This year, there have already been 18 school shootings. There were seven by this time last year,” reported Don Dahler on CBS Evening News. “Since 2013, the number of school shootings has steadily risen, with the sole exception being 2016, when there were only 48. Only– as if that was in any way acceptable or normal.”
It was a month ago when Free Beacon’s
Everytown for Gun Safety uses its own definition based on what it said is “expert advice and common sense,” which the gun-control group claims is “straightforward, fair, and comprehensive.” The group said it counts “any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds.”
ANY TIME or ANY WHERE on campus grounds, even if that results in no injury or, as Gutowski accurately notes, includes a BB gun.
From that Free Beacon analysis: “This broad definition places two separate suicides, a January 9 incident where a man shot a BB gun at a bus window resulting in no injuries; a January 10 incident where a student in a criminal justice club accidentally shot a peace officer’s real gun at a target on a classroom wall instead of a training gun resulting in no injuries; a January 9 incident where gun shots were fired from somewhere outside of Cal State San Bernardino, which struck a building on campus without injuries; and other incidents next to the murder of a Winston-Salem State University student at a nightclub on the Wake Forest University campus, the January 22 shooting of a 15-year-old at a Dallas-area high school, and Tuesday’s Marshall County High School shooting which left 2 dead and 18 others injured.”
Gun control hysteria?
h/t Newsbusters for quotes
[…] Everytown for Gun Safety compiles these bogus stats, inflating them by including ANY gun incident on a campus: suicide, drive-by shootings and those which don’t ever include students. The scare tactics worked on Paige Curry and CNN used the data to exploit the narrative. […]
[…] Everytown made headlines by falsely overstating the number of shootings in 2018 by including suicides, misfires and drive by shootings in the total. Their data was the fake news rhetoric immediately following the Florida shooting. […]
[…] on campus, incidents without injury and even a suicide by a non-student in a parking lot.) The data/graphic was used by all of the major outlets after the tragedy. At for his statement: “this happens nowhere […]
[…] CNN joined other media outlets by using bogus gun violence stats. […]