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Published On: Thu, Feb 15th, 2018

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.

fake news

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  broke down the stats: “nearly all of the incidents included alongside the Marshall County shooting bear little or no resemblance to that shooting or other well-publicized school shootings, like those at Sandy Hook Elementary or Columbine High School. None of the other events included in the gun-control group’s count feature more than one injury, most featured no injuries at all, and one involved a BB gun being shot at a school bus window.”

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

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About the Author

- Writer and Co-Founder of The Global Dispatch, Brandon has been covering news, offering commentary for years, beginning professionally in 2003 on Crazed Fanboy before expanding into other blogs and sites. Appearing on several radio shows, Brandon has hosted Dispatch Radio, written his first novel (The Rise of the Templar) and completed the three years Global University program in Ministerial Studies to be a pastor. To Contact Brandon email [email protected] ATTN: BRANDON

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Have Your Say
  1. […] 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. […]

  2. Gun-free zones linked to 98% of mass shootings | The Global Dispatch says:

    […] 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. […]

  3. Connecticut Sen Chris Murphy blames mass shooting on Congress with more lies and fearmongering | The Global Dispatch says:

    […] 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 […]

  4. CNN’s Don Lemon on the Florida shooting asks viewers ‘Do you feel safe tonight’ as they are ‘just playing the odds’ | The Global Dispatch says:

    […] CNN joined other media outlets by using bogus gun violence stats. […]

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