A mass shooting a day? "Press Distorts with Inflated 'Mass Shooting' Statistics."

[Decoy of Fenris]

Rather than lean on figures compiled by official federal law enforcement sources, the "shooting tracker" is comprised entirely of news clippings collected from around the Internet by Reddit users.

It "aggregates news stories about shooting incidents — of any kind — in which four or more people are reported to have been either injured or killed," Follman reported.

By including persons who were injured by firearms, the Reddit group inflates the number of "mass shootings" in 2015 to more than 350. In contrast, Mother Jones' own in-depth investigation of the issue turned up just a handful of examples for 2015.

"[T]here have been four 'mass shootings' this year, including the one in San Bernardino, and at least 73 such attacks since 1982," Follman wrote.

Much more here.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/press-distorts-with-inflated-mass-shooting-statistics/article/2577626


The author seems to play partisan politics routinely so I'm dubious to use him as a source, but I did a little background check of my own into the claims made in the article, and they hold water. -Any- newspaper clipping citing any four people injured by "shooting" does in fact count as a mass shooting. That includes but is not limited to; Home invasions, bank robberies, domestic violence, gang violence, shrapnel from a negligent discharge, and adults being shot by a child's pellet gun. In short, the media seems to be lying (Go figure.)

A (slightly) more reliable source can be found here:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

MotherJones, using the FBI's metric for "Mass Shooting", comes up with only 73-75 instances of a mass shooting in America since 1982, approximately two a year over a thirty three year span.


While (to me) there seems little to discuss, I'm interested to hear your thoughts or if any of you have seen data similar to this elsewhere. Anyways, thanks for your time in reading, guys. o7