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“11 School Shootings This Year!”
What do the New York Times, Think Progress, CNN, Global News, The Week, Business Insider, NY Daily News, Seattle Times, Yahoo, Reuters, MSNBC, AOL, etc., all have in common? They dutifully repeat deceptive statistics from gun control groups in order to frighten the public. This is apparently done to advance their agenda of turning “citizens” into “subjects” by taking away their clear constitutional right to keep and bear arms. The latest example is this beauty from the New York Times: “School Shooting in Kentucky Was Nation’s 11th of Year. It Was Jan. 23.”
This headline is followed by incredulity that, because of their frequency, we have become so numb to these tragedies that we barely notice them and of course the rational strategy that something must be done!
When I saw this reported in about 1,245 media outlets I thought to myself, “Self … I think I’m gonna call BS on this one.” Unlike “journalists” all over this great land, I decided to look into this amazing stat with a little bit of skepticism instead of cheerleading. I did some research (Google) and turned to that far right, pro-gun bastion called the Huffington Post.
They actually list all 11 instances that made up this stat and it was pretty interesting. How was it interesting, you ask? The qualifications of a “school shooting” in this oft-reported study, are extremely broad. If there is a gun discharged for any reason near school property, that is considered a “school shooting.” Now, of course, when people hear the term “school shooting,” they think a Columbine-type event, not someone shooting a BB gun at a bus and cracking one of the windows. (Yep, they counted that.)
For those who are interested, here is a quick rundown of what made the list:
- Jan 3: A man standing in the school’s parking lot called 911 saying he was suicidal. After talking with county officials for several hours he ultimately shot and killed himself.
- Jan 4: Two shots were fired at New Start High School in Seattle from outside the building. No one was injured.
- Jan 6: A 32-year-old man fired a pellet gun at a school bus, shattering a window. No one was injured.
- Jan 10: A student at Grayson College confused a training weapon with a real one and fired a bullet through a classroom wall. No one was injured.
- Jan 10: A 14-year-old student died in a school bathroom from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
- Jan 10: At Cal State in San Bernardino, at least one shot was fired, shattering a classroom window. No one was injured.
- Jan 15: At Wiley College in Marshall, TX, people in a car exchanged gunfire with a person in a dormitory parking lot. No one was injured.
- Jan 20: A 21-year-old Wake Forest student was shot and killed after an argument during a sorority event.
- Jan 22: Someone driving by a charter high school in New Orleans fired on a group of students in the parking lot. One boy was injured.
- Jan 22: A 16-year-old high school student in Texas shot a 15-year-old girl in the cafeteria. She was airlifted to the hospital and was in good spirits as of Tuesday.
- At a Benton, KY high school, a 15-year-old boy opened fire inside the school killing two and injuring 16.
Obviously, drive-bys, suicides, and pellet gun assaults on buses are not “School Shootings” as most people understand them. I’m sure most people would be surprised that these 11 “shootings” included five where no one was injured and two that were suicides.
By my count, there was exactly one incident that would be commonly understood as a “school shooting.” Now, this is one too many but still, it’s not 11. Why would the media be interested in pushing a blatantly misleading narrative about an “epidemic of gun violence?” Scare tactics like this demonstrate that they know they can’t make their argument based on its merits.
As usual, these people are not interested in researching what might be the reasons behind how something like what happened in Benton, KY. They are more interested in using the ginned-up emotion from tragic events to gather support for their pet political causes. That is why every mass shooting is accompanied by an outcry from the anti-gun left for legislation that would not have prevented said shooting in the first place.
Published in Guns
That is despicable! Good work. Journalism dies in darkness.
I’m going to go way out on a limb and assume this was rhetorical.
Probably should have finished my thought better there
Nah, you finished it. That one sentence just jumped out at me, though.
Concrete,
Did you see any of the stock news sources after the obligatory phony headline try to backtrack a little? Did HuffPost realize the irony of the list they published v. the inflamed rhetoric of the headlines?
Regards,
Jim
There actually seemed to be some acknowledgment in the Huff Post article of the broad definition of school shootings. I don’t know if it really occurred to them how misleading the stat is or that there is a nefarious motivation in it.
Well done. Thank you.
A bunch of gun-grabbers is what they are!
Thanks for compiling all this, Vol! :)
Yeah. Well done.
The sad thing is, it wasn’t very hard to look up and observe the obvious. Just more than, you know, actual REPORTERS want to do.
Reminds me of the overly broad definitions for “child deaths” used too. Apparently 21 year old suicides are still “children”.
The news media really ought to dial back on the mendacity just a tad, if they ever want to mend their reputations.
There is no one so blind as he who will not see.
The professional Left does this all the time. It is part of their regular tool kit.
Shortly after the financial crisis, Bernie Sanders released a report asserting that the Fed had given Wall Street 16.1 Trillion dollars in bailout money. That number was widely trumpeted at the time.
I was curious how the actual data was tortured into admitting to 16.1 trillion dollars. And I found it in a footnote to that report….
If an institution borrowed 10 million dollars from the Fed as a 30 day term loan, that loan shows up as “aggregate borrowing” of only 10 million dollars. Simple. Makes perfect sense.
But, if that same institution borrowed the same 10 million dollars for the same 30 days but did the initial loan as an overnight loan and rolled it over for 30 days, that single 10 million dollar loan shows up in the “aggregate borrowing” as 300 million dollars. (3o X 10 million).
Cute!
This 16.1 trillion dollar figure, the 11 school shootings number, and many others, are those “gee whizzz” numbers that have little bearing on what happened in reality, but are constructed to elicit a particular response from the reader. They are especially effective on people who only read the headlines or just skim through the stories. They are not exactly lies, but …..
@concretevol, it is easier to say the gun is at fault than to tackle the real issue of mental health. I know this hasn’t been stated as the motive, but the shooter falls into the right demographic. Fixing the mental health problem is hard and if done right will result in some difficult decisions. These people can’t be asked to do difficult. It goes against their snowflake persona.
Thanks for running this down, @concretevol. When I saw that headline yesterday, I thought, “That can’t be right,” but didn’t have time to follow the downward path.
I’m also not sure most people would include shootings at colleges in the category “school shootings.” I know a college is technically a “school,” but a college where adults live by choice seems categorically different from a local place where children are required by law to be and are supposed to be under supervision by adults.
Reporters these days are a bunch of lazy slobs.
(Hey editors, get this thing on the main feed already. I want to share it.)
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Isn’t it slightly alarming that 14- and 15-y-o children have guns in school?
Yes it is, it is also completely against multiple laws. I’m not minimizing the tragedy of things like suicide, I’m pointing out alarmist reporting who’s intent is to promote an agenda.
I’d say the last two would both count. It would depend on whether the shooter in #10 intended to shoot the girl. The fact that the girl (thankfully) survived doesn’t make it less of a school shooting if it was intentional. Two is still a lot less than eleven, of course. It’s ridiculous that the others are included on the list.
Oh, I’m 100% in favour of any and all attempts to seek and destroy blatantly slanted reporting, which this clearly is, so more power to you. It’s just that, as a Brit, the notion of teens with guns in schools rather jumped out at me as worthy of comment. We have similar laws, but in our case teens tend not to shoot themselves or others – indeed, very few Brits shoot themselves or others.
I think that some core reasons for violence like that should be seriously looked at. Mental health stats, warning signs, depression, devaluation of life in society in general that could contribute to that kind of mindset….. All outside of my expertise but politically it’s easier to just pass laws to make murder more illegal. Since violent crime and homicide rates are down overall, we may need to look at other things than availability of firearms.
When I was in about 4th grade (this would be circa 1970) I was in a rifle club at school. Targets and backstops were set up in the school gymnasium and we’d shoot 22’s. My older sister remembers finding brass on the floor of the gym during gym class.
At least all of these incidents took place on school grounds. Sometimes something gets classified as a school shooting because it took place within a couple blocks of a school, even though none of the participants were students, teachers, or school employees.
When I went to high school we regularly went hunting before school and had our weapons in our vehicles during class. We also had ROTC, shooting clubs, competitions, sports. Some places still do, though the liberals have shut most that down.
Oh sure, 12 yrs old seemed like about the time that kids got a .22 for their birthday. I think what is alarming is that a 14 or 15 yr old would think somehow that shooting their classmates is somehow a solution to their problems.
When I was in high school (early 70s), guys and male teachers often went hunting before school. Most of the trucks had gun racks. There was usually a rifle or two on them. I bet on any given day when I was there, 25-35 guns were also on campus—not counting the ROTC rifles. There was never an incident when one was even pulled.