Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- In an online story published Friday CNN admits they used data from the debunked Gun Violence Archive to claim there have been 641 mass shootings in the United States during 2021 – an average of 1.94 mass shootings per day.
Think about that – nearly two mass shootings per day. I’m surprised the legacy media had time to cover anything else, such as COVID, Joe Biden’s daily foibles or the tanking economy since their news crews must have been running from one mass shooting to another every single day, right?
“The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit based in Washington, DC and which CNN relies on for its reporting of mass shootings, defines a mass shooting as an incident leaving at least four people dead or injured, excluding the shooter, and does not differentiate victims based upon the circumstances in which they were shot,” the authors admit.
“They counted as many as 417 mass shootings in 2019. And this year, 641 incidents have been recorded.”
The authors actually admit relying upon the GVA for “reporting of mass shootings.” Relying upon the GVA for any news story is toxic. We debunked the Gun Violence Archive in July, in a special report titled: “The Gun Violence Archive and its Scaring of America.”
The GVA is a small nonprofit that was founded in 2013 by Michael Klein, a left-leaning philanthropist and open-government advocate, and Mark Bryant, a retired computer analyst, and GVA’s current executive director.
The problem is how Bryant and his 20 staffers define mass shootings. When most people hear the term “mass shooting,” they picture a crazed gunman stalking the halls of a school or a shopping mall, coldly and randomly executing innocent young victims. What does not come to mind are rival drug crews shooting it out in Chicago or Detroit, or a madman murdering his entire family, which no sane person would consider a mass shooting. The GVA makes no such distinction. If four people are wounded, the GVA labels it a mass shooting regardless of the circumstances, and the media and anti-gun politicians lap up the GVA’s inflated stats.
According to Bryant’s all-inclusive definition, there were 417 mass shootings in 2019.
You decide which figure is more accurate and more honest.
CNN isn’t the only organization to be hoodwinked by the inflated GVA stats. The Biden/Harris administration has cited GVA’s data, as have a bevy of other elected officials and political candidates, at the local, state, and federal levels. The New York Times, National Public Radio, USA TODAY, and a host of other media outlets also use GVA’s definition when reporting about mass shootings, because the bigger and scarier the number, the more clicks the story will receive.
When I interviewed Bryant in July for our special report, I asked him if he actually believed that the average news consumer even considers domestic violence or gang warfare when they hear the term mass shooting.
Bryant replied, “I don’t know. I know what we want to do is provide numbers and let the journalists, advocates, and ‘congress critters’ look at the data, glean details and drill down on it.”
Unfortunately, today’s legacy journalists and anti-rights politicians are too lazy to do any drilling down. They prefer to cut and paste Bryan’s off-the-charts stats.
The bottom line: Bryant and his GVA know full well they’re supplying flawed data, which the media treats as gospel. I’m guessing Bryant and his anti-gun pals are laughing about it, too.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
https://www.ammoland.com/2021/12/fake-news-cnn-claims-641-mass-shootings/