Mother Jones Editor: That ‘355 Mass Shootings’ Statistic Is Really Wrong

Shockingly, all of the mainstream media bullshit about mass shootings is made up and false. Who is going to watch Obama’s national speech on gun control tonight? I’ll be busy taking a big, smelly dump in honor of his speech and ordering some more ammo.

Via Townhall

Shortly after news broke of a shooting in San Bernardino (which we now know was a terrorist attack), Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit were abuzz that the events of December 2, 2015 were the “355th mass shooting” of 2015. Obviously, this was a concerning statistic–if it were actually true.

It turns out it wasn’t, and even figures on the left agree. There’s been nowhere near 355 mass shootings in 2015, and according to Mother Jones editor Mark Folman, there have been exactly four.

At Mother Jones, where I work as an editor, we have compiled an in-depth, open-source database covering more than three decades of public mass shootings. By our measure, there have been four “mass shootings” this year, including the one in San Bernardino, and at least 73 such attacks since 1982.

What explains the vastly different count? The answer is that there is no official definition for “mass shooting.” Almost all of the gun crimes behind the much larger statistic are less lethal and bear little relevance to the type of public mass murder we have just witnessed again. Including them in the same breath suggests that <href=”#wiki_number_351.3a_11.2f27.2f2015.2c_unknown.2c_2_dead_2_injured.2c_sacramento.2c_ca”>a 1 a.m. gang fight in a Sacramento restaurant, in which two were killed and two injured, is the same kind of event as a deranged man walking into a community college classroom and massacring nine and injuring nine others. Or that a late-night shooting on a street in Savannah, Ga., yesterday that injured three and killed one is in the same category as the madness that just played out in Southern California.

While all the victims are important, conflating those many other crimes with indiscriminate slaughter in public venues obscures our understanding of this complicated and growing problem. Everyone is desperate to know why these attacks happen and how we might stop them — and we can’t know, unless we collect and focus on useful data that filter out the noise.

As it turns out, the “355” number comes from an anti-gun subreddit and includes a far broader definition of “mass shooting” than the one used by either the FBI or groups like Mother Jones.

The statistics now being highlighted in the news come primarily fromshootingtracker.com, a website built by members of a Reddit forum supporting gun control called GunsAreCool. That site aggregates news stories about shooting incidents — of any kind — in which four or more people are reported to have been either injured or killed.

It’s not clear why the Redditors use this much broader criteria. The founder of the “shooting tracker” project, who currently goes by the handle “Billy Speed,” told me it was his choice: “Three years ago I decided, all by myself, to change the United States’ definition of mass shooting.” It’s also not clear how many of those stories — many of them from local outlets, including scant detail — are accurate.

Events like the attack in San Bernardino on Wednesday or the shooting at Umpqua Community College in October are thankfully very rare. It’s important to remember this and it’s also important to ensure that statistics are accurate.


 

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Fred John Boenih

So by the definition you are using- you have to actually be killed? So if you are paralyzed- disabled or blinded- being wounded by a Gun- you don’t count as a mas shooting unless 4 people die-
Well I’m glad you draw the line at Killed- because that makes a big difference to the people in wheelchairs- that the shooting they were crippled in wasn’t a”MASS SHOOTING” Maybe the Term should be MASS KILLING- because by definition- since to you Words Matter- the wounded were actually SHOT- in numbers over 4- not necessarily KILLED-
Funny thing is Killing and Shooting by Gun- is only controlled by a measurement. They have nothing to do with cause or reason- just measurement and placement- Both come from the same gun-just where the projectile lands on the target- which may have more to do with the target’s movements than the shooter’s intention- You following me here? So 355 Mass Shootings is right- 355 Mass Murders by Gun would be wrong- But in the words of Hillary Clinton- (With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, )

EXCEPT- the definition is— Mass shooting refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. Mass shooting is commonly defined as the shooting, but not necessarily murder, of four or more people with no cooling off period.[The term can also commonly be categorized as school shooting, mass murder or massacre. -Generally, there are three terms you’ll see to describe a perpetrator of this type of gun violence: mass murderer, spree killer, or serial killer. An FBI crime classification report from 2005 identifies an individual as a mass murderer if he kills four or more people in a single incident (not including himself), typically in a single location. (The baseline of four fatalities is key—more on that just below.)

What is a mass shooting?
Broadly speaking, the term refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. But there is no official set of criteria or definition for a mass shooting, according to criminology experts and FBI officials who have spoken with Mother Jones.
The primary distinction between a mass murderer and a spree killer, according to the FBI, is that the latter strikes in multiple locations, though still in a relatively short time frame. The third type, a serial killer, is distinguished by striking over a longer time frame, in multiple locations, with opportunity for what the FBI report refers to as “cooling-off periods” in between attacks.

Leobeer
Leobeer

http://truthstreammedia.com/2015/12/02/why-have-there-been-more-mass-shootings-under-obama-than-the-four-previous-presidents-combined/

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We live in a world of short-term memories and long-term memory deficiencies. If the 24-hour news cycle was any indication, Americans appear to be bouncing from one catastrophic mass shooting to the next, with hardly any breathing room. Like this is just a regular occurrence America has learned to endure because… guns. It’s the prevalence of firearms in the hands of the people, the anti-gunners say. Calls to limit, rewrite, redefine, or outright dispose of the 2nd Amendment are rampant.

But no one is looking at the data. If they did, they would realize something is really, really, really wrong here.

No, there haven’t always been so many mass shootings. It hasn’t always been this way. Mass shootings have skyrocketed in this country just in the last seven years under President Obama.

The following was compiled using the database over at Mother Jones on mass shootings in the U.S. from 1982—2015, up to and including the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on October 1st, 2015. It also includes the Wikipedia lists for mass shootings in the United States by year and postal killings in the U.S.

The following analysis considers the FBI’s definition of a mass murder, which is defined as “a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders”.

When all incidents where four or more people were shot in a single event are broken out by president going back to Reagan (considering the database only stretches back to 1982), there just so happens to have been a startling increase in mass shootings since Obama, the most pro-gun control president America has had in modern history, took office.

Mass Shootings under the Last Five Presidents

Ronald Reagan: 1981-1989 (8 years) 11 mass shootings
Incidents with 8 or more deaths = 5

George H. W. Bush: 1989-1993 (4 years) 12 mass murders
Incidents with 8 or more deaths = 3

Bill Clinton: 1993-2001 (8 years) 23 mass murders
Incidents with 8 or more deaths = 4

George W. Bush: 2001-2009 (8 years) 20 mass murders
Incidents with 8 or more deaths = 5

Barrack H. Obama: 2009-2015 (in 7th year) 162 mass murders
Incidents with 8 or more deaths = 18
(You can download the full list of names, dates, locations, and numbers of deaths per mass shooting by president prepared for this article here.)

Look at the difference between all other presidents and Barack Obama.

What that looks like on a chart:

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Notice anything here? We’re talking about a more than six-fold increase from the number of mass shootings in the eight years Bush Jr. was president compared to the last seven years under Obama, and his 2nd term isn’t even up yet!

Not only that, but the number of mass shootings where the shooter killed eight or more people has also increased rather significantly:

comment image

What is going on here?

Obviously this isn’t so easily simplified as more guns in the hands of more crazy people, the way the media likes to spin it. We have more gun laws now than ever before. Less types of guns are legally available to the average citizen than ever before. We also have more “gun-free zones,” zones where, just by the way, most of these shootings happen (because mass shooters do not follow laws or care about zones, obviously). So that’s not it.

We have debated whether or not antidepressant medications are playing a role in these events. Even a cursory glance at the SSRI stories school shootings database would suggest there is some substantial evidence behind this theory. We know that many of these mass shooters were either on psychotropic medications at the time of the shooting, or withdrawing from them.

However, Prozac was approved for use in the United States back in 1987. Antidepressant medications have been around and in widespread use in America for decades now. That factor alone cannot entirely explain all these mass shootings recently.

Not to mention that five out of the 12 deadliest mass shootings in American history have happened not just since Barack Obama became president, but just under his first term as president alone. That’s nearly half.

Something else is going on here.

So… what is it?

After the controversial Sandy Hook shooting, Obama passed 23 gun control executive orders. He continually says wants to do more and he’s frustrated with how limited his powers as mere president are. He continually mentions wishing America’s gun control mirrored that of the UK and Australia, two countries that passed strict, sweeping gun bans following what many have called single mass shooting false flag events which happened just weeks apart in March and April 1996.

Speaking of Australia’s gun control laws after the suspicious Charleston shooting, Obama said:

“It was just so shocking the entire country said, ‘Well, we’re going to completely change our gun laws’, and they did. And it hasn’t happened since,” Obama said, discussing the shooting deaths of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston last week.
The suspicious April 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School didn’t accomplish nearly the same gun control implementation here in America, although it did happen under another highly pro-gun control president, Bill Clinton. Perhaps one false flag just isn’t enough in a country that has been built upon a Constitution with a Bill of Rights and a 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Perhaps it can only be killed death-by-a-thousand-cuts style.

Now Obama says gun control will be his #1 top issue of focus for the last year of his final term as president.

He says his biggest frustration has been his inability to pass more gun control legislation.

He condemns these “routine” events and calls for more gun control each time another one happens. After the recent Planned Parenthood shooting, he said, “we can’t let this become the new normal… enough is enough.”

But when did it become the new normal? While the 2nd Amendment continues to be attacked each and every time another mass shooting occurs, just realize something: these events were never this “routine” until Obama became president.

https://youtu.be/Az2neZzL6UA

Anonymous
Anonymous

Arm every Christian man woman and child with the same weapons Obama dropped on the Musloids.I find it curious O is arming and training musloids-no confidence,step down!

harry p.

Admin,
Be sure to stock up on ammo, it has a long shelf life and tends to retain value when its bought at current prices. And if any gun control desires actually stick i suspect it will regulating ammo and what the govt considers “excessive”.

Id recommend Palmetto State Armory, they have “daily deals” that often offer great buys and delivery is very fair. I personally check the daily deal every day for value buys

Bill
Bill

It’s breathtaking the amount of baldfaced lies are spewed out on a regular basis through the media today. I don’t remember the show, possibly “Laugh In”, ages ago that showed a Soviet news anchor extolling the “glorious” accomplishments of some program while a hand in the corner of the screen held a gun toward his head. Unfortunately the gun is not needed with today’s “news” agencies. They’ve all bought in to their own propaganda.

Lysander
Lysander

@ Bill…The ‘gun’ being pointed at the news anchor’s heads are their huge salaries and their mindboggling medical and pension plans.

Same with the cops, same with the politicians, same with the high up .gov bureaucrats.

They are all selling us down the river because of money. You know, if any of them had political or religious or moral beliefs that made them traitors I could understand that. Not forgive, mind you, but understand. However, these pieces of shit have no morals, no beliefs, nor any religion other then loving themselves. They will deliver the message regardless of whether the writer is a fascist, a communist, a libertarian, or satan himself. As long as they get paid…that’s all that matters.

They are the first to go bye-bye in my book.

skinbag
skinbag

And tomorrow morning I will be at the local court house to apply for my ‘concealed carry’ permit.

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