Rantz: No, we haven’t had 18 school shootings this year

If I told you there was a school shooting today, what would you think happened at the school?

A fight between several people erupted in the parking lot of a Philadelphia high school. One adult shot another, killing him. They didn’t go to the school. Would you call this a school shooting?

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Two adult men “settled a score” at a Michigan school, one used a gun on the other. Neither attended or worked at the school and this happened after school was done for the day, though there was a basketball game happening on campus. Would you call this a school shooting?

A gunshot fired off campus hit a window of a building at California State University San Bernardino. There were no injuries. An adult male committed suicide outside a Michigan high school — that had been closed for seven months. A  curious third grader reached over and pulled the trigger of a school resource officer when he wasn’t looking. The gun went off but no one was injured. Would you considered any of these instances school shootings? Are they what you envisioned when you read the first sentence of this blog?

Facts matter. They especially matter when you’re hoping to enact legislation to prevent a tragedy like the one in Parkland, Florida. We should all want a solution to these problems. Unfortunately, in a rush to exploit a mass murder to enact stricter gun control laws, activists and politicians are pushing a phony statistic. That makes reform near impossible.

Everytown for Gun Safety, which keeps a tally of school shootings, claims the recent mass murder is the 18th school shooting this year. It’s meant to shock you away from complacency and into action to go after guns. That stat is a lie. Everytown notoriously pads their stats to shock you into taking their side.

Now, by “school shooting,” they literally mean a gunshot in or around a school. No one need be hurt, no damage be done. The school doesn’t even need to be opened and they will call that a school shooting. All the examples of school shootings in this blog came directly from Everytown. The database is so flawed and misleading, they’ve had to pull at least one example from this year, after the Washington Post filed a report similar to this blog.

Yet, that stat spread like wildfire. Everyone from comedian Albert Brooks and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal to Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere and Senator Bernie Sanders has used this stat to demand stricter gun control laws.

The goal of this activist organization — and those who use their phony data — is to make it more difficult to purchase a gun. Perhaps you agree. Fine. I’ll happily debate the Second Amendment with you. But if you need to make up stats to get people on your side, perhaps you should rethink your stance or solutions? I’m all for the debate and meaningful reform, but perhaps we should use real data so we can better judge if the reform will be effective.

 

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