I kept seeing statistics about “mass shootings” being reported on News sites and web feeds, and wondered where they were getting their information because it didn’t seem to represent reality and certainly didn’t match any of the statistics I was finding from credible sources. I decided to check out the source of the statistics, and found them to be coming from a website called Mass Shooting Tracker [shootingtracker.com.] Curious as to what data they were collecting and how they collected it, I decided to read through their site. I was honestly dumbfounded at the convoluted nature of their argument, as if the website had been written by a 5th grader.
The first thing I noticed is that they try to confuse definitions for mass murders with mass shootings, trying to lead you to believe the murder definitions are “wrong” when they are, in fact, irrelevant. As such, they have made up their own definition for “Mass Shooting” which incredibly overstates the number of real mass shooting events as most people have come to understand the term. Even worse, it entirely removes the requirement that a criminal shooter actually do the shooting to meet the definition. The result is that the data set blames the gun, specifically, for anyone shot and not the intent of any shooter(s) to shoot multiple people. Attempted shooting sprees that are merely unsuccessful at killing people should still be recorded as shooting sprees, and different than data collection for “mass murders” and “murder sprees” but trying to solve the issue by creating a statistic that includes anyone who was shot by anyone during an event clearly distorts the data sets. Events that were never intended to be mass murders or murder sprees are included in the data set. The bottom line is; If you actually take the time to read their website you’ll realize that Mass Shooting Tracker is an anti-gun propaganda site…period.
Here’s their website: Mass Shooting Tracker
From their site: “The only requirement is that four or more people are shot in a spree or setting, likely without a cooling off period. This may include the gunman himself (because they often suicide by cop or use a gun to kill themselves to escape punishment), or police shootings of civilians around the gunman. The reasoning behind the latter being that if the shooter is arrested, he will often be charged with injuring people the police actually shot, as that is a foreseeable result of a shooting spree.”
Foreseeable result that cops will shoot civilians? Um? Think about that for a minute. If a guy fires a gun in the air and shoots absolutely no one (maybe is just wielding what merely looks like a gun), possibly having no intention of actually shooting anyone, and then cops mistakenly shoot 3 bystanders and then the gunman …that is listed as a mass shooting EVEN THOUGH THE SUSPECTED GUNMAN DIDN’T SHOOT ANYONE.
I’m not sure if the sarcasm here is a Parody, or a complete Mockery of the arguments attempted to be made at Mass Shooting Tracker…but it certainly shines a light on the fallacious logic that their statistics represent:
A Mass Shooting Tracker (Parody)
An example from the parody website: Three intruders break into my home and one shoots me in the leg; I then shoot all three of them. That meets their requirements for a mass shooting…when really it is a home invasion.
Now the people at Mass Shooting Tracker might come back with a rebuttal and say those scenarios wouldn’t qualify as Mass Shootings, even though they fit their definition for one. If they were to argue that the home intrusion scenario would not be counted as a mass shooting, I’d have to ask “where is the definition that excludes it?” I cannot find one. If it were to be excluded, how is that decided; undisclosed definition, vote, general gut feeling by one person at Mass Shooting Tracker? When it was previously pointed out that their statistics actually contained 2 pellet gun shootings, they were apparently removed manually. If their algorithm makes mistakes Before presenting the statistics, how can anyone ever argue that the resulting data sets are accurate or credible? Where is the actual checks and balances on the data set before presenting distorted material to the public.
Even the semantics on their site are biased; I loved this subtle one in their “imagine this” scenario.
‘A reporter goes up to a victim who has been shot and asks “What’s happened here?” The victim replies “There has been a mass shooting, that gun owner just shot four of us.” The reporter replies “Sorry, that wasn’t a mass shooting.” ‘
Did you catch the NLP implant there? That “gun owner” just shot four of us.
The only way to make a logically sound decision as to how to further reduce gun violence is to evaluate the real facts in the matter. Both sides making shit up and presenting fallacious and distorted data doesn’t do any of us any good.
I can’t help but feel the closing comments of A Mass Shooting Tracker (Parody) sums things up nicely:
All joking aside, this is too important of an issue to deceive the public, so let’s summarize and keep it honest by really giving an accurate and precise definition of a mass shooting:
A mass shooting is when one or more shooters collectively intend to shoot multiple people in an event or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period, and 4 or more innocent people are shot by the shooter(s).
What is truly phenomenal, is that in a nation of roughly 319 million people there is on average only one event a day in this country where 4 or more people were injured during that event by a gun and yet some would make the public believe it is an epidemic. Mass shootings (as defined on the frequently quoted website) are relatively anomalous in the scope of continuously declining gun violence. Mass Shootings when properly defined are substantially more scarce.