Natebishop3
Don't tread on me!
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2008
- Messages
- 94,328
- Likes
- 57,641
- Points
- 113
How are we supposed to have an actual debate about a topic like gun control when there are organizations out there who are spreading misleading data?
They put out a number, like 18 school shootings in 2018, and that number spreads like wildfire because it's an attention grabber. Nobody fact checks it. Nobody verifies that it's true. They just run with it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...1d91fcec3fe_story.html?utm_term=.9a358ad1d163
"Just five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury. Three others appeared to be intentional shootings but did not hurt anyone. Two more involved guns — one carried by a school police officer and the other by a licensed peace officer who ran a college club — that were unintentionally fired and, again, led to no injuries. At least seven of Everytown’s 18 shootings took place outside normal school hours.
Shootings of any kind, of course, can be traumatic, regardless of whether they cause physical harm.
A month ago, for example, a group of college students were at a meeting of a criminal-justice club in Texas when a student accidentally fired a real gun, rather than a training weapon. The bullet went through a wall, then a window. Though no one was hurt, it left the student distraught.
Is that a school shooting, though? Yes, Everytown says.
“Since 2013,” the organization says on its website, “there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America — an average of about one a week.”
But since Everytown began its tracking, it has included these dubious examples — in August 2013, a man shot on a Tennessee high school’s property at 2 a.m.; in December 2014, a man shot in his car late one night and discovered the next day in a Pennsylvania elementary school’s parking lot; in August 2015, a man who climbed atop the roof of an empty Texas school on a Sunday morning and fired sporadically; in January 2016, a man in an Indiana high school parking lot whose gun accidentally went off in his glove box, before any students had arrived on campus; in December 2017, two teens in Washington state who shot up a high school just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, when the building was otherwise empty."
How are we supposed to have a debate about this topic while we have organizations spreading misinformation for their own purposes?
When you hear the term "school shooting," do you think of a guy killing himself on school property at 2 in the morning?
They put out a number, like 18 school shootings in 2018, and that number spreads like wildfire because it's an attention grabber. Nobody fact checks it. Nobody verifies that it's true. They just run with it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...1d91fcec3fe_story.html?utm_term=.9a358ad1d163
"Just five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury. Three others appeared to be intentional shootings but did not hurt anyone. Two more involved guns — one carried by a school police officer and the other by a licensed peace officer who ran a college club — that were unintentionally fired and, again, led to no injuries. At least seven of Everytown’s 18 shootings took place outside normal school hours.
Shootings of any kind, of course, can be traumatic, regardless of whether they cause physical harm.
A month ago, for example, a group of college students were at a meeting of a criminal-justice club in Texas when a student accidentally fired a real gun, rather than a training weapon. The bullet went through a wall, then a window. Though no one was hurt, it left the student distraught.
Is that a school shooting, though? Yes, Everytown says.
“Since 2013,” the organization says on its website, “there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America — an average of about one a week.”
But since Everytown began its tracking, it has included these dubious examples — in August 2013, a man shot on a Tennessee high school’s property at 2 a.m.; in December 2014, a man shot in his car late one night and discovered the next day in a Pennsylvania elementary school’s parking lot; in August 2015, a man who climbed atop the roof of an empty Texas school on a Sunday morning and fired sporadically; in January 2016, a man in an Indiana high school parking lot whose gun accidentally went off in his glove box, before any students had arrived on campus; in December 2017, two teens in Washington state who shot up a high school just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, when the building was otherwise empty."
How are we supposed to have a debate about this topic while we have organizations spreading misinformation for their own purposes?
When you hear the term "school shooting," do you think of a guy killing himself on school property at 2 in the morning?

