I am a member of a part-time faculty at a local community college.  I teach criminal justice courses to students who are looking to obtain a two year degree in the criminal justice field.  The college I am at is, as most a very liberal environment, which makes teaching all the more fulfilling and entertaining for me.

When there is something happening on one of the campuses everyone gets an email announcing the event.  And more often than not, to increase the readership more than one person has a question and just has to “Reply to All”.  The reply to all is another subject that needs it own dedicated blog post. So it is not unheard of to the same email ten different times.

Today I received an email that was titled “380 mass shootings in the 329 days of 2019”.  The poster for the event then went on to explain that there is a “link between White Nationalism, Misogyny and Gun Violence here in the US.”  I do not disagree that there are related issues that involve gun violence, but the title and the body of the email lead the reader to believe all of gun violence was related to these subjects.  Also the subject headline is mis-leading and inaccurate.

The writer of the email linked “Gun Violence Archive” which is a website that tracks firearm related incidents.  Wikipedia also sites this organisation for it’s definition of a mass shooting. Gun Violence Archive lists a shooting incident where violence resulting in at least four people being shot at roughly the same time and location, excluding the perpetrator.  A quick look at their 2019 statics completely contradict the title and the body of the email. Yes, according to their statistics there have been 380 incidents of gun related violence so far this year. There have not been 380 incidents of mass shootings.  Nor have there been 380 incidents that can be attributed to “link between White Nationalism, Misogyny and Gun Violence here in the US.”

So I broke down the numbers from the cited website, which I assume is a reputable website.  As of this writing, they have documented 380 firearm related incidents. 248 of them meet their own definition of “Mass shooting” where four or more people were injured.  In those 248 incidents 1237 people were injured. What is really astounding is that 142 people lost their lives. While the most horrific of these crimes has a tie to white supremacy, the second most horrific of these really does not have any identifiable motive.  The actual total for the reported statistics, as of this writing: 425 deaths, and 1534 injuries.

My point is all of the incidents documented through “Gun Violence Archive” are tragic, I think we do a dis-service to all walks of life if we cherry pick or manipulate the data to fit whatever narrative we want it to fit.  If you are using facts that you have manipulated to further your stance, or even worse profit from the act, then you should be ashamed of yourself. 

I will end with this:  “In 2017, more than 70,000 people died from drug overdoses, making it a leading cause of injury-related death in the United States. Of those deaths, almost 68% involved a prescription or illicit opioid.”  My source: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html

In full disclosure I did not go through the exhaustive list that this group records.  There are lots of incidents that list one or two victims