In response to the Thousand Oaks mass shooting on Wednesday, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting survivor and pro-gun control activist David Hogg was among the many who pushed an inflated number of mass shootings that have occurred this year.
“307 mass shootings in America this year there's only been 312 days,” Hogg tweeted on Friday.
307 mass shootings in America this year there's only been 312 days.
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) November 9, 2018
It was not just Hogg who ran with 307 mass shootings number, as many publications and activists have also pushed the same number:
307. There have been 307 mass shootings so far this year. Do we really want to raise our children in a country where mass shootings like Thousand Oaks are a weekly occurrence? A country where every single day in America, more than 90 people are killed with guns?
— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) November 8, 2018
307 mass shootings in the 311 days of 2018.
— Matt Deitsch (@MattxRed) November 8, 2018
Thousand Oaks is one of the safest cities in America.
We can end gun violence in America.
Our citizens should not be on the frontlines.
This year alone, there have been 307 mass shootings, and at least 328 people have been killed. - @NBCNightlyNews https://t.co/zZIP9TVbbX
— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 9, 2018
There have been 307 mass shootings just this year. 6 in the past 9 days alone... and almost 1,900 since Sandy Hook. We cannot wait any longer for sensible gun control policies. https://t.co/Eb6EV6h6Oj
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) November 9, 2018
The number stems from the Gun Violence Archive, a “not for profit corporation formed in 2013 to provide online public access to accurate information about gun-related violence in the United States,” according to their website.
The archive counts a mass shooting “on the numeric value of 4 or more shot or killed, not including the shooter,” which results in their numbers being much higher than other sources.
The more commonly accepted FBI definition is “active shooter incidents and mass killings (defined by the law as three or more people) in public places.”
The Washington Free Beacon found in 2017 “only 8 of the 154 incidents [in] the Gun Violence Archive meet the FBI standard for mass murder.”
Hogg has a history of pushing inflated shooting statistics.
After the mass shooting at his school in Parkland, Florida, Hogg stated, after the New York Magazine author had ironically said he came “armed with facts”, that, “There have been 18 more mass shootings than there need to be this year at schools. It needs to come to an end.”
The number of school shootings came from Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun control group started and funded by New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
The Free Beacon also reported how their definition of a school shooting, where "any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds," includes incidents where no one was injured or when an actual firearm wasn’t even used.
“A January 9 incident where a man shot a BB gun at a bus window resulting in no injuries; a January 10 incident where a student in a criminal justice club accidentally shot a peace officer's real gun at a target on a classroom wall instead of a training gun,” the Free Beacon reported.
Other “school shootings” included where shots were fired near a college campus, hitting a building with no injuries and two separate suicides.
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