Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) latest gun control push includes the claim that there have been “over a dozen” mass shootings in America since Friday.
Pelosi tweeted this claim Tuesday and did not include any citation to substantiate it:
The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University maintain a database of mass shootings, defining the incidents as those “in which four or more people were killed other than the perpetrator.” This measurement has been standard for identifying mass shootings or mass murders for years.
On April 15, 2021, the Rand Corporation observed that the standard for “mass shootings” is derived from the FBI’s 1980s definition of a “mass murderer” as an individual who “kills four or more people in a single incident (not including himself).” Therefore, four or more deaths in a single incident by a single gunman was the working definition of a “mass shooting.”
These things considered, the AP/USA Today/Northeastern database shows there were 19 “mass killing” incidents in the U.S. from January 1, 2023, to May 2, 2023. Yet Pelosi claims there have been over 12 since Friday.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.