White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed Monday that there has been, on average, more than one mass shooting every day during 2023.
She did not cite any studies to back up the claim; she simply said, “According to leading accounts, we witnessed the 201st mass shooting in this country this year. That means we are averaging more than one a day.”
President Joe Biden made a similar claim on Sunday when he released a statement saying, “communities have suffered roughly 200 mass shootings” in America in 2023.
Breitbart News fact-checked Biden’s statement and noted it was false. Breitbart pointed to a database maintained by the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University, which shows there were 19 incidents that fit the definition of mass shootings in the U.S. between January 1, 2023, and May 2, 2023.
The left has long elevated the reported number of mass shootings in the U.S.
On December 4, 2015, two days after the San Bernardino firearm-based terror attack, the left claimed 355 mass shootings had occurred that year.
Mother Jones’ editor Mark Follman countered this claim, using a New York Times op-ed to note:
At Mother Jones, where I work as an editor, we have compiled an in-depth open-source database covering more than three decades of public mass shootings. By our measure, there have been four “mass shootings” this year, including the one in San Bernardino, and at least 73 such attacks since 1982.
The number of alleged mass shootings claimed by the left has only increased since Follman struck back in 2015.
Last year, while still in the month of November, the Hill claimed there had been over 600 mass shootings in the U.S. during 2022.
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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 PhD 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.