During coverage of the attack on Maryland’s Great Mills High School CNN reported that there has been one school shooting per week, “on average,” in 2018.
They claim the total number of school shootings sits at “17” for year.
To reach 17, CNN explained that they counted “gang violence,” “domestic violence,” and an “accidental discharge” of a firearm on school grounds, as school shootings. This criteria allowed them to count incidents like the alleged March 2 murder of two parents by their son at Central Michigan University as a school shooting, even though the parents were not students at the university and no one, other than the parents, was targeted or injured.
It also allowed CNN to count the March 13 accidental discharge of a firearm in a Seaside, California, classroom as a school shooting. KSBW reported that a reserve police officer, who is also a teacher, accidentally discharged a firearm and a male student received “moderate injuries” from bullet fragments that “ricocheted off the ceiling.”
Other similar incidents were counted as school shootings by CNN as well, making actual school shootings like the February 14 Parkland Florida shooting or the March 20 Great Mills High School shooting seem legion.
Ironically, on the day of the Parkland shooting Michael Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety tweeted that there had been 18 school shootings in 2018. That claim was quickly spread by pro-gun control liberals then debunked after Breitbart News did a fact check.
The audit showed that Everytown had reached the number “18” by counting suicides, in which no one other than the deceased were targeted, and eight non-suicide firearm-related incidents in which there no injuries or fatalities. Everytown also counted accidental discharges, a “shooting…outside a Louisiana high school resulting in a 14-year-old receiving an ‘superficial’ wound, and another [that] resulted in a 15-year-old girl being wounded by a 16-year-old boy.”
When suicides, accidental discharges, and firearm-related incidents with no injuries or fatalities are counted as “school shootings,” alongside heinous attacks like those on Parkland or Great Mills, we have reached point where the phrase “school shootings” no longer communicates anything.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, 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. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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