Fact Check: CNN’s List of School Shootings Includes BB Gun Incident, Accidental Discharges

Hours after the heinous attack on Santa Fe High School, CNN released a list of school shootings that includes BB gun incidents and accidental discharges of legally possessed guns.

CNN used the list to claim there has been, “on average, one school shooting every week this year.”

But those who take the time to read the list, see that one “school shooting” was an April 9 incident in which one student in Gloversville, New York, shot a BB gun at another student.

Another “school shooting” was a March 13 incident in which a police officer, who is a part-time teacher in Oceanside, California, accidentally discharged his firearm in the classroom. One student was “injured by a bullet fragment or by debris that fell from the ceiling.”

Another “school shooting” was what police described as an “unintentional” discharge of a firearm at Los Angeles’s Sal Castro Middle School. ABC7 reported the shooting as an “accidental” incident that occurred after a 12-year-old illegally brought a pistol to school.

CNN admits that other “school shooting” examples in their list include “gang violence, fights and domestic violence.”

On March 20 — just over a month after the Parkland school shooting — Breitbart News reported that CNN was already claiming “on average, one school shooting every week this year” with a less complete, but equally misleading, combination of accidental discharges, “gang violence,” “domestic violence,” etc. The newer list is just more of the same.

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.