The Patriot Post® · FBI Used Bogus Numbers in Mass Shooting Report

Last month, the FBI released a study on mass shootings since 2000. We looked at the underlying cultural problems, but gun researcher John Lott dug deeper into the actual numbers the FBI used. What he found is astounding. “The FBI counted 160 ‘mass’ or ‘active’ shootings in public places from 2000 to 2013,” Lott wrote. “Worse, it said these attacks rose from just one in 2000 to 17 in 2013. Media outlets worldwide gave the ‘news’ extensive coverage. Too bad the study is remarkably shoddy – slicing the evidence to distort the results. In fact, mass public shootings have only risen ever so slightly over the last four decades. While the FBI study discusses ‘mass shootings or killings,’ its graphs were filled with cases that had nothing to do with mass killings. Of the 160 cases it counted, 32 involved a gun being fired without anyone being killed. Another 35 cases involved a single murder. It’s hard to see how the FBI can count these incidents, which make up 42 percent of its 160 cases, as ‘mass killings.’ They plainly don’t fit the FBI’s old definition, which required four or more murders, nor even its new one of at least three murders. And these non-mass shootings, with zero or one person killed, drive much of the purported increase in the number of attacks. If you consider cases where no one or only one person was killed, 50 came in the last seven years of the period the FBI examined and only 17 during the first seven years.” In other words, it appears the FBI produced a deceptive report that just happens to bolster the gun-grabbing agenda of the Obama administration. More…