White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed there have been hundreds of mass shootings in the U.S. this year in yet another attempt by the Biden regime to propagandize the gun debate.
The problem is her figure was off. Way off.
She also blamed Republicans for the mass shootings, of course.
“Today is Monday, May 8. That mean it is the 128th day of 2023. And yesterday, according to leading accounts, we witnessed the 201st mass shooting in this country this year,” she claimed.
“That means we are averaging more than one a day. More than 200 mass shootings in 128 days. Credible estimates show that more than 14,000 people have died this year from gun violence,” she added. “This is a crisis. It is a crisis that the Republicans in Congress are refusing to address. We are talking about the number-one killer of kids in America, and Republicans in Congress are saying there is nothing that we can do about it.”
The White House’s chief flak did not cite the “leading sources” or where she got the “credible estimates” from, and she also did not define what the administration considers a “mass shooting,” but The Associated Press was quick to fact-check her into oblivion.
From the AP:
Over the first four months and six days of this year, 115 people have died in 22 mass killings — an average of one mass killing a week. That includes the bloodshed Saturday at a Dallas-area mall where eight people were fatally shot.
That is still a lot of gun-related shootings, to be sure, but the real number of “mass killings” is nowhere near what Jean-Pierre claimed.
According to the AP, the 22 incidents do not all involve the use of firearms, and the contexts in which they occur are diverse, ranging from disputes in families and neighborhoods to shootings in schools, workplaces, and public areas. Additionally, murder-suicides account for only a small percentage of the incidents.
“The way that Jean-Pierre presented her figure, its validity notwithstanding, suggested that every mass killing happens the same way with the same motive: one deranged perpetrator randomly mowing down innocent people. But, as the AP reported, that simply isn’t true,” The Blaze noted in a report citing the press secretary’s claims and the AP’s fact-check.
“While it remains unclear where Jean-Pierre got the number, Mathew Littman, executive director of pro-gun reform organization 97Percent, went on CNN early Monday and claimed that there have been more than 200 mass shootings in 2023. That calculation includes incidents in which no one died,” The Blaze added.
