As shown early this morning, the press's redefinition of the term "mass shooting" has turned into a nearly omnipresent meme virtually overnight in the wake of Wednesday's Islamic terrorist massacre in San Bernardino, California. Under the new, demonstrably indefensible definition which not only breaks with past practice but also pretends it never existed, there have been 355 "mass shootings" so far this year in the U.S. As consistently defined for many previous years, the actual number is 4.
Just two months ago, the incurably left-biased "fact checker" site Politifact, in evaluating a "mass shooting" total of 294 claimed by Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, asserted that she "used an overly broad definition of what most people would consider a mass shooting."
The web site's Amy Sherman predictably graded Wasserman Schultz's statement on a generous curve, giving her statement — "380 Americans have been killed in 294 mass shootings in 2015 alone" — a "Half True." Politifact has given outright leftist lies a "Pants on Fire" evaluation about as often as professional basketball's Philadelphia 76ers have been winning games so far this year (for those who don't follow such things, the Sixers are 1-20 after a Saturday loss).
Given that the site's final grades are so thoroughly corrupted, one must look at the content of Sherman's writeup to see how dishonest Wasserman's contention — and, by inference, the contention of those in the press who have swallowed the "355 mass shootings" meme since San Bernardino massacre — really was (links are in original; bolds are mine):
Wasserman Schultz claims 294 mass shootings in 2015 alone
In the wake of the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that the "national epidemic" of such incidents demands a response from Congress.
... "A message for Jeb Bush: 380 Americans have been killed in 294 mass shootings in 2015 alone. ‘Stuff’ doesn't just ‘happen.’ Inaction happens," she said in an Oct. 2 tweet.
... We found that Wasserman Schultz used an overly broad definition of what most people would consider a mass shooting.
... The statistic came from Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowdsourced site, which defines mass shooting as any in which four or more people are shot, regardless of whether they die or are injured. But that definition is more broad than some other definitions, which we will get into later.
Mass Shooting Tracker showed 294 mass shootings as of Oct. 1. About 122 of those incidents -- or about 42 percent -- involved zero fatalities. The shootings killed 379 people and injured 1,094.
... While the website defines mass shootings to include fatalities and injuries, a key federal government report defined "mass shooting" and "mass murder" as four or more fatalities.
... "Those who want to create a sense of crisis over the violence will tend to use lower cutoffs, while those who want to minimize the problem will use higher cutoffs," said Gary Kleck, a criminology professor at Florida State University.
A Wikipedia entry on "mass shootings" demonstrates that Sherman understated the perceived relevance of the definition in "a key federal government report." The definition Wikipedia claims, namely "Shootings that murder and injure multiple people in one place and time in the United States," has data going back to 1929. The key point is that there has been a common understanding of the term in law enforcement for decades which leftist gun-grabbers are intent on changing, as Prof. Kleck noted, "to create a sense of crisis."
What the entry shows is that from 1929 until 2010, there were 89 "mass shootings," an average of just over one per year. Since then, there have been 35, a vast increase in annual frequency (7) from that seen during the previous decade (3.6).
It's clear, based on the existence of decades of data under a commonly accepted definition, that Politifact should have given Wasserman-Schultz a "Pants on Fire" evaluation. Given that the site even gave her a "Half True" really indicates that the web site knew she was being fundamentally dishonest in using a gun-hostile subreddit's out-of-thin-air definition of "mass shooting."
But what even Politifact couldn't handle two months ago now appears to have become the agenda-driven media norm. It's no wonder that the American people's trust in the press is at an all-time low.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
