Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety‘s Numbers Are Bogus

Everytown for Gun Safety has already gained a reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts. Now the Michael Bloomberg-funded group is back to its old tricks of performing a so-called “investigation”, then publishing a “conclusion” with no basis in fact.

The alleged study is titled “No Questions Asked: How Oregon’s Meth Users and domestic Abusers Shop Online for Guns“.

This is not the first time that Everytown has mounted an internet investigation in a state where it was funding an enhanced background check initiative. In September 2014, just six weeks before a voter referendum on background checks in Washington state, the group released a study that contended one in 10 private online gun sales were to criminals.

Gun rights advocates argued that in that instance, of the 16,739 online advertisements, the group found just eight individuals that had been convicted of crimes that prohibited them from possessing firearms, or about 0.005 percent, not the much larger 10 percent figure claimed by Everytown.

The Bloomberg group published a report in Vermont in January 2015 that claimed as many as one in 24 private sales could be to prohibited possessors. That study soon found itself at the center of threatened litigation when it was discovered that the gun control group used a series of photos from a real gun shop in their fake ads that retained the shop’s watermark and name. This led to a correction of the data collected by Everytown.

You all remember a striking statistic that began circulating on the internet last year that said at least 74 school shootings (now reporting it is 100) had occurred since December 2012, when an assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School by Adam Lanza left 28 dead, including Lanza and his mother. The statistic came from Everytown for Gun Safety. Numerous media outlets reported the 74 school shootings figure, and the number spread widely in Facebook posts and through other forms of social media. Even President Barack Obama brought up the once-a-week line.

But as widely as the number spread, it also attracted criticism. The main reason for the criticism of Everytown’s count is that its definition of “school shooting” is relatively broad. The group’s criteria goes beyond what many people would consider “school shootings” — incidents in which a student or an intruder enters a school and fires at innocent students and staff. Here’s the methodology as explained by the group at the bottom of the list:

Incidents were classified as school shootings when a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds, as documented in publicly reported news accounts. This includes assaults, homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings. …

Real data doesn’t support Bloomberg’s agenda, so why not make up his own?

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