Amy Swearer Profile picture
Jun 3, 2022 28 tweets 5 min read Read on X
I'm going through 2022 school shooting data, and this is your friendly reminder that many gun control groups routinely inflate school shooting numbers to scare people into thinking Uvalde happens every week. It doesn't.

Here a few of my favorite inclusions from Everytown:
An adult couple met with strangers to buy a car in an elementary school parking lot at midnight. The sellers tried to rob them. One woman was shot in the shoulder and injured.
A 27-year-old man was found fatally shot in his car behind a school building on a Sunday.

A 20-year-old was found fatally shot behind a school building at 1:00 a.m.

Another man was fatally shot in a school parking lot at 6:40 am on a Sunday.
After a high school graduation ceremony, on publicly accessible tennis courts belonging to a local college, one teenager shot two other teenagers (one fatally) and fled.
A teenager shot another teenager on an elementary school's property on a Sunday.
There is literally one where an armed woman chased her ex-boyfriend out of the apartment, is confronted by officers near a daycare center and fatally shot...and the press release literally says the daycare center was not involved and was never in harm's way.
Are these all instances of gun violence? Yes. Are they all problematic in their own right? Yes. But packaging these as part of some "school shooting" epidemic is dishonest nonsense.
My God, they literally count a cop who shot himself in his own vehicle vaguely near an elementary school. Presumably overnight. In mid-JULY.
We've got a 25-year-old fatally shot [and I quote here] "near a school playground." On a Sunday evening.

A 17-year-old fatally shot outside of an elementary school...on Veteran's Day, when school wasn't in session.
It doesn't get less absurd. They include an instance where, after a night game for an adult league flag football league, a man fatally shot a member of the opposing team because of an on-field dispute...solely because it happened behind an elementary school.
Woof. I've discovered the "no one injured" filter and let me tell you, some of these are absolute doozies.

We've got an instance where a stray bullet struck a window of an elementary school while no one was inside the building.
We've got "a couple shots fired near a middle school baseball field on a Friday evening while a 20 year old and friends were taking batting practice," apparently not directed at anyone associated with the school, and as far as anyone can tell there were no injuries.
There are bullets hitting the outside wall of a middle school gym in the early morning before anyone was on the campus, likely during an unrelated drive-by shooting.

MORE adults in a flag football league getting into fights. No injuries this time, just a warning shot.
*Guys these examples are all just from the 2021-2022 school year numbers*
A bit tangential, but I'm also finding WAY more stories of school SROs protecting kids than I knew about previously. Like, did you know that in March, an SRO at a Woodbridge, VA, middle school confronted a man armed with a rifle and shotgun?
Woodbridge isn't that from me and I had no idea. The armed man threatened during a domestic dispute in a nearby home, then fired off a shotgun round on school property. Staff members rightly notified the SRO, who requested additional officers and locked down the school.
Once that was done, he confronted the armed man (outside of the school as he cut through property near the side of the school building) and arrested him.
Atlanta in March, an SRO shot and wounded a parent who showed up brandishing a gun at high school students and staff during school dismissal. She's been charged with a whole bathtub full of criminal offenses.
Just last month in Florida, an SRO fatally shot a man who drove through a high school breezeway while classes where in session, crashed his car into a tree, ran into the school auditorium, and fought with a staff member.
Everyone is over here whining about "but Everytown counts 'gunfire at schools' and not 'school shootings'" as though this is somehow now an honest framing of the issue. So let's do some other databases.

EducationWeek: edweek.org/leadership/sch…
Same problems of broadly tying in "things that happen near schools" with "school shootings."

4 teens get into a fight in a parking lot outside of a nighttime basketball game? Now a school shooting.

Same for an adult man shot in a parking lot during high school basketball game.
Student shot near a school AFTER the basketball game? Now a school shooting.

Student shot in a parking lot 45 minutes after school ended? Now a school shooting.

Interpersonal dispute after school in a parking lot? Now a school shooting.
On a basketball team's charter bus, after practice on the way to get dinner, a player's gun discharged inside his bag and struck a team trainer. This is now a school shooting.
A gang-related incident outside of a school stadium in a parking lot? Congrats. Now a school shooting.
Oh, look, CHDS calls anything a "shooting incident" using the same parameters as Everytown, so they can regurgitate some absurdly high numbers of "school shooting incidents" that tells us almost nothing about student safety but does manipulate people. chds.us/ssdb/charts-gr…
You really think gun control advocates don't use these absurd framings "prove" we need extreme gun control because students are perpetually in danger? Oh, look, Sandy Hook Promise using numbers from a database that replicates Everytown's parameters.

sandyhookpromise.org/blog/gun-viole…
So let me repeat: this isn't about justifying some "acceptable" number of school shootings or being fine with non-school violence. It's about groups intentionally manipulating people's perception of the problem so that they're more likely to side with an extreme policy approach.
Since so many people can't bother with basic contextual comprehension, I am very obviously referring to *favorite examples of intentional misrepresentation/manipulation in a specific data collection* this isn't hard unless you've come in bad faith.

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More from @AmySwearer

Jan 18
I'm reading through the DOJ's scathing report on the disastrous Uvalde response so that you don't have to.

Here's what sticks out: 🧵

static.texastribune.org/media/files/17…
The investigation "identified several critical failures and other breakdowns" during the response and refers to "cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training that contributed to those failures and breakdowns."
The most significant failure? First responders treated a clear active shooter scenario--where generally accepted practice is to "immediately engage the subject...if necessary, bypassing injured victims and placing themselves in harm's way"--as a barricaded subject scenario.
Read 16 tweets
Aug 14, 2023
Can we take a minute to appreciate how many women have protected themselves and others with firearms in the last two or so weeks? It's basically a highlight real of just how important the right to keep and bear arms is for us, too. Tip of the DGU iceberg, but important:

📜📜📜
Aug. 11, Tucson (AZ) - A woman living by herself fatally shot a would-be intruder who kept trying to break into her home despite knowing she was armed.

kold.com/2023/08/12/pcs…
Aug. 11, Pottstown (PA) - A woman shot and wounded the father of her child after he assaulted her, leaving various injuries. He not only had an active restraining order against him, but also had active warrants for violating that restraining order.

archive.ph/mP2Rh
Read 15 tweets
Jul 21, 2023
(1) She was 30 weeks pregnant, which would have been illegal in most states pre-Roe [and most of the world], and is 20 weeks past the FDA's approved usage timeline for abortion pills.

(2) She wasn't charged under the abortion law. She was charged with concealing the remains.
(3) Her mother is charged with *performing* the abortion after 20 weeks, as well as with performing the abortion without a medical license.

(4) Doctors lose their licenses all the time for far less egregious things than prescribing abortion pills at 30 weeks.
(5) Survival rates for babies born at 30 weeks are somewhere between 95-98% in developed countries. The baby has vocal chords, fingerprints, fully developed lungs, and even eyelashes. It can open its eyes and blink. It can grasp the umbilical cord with its tiny hands.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 27, 2023
It's indisputable that an armed civilian stopped an active shooter last week.

You almost certainly haven't heard about it.

Why?

Because Las Vegas Police have gone out of their way to downplay it, while the media have shown basically zero interest.

THREAD.
Last Friday, LVPD responded to a shooting at a luxury condo just off the Las Vegas strip. The initial reporting on it looked generally like this:

Two people involved. One shot and injured.

That's it. Pretty standard crime, right?

8newsnow.com/news/local-new…
The next day, some follow up reports started hinting that something more complex may have happened.

We find out that a "gunman" fired shots into the apartment complex lobby, and was "stopped" by a hero employee.

ktnv.com/news/man-calle…
Read 20 tweets
Jun 8, 2023
Example #1837 of why it's a horrible idea to only count defensive gun uses if they're confirmed in some publicly available media report.

Often, the public doesn't get updated if a shooting is later deemed justified unless it's suddenly relevant again.

wtvr.com/news/local-new…
Case in point - a Richmond teenager was fatally shot in Nov. 2021. Limited info, except for a March 2022 article detailing that his family was upset no arrests had been made. That could mean many things, including a lack of suspects.

nbc12.com/2022/03/22/tho…
But at some point between Nov. 2021 and today, the police determined this shooting was actually a justified homicide. They either told no one, or no one cared enough to report it. Can't find a public disclosure of that determination. If it exists, it flew under everyone's radar.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 8, 2023
This is some Orwellian doublespeak. You don't "enshrine freedom" by literally limiting the scope of your existing freedoms, which are already enshrined. And you can't "leave the Second Amendment intact" while cutting out its heart and removing its soul.
The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, protects what citizens may do by telling the government what it cannot do.

Newsome's amendment turns this on its head, mandating what government MUST do in order that peaceable citizens may NOT do certain things.
It's like saying "we're keeping the 1st Amendment intact" with a new one criminalizing unpopular speech, limiting freedom of religion to just The Big 5, and requiring those under 21 to get parental consent for internet use.

You're blatantly dismantling the whole thing.
Read 6 tweets

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