Jimmy Kimmel Tweets CNN’s Inflated School Shooting Stats

TV Personality Jimmy Kimmel arrives for the premiere of 'Office Christmas Party'
VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images

Late-night Jimmy Kimmel tweeted CNN’s inflated school shooting stats on Monday, which claim school shootings occur “57 times” more often in the U.S. than other “industrialized nations combined.”

Jimmy Kimmel tweeted:

Kimmel’s tweet links to a report in which CNN admits the stats include “gang violence, fights and domestic violence,” as well as “accidental discharges” of firearms, and that includes incidents where the legal firearms are possessed by a police officer on campus.

For example, CNN published a condensed version of their study on May 18, the day of the attack on Santa Fe High School. That study, like the larger one, claims that the U.S. has had, “on average, one school shooting every week this year.” But when Breitbart News examined the study we found that one of CNN’s school shootings was an April 9, 2018, incident in which one student shot a BB gun at another. We found that CNN’s list contained a March 13, 2018, incident in which a police officer, who was a school teacher, accidentally discharged his firearm into the ceiling of classroom in Oceanside, California.

That officer legally possessed his gun on campus.

In another incident, CNN counted the March 20, 2018, “unintentional” discharge of a firearm in a Los Angeles school as a school shooting. ABC7 described as an “accidental” incident but CNN counted it as a school shooting.

And Kimmel is linking to these inflated CNN claims to make his case against guns?

It was Kimmel who railed against gun shows during his opening monologue the day after the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas shooting, even though the Las Vegas gunman acquired his rifles via background checks at gun stores. During that same monologue, Kimmel claimed Trump had “signed a bill that made it easier for people with severe mental illness to buy guns legally.” But Trump had done no such thing. Rather, Trump signed a bill repealing Obama’s Social Security gun ban; a ban designed to deny Second Amendment rights to Social Security beneficiaries that needed help managing their finances.

On April 20, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Kimmel joined with Alec Baldwin, Amy Schumer, Michael Moore, and other celebrities, to launch the “No Rifle Association initiative.” They issued a letter to the NRA saying, “We’re coming for your money. We’re coming for your puppets. And we’re going to win.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.