Fake News: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Spreads Hoax Stats on U.S. Mass Shootings

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Candidate for U.S. Congress (D-NY), reacted to the lives lost in Annapolis by claiming the attack marked the 195th mass shooting this year.

She shocked the nation with a primary victory over Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY-14) on June 26, and is now spreading stats on mass shootings that are exponentially higher than actual shooting figures support.

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted:

Horrifying.

This is our nation’s 195th mass shooting – this year. https://t.co/zNBsX3sulZ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) June 28, 2018

So Ocasio-Cortez is claiming 195 mass shooting in the first six months of this year, and if the same kind of math applies to the next six months, that will mean a claim of 390 mass shootings for the year. The left made similar claims in 2015, suggesting 355 mass shootings for the year. The figure was so far removed from reality that Mother Jones editor Mark Follman stepped in to correct the record.

Writing in The New York Times, he said:

At Mother Jones, where I work as an editor, we have complied an in-depth open-source database covering more than three decades of public mass shootings. By our measure, there have been four “mass shootings” this year, including the one in San Bernardino, and at least 73 such attacks since 1982.

Follman showed the claim of 355 mass shootings was about 351 incidents too high. The actual number of mass shootings for 2015 was four.

CNN has taken the lead on presenting inflated numbers on school shootings. Following the February 14, 2018, Parkland school attack, they claimed one school shooting “on average” every week. They made the same claim following the May 18, 2018, shooting at Santa Fe High School, but their claim included BB gun incidents and accidental discharges.

The heinous attack on Capital Gazette headquarters in Annapolis was a mass shooting, but it was simply nowhere close to the 195th such shooting this year.

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.