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After an Oregon high school freshman armed with an assault rifle injured a teacher, killed a student and killed himself Tuesday, a striking statistic began circulating on the internet. It said that at least 74 school shootings 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, an advocacy group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and gun-control advocate Shannon Watts. That comes out to more than one school shooting per week.
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 in an interview with Tumblr CEO David Karp.
In the interview, Obama discussed his frustration with lawmakers’ inaction on gun control legislation, particularly in the wake of Sandy Hook. While it’s not clear that Obama was specifically referencing the statistic compiled by Everytown, his comment was in line with their math. "We’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens," he said,
"and it happens now once a week."
But as widely as the number spread, it also attracted criticism. Charles Johnson, who writes for the conservative Daily Caller, garnered attention for what he considered a debunking of the Everytown list.
We decided to sift through the numbers ourselves.
How Everytown counted 74 incidents…
Read the full story: www.politifact.com
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