Press distorts with inflated 'mass shooting' statistics

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Newsrooms have been quick to claim that there have been 355 mass shootings in America so far this year, but they've ignored that this statistic comes from an anonymous Internet group with an entirely arbitrary definition of "mass shooting."

"The statistics now being highlighted in the news come primarily from shootingtracker.com, a website built by members of a Reddit forum supporting gun control called GunsAreCool," Mother Jones national affairs editor Mark Follman wrote in an article published this week by the New York Times.

Rather than lean on figures compiled by official federal law enforcement sources, the "shooting tracker" is comprised entirely of news clippings collected from around the Internet by Reddit users.

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