For thousands of years people have been using some variation of the saying the pen is mightier than the sword. Nowhere is that saying more appropriate today than in the “gun debate” — even the words “gun debate” themselves are loaded.

I want to do a quick overview of the terms I am aware of that are used to steer public opinion one way or the other. When you are aware of them and start looking for them, you can often deduce the author’s intent and conclusion just from a few keywords.

Here is part of a typical Giffords press release (bolding mine):

In the wake of three mass shootings in California, the gun lobby has predictably argued that the fact that shootings still occur in states like California with strong gun safety laws proves that efforts to protect the public from gun violence are futile. https://giffords.org/press-release/2019/11/memo-california-gun-laws/

Mass Shooting is probably the most fickle word. It can have several meanings, and the author’s intent is usually indicated by an anecdote at the start of the article. Its varying definitions have been widely discussed, but the tactics for using them to influence public opinion are usually left out of the discussion.

In this case, the author sets up his intent in the opening paragraph (bolding mine):

Last week, the State of California suffered three mass shootings in the span of four days. These attacks—at a school in Santa Clarita, a family home in San Diego, and a football watch party in Fresno—claimed 10 lives and left 10 other people grappling with life-altering trauma and gunshot wounds, including a nine-year old boy named Ezequiel, who is in critical condition and fighting for his life in the hospital after his mother and three brothers were shot dead beside him.



On Wednesday, another mass shooting left four people shot in Richmond, California, and on Thursday, another left five people shot in Long Beach. Thankfully, all nine victims are expected to survive.

First, and perhaps most obvious, they want to humanize the victims. By specifically mentioning school shootings and nine-year old Ezequiel you will start thinking of other school shootings, like the one in Newtown seven years ago.

Did you catch that, Dear Reader? I wrote “other school shootings.” If you accepted that without a second thought, it was probably because Giffords’ paragraph had primed you for it. Ezequiel was shot by his father, in his home. He was not at school.

Nobody is talking about school shootings, they are talking about mass shootings. Now while there is overlap, only a very small proportion of mass shootings (which in itself are rare), are also school shootings. I may do another post on that later.

They are also talking about life-altering trauma and gunshot wounds. This factors in to the later definition of mass shooting; after all, a mass shooting where multiple people are killed is rarer than a mass shooting where multiple people are injured.

The mass shooting at the family home was a murder-suicide. While tragic, it does not match the image conjured up by first referring to school shootings. There is no random aspect to it. The “football watch party” mass shooting also diverges from that image. It was gang-related; gang members were hanging out in a backyard when a rival gang opened fire on them.

But, now that you have that image in your head of Ezequiel and school shootings, the “memo” (blog post) then goes on to list states in which mass shootings have occurred that month, without defining the term mass shooting itself.

The typical definition, when solely making the argument that there are too many mass shootings is one where a minimum of three or four people are injured in an incident where a firearm, was involved, without accounting for any other factors. Some incidents which would be considered mass shootings under this definition:

A husband finds his wife in bed with another man. In a rage, he shoots them both and then himself once he realizes what he has done.

Gang members do a drive-by shooting on a rival gang member’s house. The gang member’s family members are injured by shards of glass .

Police intervene in a drug deal. A firefight ensues and several of the drug dealers are wounded before being arrested.

None of these line up with Ezequiel. Ezequiel was likely not involved in gang activity or adultery. But all of these are included in the list of mass shootings.

They could have used other definitions of mass shooting; and they would have, if their point had been something other than making it seem like they are a common occurrence. It’s easy to find definitions online, so I will just list some factors that can be considered based on author intent.

Wounded or killed?

Injury caused by firearm or where firearm was present?

Shooter involved in criminal activity beforehand?

Gang affiliation?

Domestic factors?

Using these you can craft just about any narrative by simply redefining the word mass shooting. For example, if you have beef with white men, you can look at only killings, where there was no gang affiliation or criminal activity, and exclude domestic violence. The low number of mass shootings that remain (1,196 victims since 1966) will have been primarily perpetrated by white men.

If you have beef with AR-15s, you use a similar definition, but you don’t go back in time all the way to 1966. A good starting point is 1982, when George Banks committed the Wilkes-Barre Shootings. You can also use this as a jump-off point to 1994, when the federal assault weapons ban was enacted. Include this event and compare the 12 years preceding the ban to the 10 years of the ban, and it will make the ban appear effective.

On the other hand, if you don’t like black people, you’re going to want to include those gang and crime incidents. If you are trying to link mass shootings to poverty, also definitely include them. If you want to prove that mass shootings are more of an Anders Breivik-type affair, exclude them. If you want to blame them on the GOP, exclude gangs and crime, but include domestic factors.

But most importantly, whatever definition you pick, be sure to include a paragraph about Ezequiel at the top to plant the image. The suburbanite audience for these posts needs to believe that they are protecting Ezequiel by banning mass shootings.

To show just how much of a difference this makes in simply discussing mass shootings I threw together the following table based on data from the Washington Post (who define a school shooting as, quite literally, a shooting happening on school grounds- including suicides and non-students) and Gun Violence Archive (four or more shot).

The GVA data I had available to me don’t go farther back than 2014, and the WaPo data are likely to be partial (the last entry is March 2019). Of course 2018 was the year indiscriminate mass shootings happened at Marshall County High School, Santa Fe High School, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Now of course it would be easier to contrast those number to overal gun violence numbers, or to compare them to more common causes of death (car accidents, heart attacks, etc.). But I won’t. Let’s look at mass shootings alone.

Even in 2018, that outlier year, there were 31 people killed and 63 people injured in school mass shootings. The ones Giffords want you to think about in that opening paragraph. That is 8.4% of all the people killed in mass shootings. 4.7% for injuries.

If we take all school shootings (so anything firearms related happening on school grounds), those are not that far off, relatively. Obviously, the numbers in other years are even lower. And remember, we’re looking at the percentages of mass shooting casualties.

So even though Ezequiel was a victim of a mass shooting, by GVA’s definition, if he had been a victim of school shooting as was implied, he would even be a statistical outlier among mass shooting victims.

Of course what happened at the aforementioned schools was horrible, and I would not wish that upon anyone or anyone’s children. However, when implementing policy we have to do so based on facts and data. The simple fact is that these events are so rare that proponents of gun control have had to craft an entire language and strategy around framing the incidents.

So next time you see someone write about mass shootings, ask yourself what they mean. Then look at what they’re saying. If the two don’t add up, you’re being manipulated.