opinion

No, there have not been 18 school shootings already this year

No, there have not been 18 school shootings already this year, as CNBC, Politico, The Washington Post, ABC, The (New York) Daily News and briefly a USA TODAY column all reported in the hours since a 19-year-old allegedly slaughtered 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., on Ash Wednesday.

Fake stats like that make finding a solution to the real problem of gun violence, which has actually struck American schools at least six times this year, that much harder. Amping up fears, and muddying the search for fixes that can cut back the senseless violence, only undermines efforts to reconcile the real concerns of parents and the legitimate desire of civil rights advocates to protect the Bill of Rights.

Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control advocacy group responsible for spreading this bogus statistic, should be ashamed of its blatant dishonesty. When parents hear the words “school shooting,” their hearts freeze and their heads fill with images of Sandy Hook: dead and dying grade-schoolers, broken and bleeding in a classroom, helpless teachers crying over their charges and slain colleagues as a black-clad killer switches magazines in his AR-15.

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That’s mostly not what Everytown is talking about. At least when The Washington Post reported Everytown’s propaganda, it included some important caveats:

“That data point … includes any discharge of a firearm at a school — including accidents — as a ‘shooting.’ It also includes incidents that happened to take place at a school, whether students were involved or not.”

The Post should have kept including caveats. By Everytown’s criteria, nobody has to be injured and the “shooting” doesn’t actually have to take place on campus, though it does have to be heard on campus or a bullet has to hit somewhere on campus.

Some examples:

►On Jan. 3, a 31-year-old “military veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury and depression” shot himself in a school parking lot after he called police to report he was suicidal, according to the Lansing (Mich.) State Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network. (Everytown removed this instance from their report after The Post found that the school had been closed down for months.)

►On Jan. 10, in Denison, Texas, at Grayson College Criminal Justice Center, a student mistook a real firearm belonging to an officer, who was authorized to carry the weapon, for a practice weapon and fired it into a wall. No one was killed or injured.

►On Feb. 5, in Maplewood, Minn., a third-grader pulled the trigger on a police gun while the officer was sitting on a bench. No one was killed or injured.

In eight of the 18 cases originally counted by Everytown, no one was injured or killed. Two were suicides.

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And it sure isn’t necessary to inflate the number of school shootings this year. The real number according to a stricter definition used by The Post is at least seven shootings targeting teachers or students. USA TODAY's news department counts six. In any case, that’s about one a week since the beginning of the year, a horrifying statistic.

Indeed, in one case Everytown included a “school shooting” in a town with fresh scars from a real school shooting.

On Jan. 10, according to The Desert Sun, “a gun was fired from off campus and a bullet struck the Visual Arts Building” at California State University-San Bernardino. No one was killed or injured.

Everytown counted that ambiguous incident as a school shooting anyway. That must be mystifying to those who suffered through a real murder-suicide shooting in San Bernardino’s North Park Elementary School just last year. In April, an angry man gunned down his estranged wife who was a teacher. Before killing himself, he hit two of her students in the process, killing one.

The people of San Bernardino and parents all across America know what a school shooting is. We don’t need fake stats to pressure lawmakers into action. The real facts are horrifying enough.

David Mastio is the deputy editorial page editor of USA TODAY. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidMastio.