In the wake of Wednesday's attack on Republican congressmen at a park in Alexandria, Virginia, a number of national media outlets have published activists' claim that there have been more than 150 mass shootings in the United States so far this year.
The Washington Post, Fortune, the Huffington Post, Bustle, and MSNBC all cited the figure in pieces related to the attack on the congressmen. The figure was calculated by the Gun Violence Archive which was founded as a non-profit in 2013 with the intention of building on work tracking gun violence started by the liberal political magazine Slate. By their count, there have been 154 mass shootings so far this year.
However, the Gun Violence Archive counts any shooting attack where four or more people are injured as a mass shooting. This is a looser standard than the FBI standard for mass murder which they describe as "a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders."
Only 8 of the 154 incidents the Gun Violence Archive meet the FBI standard for mass murder.
Editor's Note: It would appear the concept of collecting all political commentary onto a single page for the time being. As stated on the "Get Your Political Opinions 2.0" page, it will be re-evaluated when the 2018 election cycle begins.
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