Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) latest gun control push includes the claim that there have been “over a dozen” mass shootings in America since Friday.
Pelosi tweeted this claim Tuesday and did not include any citation to substantiate it: "We have had over a dozen mass shooting since last Friday, leaving families and communities devastated — and still, Republicans would rather ban books than assault weapons. Democrats will never stop fighting to keep America's children safe from guns. -NP"
The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University maintain a database of mass shootings, defining the incidents as those “in which four or more people were killed other than the perpetrator.” This measurement has been standard for identifying mass shootings or mass murders for years.
On April 15, 2021, the Rand Corporation observed that the standard for “mass shootings” is derived from the FBI’s 1980s definition of a “mass murderer” as an individual who “kills four or more people in a single incident (not including himself).” Therefore, four or more deaths in a single incident by a single gunman was the working definition of a “mass shooting.”
These things considered, the AP/USA Today/Northeastern database shows there were 19 “mass killing” incidents in the U.S. from January 1, 2023, to May 2, 2023. Yet Pelosi claims there have been over 12 since Friday.