The debate over mass shootings in America has become as much a war over statistics as over policy, with competing definitions and methodologies producing wildly different pictures of the problem.
Writing for PJ Media, columnist Kevin Downey Jr. argues that mass-shooting data is being distorted by political bias, pointing to a recent viral claim comparing U.S. mass-shooting deaths to France’s heat wave fatalities.
The tweet in question asserted that more people died in France’s current heat wave (7,300) than in all U.S. mass shootings since 1966 (1,741). Downey says that claim is misleading, depending largely on how one defines a “mass shooting.”
Competing Definitions
The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter, in a fluid situation. Under that definition, a 2023 shooting at a Sweet 16 party in Dadeville, Alabama, where five criminals shot 34 people and four died, qualifies as a textbook mass shooting.
But the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a think tank affiliated with the State University of New York, uses a narrower definition. It defines a mass shooting as an incident of targeted violence carried out by one or more shooters at public or populated locations, with victims and locations chosen at random or for symbolic value, occurring within a single 24-hour period. Crucially, it excludes incidents that “must not correlate with gang violence or targeted militant or terroristic activity.”
Downey argues that exclusion skews the data. “They don’t want black people or Muslims involved in the mass shooting statistics,” he wrote. Under the Gun Violence Archive’s broader definition, he says, black males are responsible for at least 70% of mass shootings, a figure he calls conservative.
The Numbers
The Rockefeller Institute’s data shows 1,741 mass-shooting deaths across 517 shootings from 1966 through mid-August 2026. Under its definition, perpetrators tend to be white 54.6% of the time, while black individuals account for 21.4% of shootings.
Downey notes that white people make up roughly 56.1% of the U.S. population and black people 13.5%, meaning white individuals are slightly underrepresented relative to their population share while black individuals are overrepresented even under the institute’s narrower definition.
Using Gun Violence Archive data compiled via Grok, Downey says there have been between 7,000 and 7,500 deaths from mass shootings in the U.S. from 2013 to the present. France is reporting 7,300 heat-related deaths this year.
“The number of French people who died from the heat this year is roughly the same as the number of Americans killed in mass shootings since 2013,” he wrote.
Political Implications
Downey places the statistical debate in a broader political context, accusing Democrats of fudging numbers to advance gun control and ultimately undermine the Second Amendment. He cites the “45 goals of Communism” entered into Congress in 1963, including a goal promoting the U.N. as a one-world government with independent armed forces.
The columnist also points to the cities with the most mass shootings per the Gun Violence Archive: Chicago, which has been run by Democrats since 1931, and Philadelphia, whose last Republican mayor left office in 1952.
“Since I avoid gangs, drug deals, Chicago, and Philly, I’ll take my gat and AC over France any day,” Downey quipped.
The piece reflects a growing trend of statistical battles in the gun debate, where definitions of “mass shooting” vary widely among researchers, law enforcement, and advocacy groups, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult and leaving room for political interpretation on all sides.
Source: pjmedia.com — https://pjmedia.com/kevindowneyjr/2026/08/26/mass-shootings-inconvenient-facts-vs-phantom-fiction-n4956547
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