The Pinocchio Test
Okay this is a year old but to remember that certain groups misrepresent things:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/29/has-there-been-one-school-shooting-per-week-since-sandy-hook/
There are many ways to define school shooting. But applying the reasonable person standard, as is the standard at The Fact Checker, it is difficult to see how many of the incidents included in Everytowns list such as suicide in a car parked on a campus or a student accidentally shooting himself when emptying his gun and putting it away in his car before school would be considered a school shooting in the context of Sandy Hook.
Lawmakers have a responsibility to check out the facts in the reports they use, especially ones that come from advocacy groups. If they are aware there are definitions that are disputed, or that are defined in other ways depending on who uses them, it is incumbent on lawmakers to clarify exactly what they are talking about and not mislead the public. In particular, lawmakers should rely more on official government statistics, such as from the FBI, rather than misleading metrics cobbled together by interest groups.
We wavered between Three and Four Pinocchios. But this is a definition of school shooting that was widely disputed a year ago, and lawmakers need to present information especially for such a controversial topic as gun control in a clear, responsible and accurate way. Murphys failure to do so tipped the rating to Four.
Four Pinocchios
I unofficially count 14 school shootings since June of last year when the article was published. (I don't include firearms discharges where there were no casualties.)