FBI ‘Active Shooter’ Stats Shoot Holes In Biden’s ‘Mass Shooting’ Argument

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, anti-gun legislators and gun-ban groups like to tout the number of mass shootings in America, often saying there have been more mass shootings in the country than there have been days in the year.

Of course, these anti-gun activists are using numbers from the Gun Violence Archives, a website known for using criteria that greatly inflates such numbers. And that’s very easy to see when compared to the just-released Federal Bureau of Investigation report on “active shooter” incidents.

GVA’s “mass shootings” criteria is all events where four or more people are injured in a shooting. These incidents are often drug gang attacks and the like—not at all what Americans think of as mass shootings. In fact, they would include a botched arrest where two cops and two suspects are shot, and even self-defense shootings! By their criteria, they reported 656 mass shootings in 2023.

The FBI, on the other hand, classifies an “active shooter” how most Americans likely envision it—“an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” By the FBI’s count, there were 48 active shooter incidents in 2023, only about 7% of the total reported by GVA and constantly regurgitated by politicians and the press.

Of course, President Biden and other gun-ban advocates have full access to the FBI report, but you never hear them talking about it. They prefer the bloated numbers from GVA, even though they aren’t a true picture of what most think of when they hear the word “mass shooting.”

The latest FBI numbers showed a decrease in active shooter incidents from 50 in 2022. However, most media outlets chose to report that the number had gone up compared to 2019 numbers. Go figure.

According to the FBI report, the 48 active shooter incidents in 2023 occurred in 26 different states. That means nearly half of the states didn’t have a single incident, despite the media trying to make you think it’s almost a certainly you’ll be involved in a mass shooting at any minute. What likely won’t be surprising to most TTAG readers is that the state with the most “active shooter” incidents last year is also the state with the most restrictive gun control laws—California.

Of the 48 incidents, California had eight—nearly 17% of the total. And yes, that’s the same California whose restrictive gun laws are coveted by President Biden and gun-ban advocates throughout the country. On the other hand, 22 of the 30 states that have passed constitutional carry laws had only one or zero FBI-defined “active shooter” incidents in 2023.

When it comes to what people think of when they hear the term “mass shootings,” the title of the John Lott book More Guns, Less Crime continues to remain as relevant today as it was back when it was first published.