How Divergent Definitions Skew the U.S. Mass-Shooting Death Debate

The opinion piece refutes a tweet asserting that more people have died in France’s current heat wave than in all U.S. mass shootings since 1966, labeling the comparison as deceptive. It explains that the total depends on how a "mass shooting" is defined: the Gun Violence Archive records between 7,000 and 7,500 deaths from 2013 onward, whereas the Rockefeller Institute of Government lists 1,741 deaths across 517 incidents from 1966 through mid-2026 using a stricter definition that excludes gang, drug-related or terror incidents.

The author claims liberal think tanks deliberately narrow the scope to portray white men as the primary threat while ignoring the higher per-capita involvement of black shooters. Demographic figures are presented to suggest black perpetrators are over-represented relative to their share of the population. The article frames these statistical disputes as part of a broader political strategy to curtail the Second Amendment.