CBS Not Too Good with Math

Mass Shootings and Propaganda

By Chuck Warren

Here’s a CBS News headline: “1 out of every 15 American adults have been at a mass shooting, according to University of Colorado study.”

If it sounds absurd, it’s because it is absurd.

There are more than a quarter billion adults in the United States. 1 out of 15 is about 17 million adults.

Rudimentary math.

Let’s do an exercise. Life expectancy in the United States is 78. This means 60 years of adulthood. And let’s say that nobody has ever been at two mass shooting events—just to take the highest estimate. So, on average, 283,000 adults a year have experienced one for the last 60 years. On average, there are 400 mass shootings a year (and the number has gone up; the average for the last 60 years is actually lower). So more than 700 people must have been present at every mass shooting event.

Let’s round up the numbers now. Let’s say that people live up to 100, and on average there are 1,000 mass shooting events a year. That’d be more than 200 adults present at every mass shooting.

This is ridiculous.

The study defines a mass shooting as a public event in which at least 4 people are shot by a gun. Most mass shootings happen by handguns and on the street. Unless you’re talking about Times Square, there are not going to be hundreds of people around to witness it.

The study is completely bogus and is pure "trust us on Biden's mental state" propaganda.

Here’s what the study says about the sample data’s geographic distribution:

Respondents residing in states with populations exceeding 15 million contained large enough representation in the survey to warrant differentiation. These states include California, Florida, New York, and Texas, where respondents in the remaining states and District of Columbia were grouped into U.S. Census defined regions of West, Midwest, South, and Northeast.

There is no accounting for municipal distribution. About 50 million U.S. adults live outside urban areas, where mass shootings are very rare.

The study also doesn’t clarify how they chose the respondents, and whether they accounted for biased responses.

If you ever experienced a mass shooting, it is likely that you are passionate about the issue. YouGov conducted this survey, using its existing database of people it surveys.

So when YouGov asks you to participate in a survey about gun violence, it is much likelier that someone with the passion to stop it because of personal experience would volunteer to participate than the average citizen.

This ridiculous study did not have to be published and reported. If the academic professor who wrote it had any common sense, he would have asked for his money back from YouGov and paid another pollster to do it more accurately.

If the reporter at CBS had any common sense, she would have seen the problem with it and asked the professor and the pollster to clarify these extraordinary numbers. But instead, she did not second-guess anything because the numbers worked in favor of her agenda. She went out to seek anti-gun activists to interview to back up the study. This is another example of why voters do not trust the press anymore.

And if her editor had any common sense, he or she would have stopped the reporter from writing such a ridiculous story. Better yet, the editor should just be fired.

There were many layers to prevent the publishing of this report, and it would have taken only one person with common sense. But when every person from top to bottom shares the same elite biases, you end up reporting falsehoods like this.

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.