President Trump is correct; CNN is often fake news. It’s certainly slanted and biased news on a grand scale. I examined an example of that when I dissected its coverage of a story months ago. CNN intentionally and quite adeptly often combines real facts with its own bias to create a false or misleading narrative. CNN is again deliberately misleading America. This time, it is on the difficult subject of “Mass Shootings.” Here is what you need to know about CNN & Mass Shootings: its coverage is one big “white” lie.
CNN ran a story with a click-bait title authored by a Muslim female “journalism” student. The story is, “How America Has Silently Accepted the Rage of White Men.” Pushing the lie that white males are the bogeyman is standard fare at CNN, and the title itself is designed to titillate its core audience, produce clicks, and reinforce the false narrative that angry white men are behind the recent decade of Mass Shootings.
The “story” stands for the unremarkable proposition that white male shooters have committed the majority of “Mass Shootings” since 1982. That’s not news … that’s fact. It’s just grossly misleading and irrelevant.
Indeed, males are the primary purveyors of gun violence, and white males represent the largest chunk of the male population in this country … by a lot.
If white male shooters were not committing the most “Mass Shootings,” wouldn’t we all agree that would be news? In fact, given that white males are 31 to 32% of the current US population, compared for example to black males, who are roughly 6.5% of the population, it would be an astonishing story worthy of national coverage if the majority of “Mass Shootings” were committed by minorities.
Ms. Modan’s CNN piece caught my attention because she was using data collected by the publication Mother Jones on Mass Shootings. As it turns out, I already did that. I spent 6 months buried in that data before publishing a piece on Mass Shootings last February. My piece was based on the remarkable findings that emerge solely and exclusively from an honest examination of those data.
CNN’s piece pushes a conclusion from the entire data set that is intentionally misleading, racist, and dangerous.
First, just to clear up any confusion, Mother Jones uses the correct, FBI-approved, definition of “Mass Shooting.” On the internet, there are numerous stories about mass shootings and the purported number of them, and Ms. Modan conflates that issue too. One common and incorrect statistic is that America has averaged one “Mass Shooting” a day since the shooting at Newtown. It has not.
America has not had one Mass Shooting a day since Newtown.
Americans are dying from gunfire across this country. That’s true. However, gun deaths are actually dropping nationally. And, most gun deaths, sadly, are suicides. Still, in many places, people are being shot by others. Most of these shootings are crime, gang, and drug-related.
I capitalize “Mass Shootings” here when I refer to the FBI definition as used by Mother Jones. Mass Shootings represent shootings where 4 or more people, not including the shooter, are killed in the attack. The difference in these shootings compared to the average week in Chicago is that these “Mass Shootings” represent mostly random attacks made indiscriminately on people in public places.
Mass Shootings under this definition include, for example, infamous shootings like the Aurora Movie theater, the Charleston Church, Columbine, and the Pulse Nightclub, and other similar attacks (This piece does not carve out terrorism, which one might argue should be caused out from Mass Shootings, like the Pulse Night Club, Fort Hood, and San Bernardino). Like it or not, for law enforcement purposes, crime-related shootings are not lumped into this definition, but terrorism is.
Ms. Mordan’s piece seems to confuse the mass shooting definitions, using the historical data about FBI defined Mass Shootings while toggling back and forth about all the other crime-related, mass shootings. She wisely does not attempt to identify those crime and gang-related shootings by “race.”
The CNN hit piece on angry white males is “correct” with respect to the 35 years of Mass Shooting numbers. When I say “correct,” I mean it is true that white shooters have committed most of the Mass Shooting over the entire period data set.
CNN’s spin that Mass Shootings are on the rise due to Angry White men and that America is silently accepting this is an outright .. damnable lie.
Indeed, one would have to be intentionally dishonest to conclude that America is suddenly silently accepting a growing number of murders from predominantly white men.
In reality, Mass Shootings by white men are down since 2009. Indeed, they are down since about 2002.
It may be of little comfort to Americans and victims of Mass Shootings, but white males are now only participating in these crimes at a rate much closer to their proportion of the US population.
Where angry white men in the 1980’s and 90’s were Mass Shooters 70% of the time, they are now the shooters 39% of the time. White men, by this measure, are actually far less angry, and America has fewer of their outrageous crimes to accept than it did two or three decades ago.
Any honest analysis of the data would show these facts … unless such an analysis was trying to prove a thesis that holds that white men are politically angrier NOW and taking it out in Mass Shootings. They are not. That’s the CNN “White” lie.
The author and CNN are not interested in an honest analysis of Mass Shootings based on race. They want a narrative. The narrative they want goes along with the false narrative of the rise of white supremacy, and the false charge that angry white men elected Trump. Disinterested black voters assured Trump’s win when 750,000 black voters who voted for President Obama in 2012 failed to show up for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton is NOT the president because black voters abandoned her.
CNN’s narrative on white shooters is likewise dead wrong. Mass Shootings are up … and they are up a great deal since 2009. But the increase in these shootings is not due to angry white men.
So … who are the new angry Mass Shooters?
Remember at the top of this piece when I wrote that it would be an “astonishing story” if whites were not the primary shooters because of their position as the largest segment of our population? Well, that is the astonishing story. CNN and every other MSM outlet have completely ignored the Mass Shooting data. Here is what CNN won’t tell you about Mass Shootings.
Since January of 2009, we have seen a huge uptick in the number of Mass Shootings and a huge increase in Mass Shootings by minority shooters. We also have seen a huge drop-off of Mass Shootings by white shooters.
In fact, since 2009, more than 61% of the Mass Shootings were by minority shooters, not including Las Vegas.
Why doesn’t the author or CNN tell you those facts?
The numbers are shocking. The reversal of trends from white shooters to minority shooters is stunning. The decline in white shooters, given their still huge presence as a percentage of the population, is most welcome. Moreover, contrary to the false narrative, even as Mass Shootings have escalated, white shooter participation has dropped.
Either CNN, and the entire Mainstream Media is collectively incompetent, or they simply don’t want to report these facts.
Indeed, I set out to analyze these data when a former law student of mine in June of 2016 made a flippant remark suggesting that to protect Americans from Mass Shootings, we outlaw white men. I made the crazy decision to open the Mother Jones spreadsheet it links to its site and analyze it. Imagine that. There I was doing the job CNN and professional journalists would not do. The result of my analysis of data collected and made public by a left-wing publication prompted my piece, “Obama’s Legacy: Spike in Minority Mass Shootings,” which I published back in February. Heck, I even made the charts and graphs.
CNN managed to find college student Ms. Modan for her false narrative, but they couldn’t locate me with a map … or a scope. Ms. Modan is studying “journalism.” Meanwhile, I have appeared as a legal expert and political commentator on over a hundred different TV and radio broadcasts. My real analysis of this public data has been out there since February, and I have tweeted it daily for about 3 months. Less than 4,000 people have read the work. I suspect CNN likes it that way.
There is nothing in the data that supports a conclusion or inference that America has a growing problem with angry white male Mass Shooters in the last decade since Mass Shootings accelerated. NOTHING.
The truth about Mass Shootings is scary, and it is exactly the opposite of what CNN has represented by adopting the Mordan, angry white man narrative.
As my piece implores America, we need to find out why these shootings are increasing, and why new segments of our population are rushing into a murderous rage in which they barely ever participated in before.
America can’t silently accept the Mass Shootings or rage of any person … no matter his or her race.
However, if we are going to attack the problem of Mass Shootings, we must be honest about the data. CNN won’t be honest. CNN and America would be better off if CNN chose its opinion pieces based on sound analysis and truth.
I will point out a few startling facts from my complete analysis of the data:
From 2009 forward, white males have represented 31-33% of the US population and they have participated in roughly 39% of the “Mass Shootings.” That’s about what one might expect.
Put statistically, mass shooters since 2009*** compared to their race are:
Blacks males, 6-7% population,* 19.4% of the shootings
Latino males, 8-9% of the population, 11% of the mass shootings
White males, 31-32% of the population, 39% of the mass shootings
Asian males, 2-3% of the population, 8% of the mass shootings
Since 2009, white male, Mass Shooters have declined by 44%. Since 2009, black male, Mass Shooters have increased 31%.**
Minority Mass Shooters, only 26.6% of the shooters from 1982-2008, were more than 61% of the Mass Shooters after January 2009. That’s an increase of 130%.
Muslims are neither a race nor ethnicity. However, as a distinct group, they are new to US Mass Shootings. Based on the data I found the following:
Muslims represent 1% of the US population, and Muslim males are approximately .6% or less of the US population. They have accounted for 11% of the Mass Shootings since 2009. In fact, Muslim Mass Shooters engage in Mass Shootings in the US at 183 times their US population since 2009.
Prior to 2009, it appears no Muslim was involved as a Mass Shooter in the data collected by Mother Jones.
Unlike CNN and its guest columnist, I am not smart enough to tell you why we have seen these remarkable, almost inexplicable changes in who is doing the majority of these horrific acts. Yes, I have a theory that dividing by race and normalizing racial animus is part of the problem. I can’t prove that with data, but I am honest enough to give you the data in a truthful, meaningful fashion.
People interested in solutions and responsible public policy understand that white male, Mass Shootings in the 1980’s and 90’s don’t relate to the trends we see over the last 9 years, and therefore are irrelevant other than to examine how or why their numbers have declined.
The CNN deception here must be exposed. Indeed, no American of any color can silently accept this kind of media deception anymore.
If you are an honest, decent, journalist at CNN, you must repudiate this great white lie pushed by your network. If not, you are adopting in silence the division and propaganda pushed on a country in grief, and you are playing with fire around a country that is already a tinder-box of racial grudges.
It’s time CNN tell the truth.
*NOTE: Population data is a moving and even trustworthy organizations that compile it do so from multiple sources at different times. The male/female breakdown of the US population by race is often broken into age groups, and not delineated as a whole. Roughly speaking, in any population group, females will slightly outnumber males. Thus, if the “white population” of America is currently 63%, Males are likely roughly 31% of that group.
**NOTE 2: The percentage changes on shootings reflect the demographic data collected by Mother Jones on the shooters for each incident and time period.
***NOTE 3: As my underlying article addresses, I actually set out to see if I could slice this data differently. That is, after seeing how bad the data were under Mr. Obama, I went back and sliced out the Bush years, just to see if this change was already happening and shifting. The data show it was not.
**** NOTE 4: Thank God some mass shootings are stopped. Recently, a minority mass shooter attacked over 50 people in a church, killing one and shooting 7. An usher stopped the attack. Before he did, he bravely confronted the shooter and was pistol-whipped. The usher then went to his car and retrieved his legal firearm. He then held the gunman until police arrived, preventing this from being a massacre and “qualifying” as a “Mass Shooting.”
Author: Richard Kelsey
Richard Kelsey is the Editor-in-Chief of Committed Conservative.
He is a trial Attorney and author of a #11 best-selling book on Amazon written on higher education, “Of Serfs and Lords: Why College Tuition is Creating a Debtor Class”
Rich is also the author of the new Murder-Mystery series, “The ABC’s of Murder,” book one is titled, “Adultery.”
Rich is a former Assistant Law School Dean and Law Professor. At Mason Law Kelsey conceived of, planned, and brought to fruition Mason’s Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, known as CPIP, drawing on his expertise as a former CEO of a technology company specializing in combating cyber-fraud.
In 2014 he was elected by the graduating class as the faculty speaker at their graduation.
He is a regular commentator on legal and political issues in print, radio and on TV. Rich has appeared on hundreds of stations as a legal expert or political commentator. He provided the legal analysis for all stages of the Bob McDonnell trial and appeal for numerous outlets including NPR and WMAL.
Rich also writes on occasion for the American Spectator and CNSNews.com.
In his free time, Rich is part of the baseball mafia of Northern Virginia, serving on numerous boards and as a little league and travel baseball coach.
His Twitter handle is @richkelsey.
