The media is out of control in its push for gun control

Fact checkers are out of control, and on the issue of guns they no longer even try to pretend impartiality. Especially on social media, this is becoming a serious problem.

Facebook has been working with organizations such as PolitiFact, Snopes and Factcheck.org to filter news. Stories deemed “false” by these organization are labeled as false and are much more difficult to spread virally.

A couple of years ago, Fox News’ Special Report cited some research on mass public shootings by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I preside over. When that old story recently started trending on Facebook, Snopes stepped in to stop it. Snopes’ verdict was that our numbers were “accurate based on the CPRC’s definition of a mass shooting, but also extremely misleading.”

President Obama’s kept claiming that the United States was unique in terms of mass public shootings. So in 2016, we looked over the years of Obama’s tenure and found that Europe had experienced more casualties per capita and a similar rate of attacks compared to the U.S.

Snopes’ attack never mentioned that we had used the FBI’s traditional definition of mass public shootings. This definition excludes gang fights over drug turf and specifies what constitutes a public place. Instead, Snopes preferred the definitions used by Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety and Mother Jones.

Click here to read the entire op-ed at TheHill.com.