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Determined to not let any tragedy go to waste, each of the broadcast networks touted President Biden’s call for gun control on Tuesday following the mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado. But NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt went a step further, trying to browbeat viewers with a claim that America had experienced “more than 100” such shooting in “the last 20 years.” But back on November 8, 2018, the network claimed there were 307 mass shootings in the first 10 months of the year alone.
“As a nation, we have been here so many times before. More than 100 times over the last 20 years. After a deadly pandemic year, the country is again facing an enemy within: gun violence and mass murder,” Holt pontificated.
But as NewsBusters reported back in 2018, NBC was known for throwing out completely bogus mass shooting statistics. “Less than two weeks ago, we were reporting from the scene of another mass shooting in Pittsburgh. In fact, folks, there has been a mass shooting almost every day this year,” he said back then.
Holt left it up to Stephanie Gosk to specifically toss out the fabricated stat. “This year alone, Parkland, Santa Fe, Pittsburgh, and now Thousand Oaks. And that skims the surface,” she proclaimed. “There have been 307 mass shootings with four or more people shot. 328 people killed, and the year is not over.”
But NBC’s conflicting information was of no concern to correspondent Tom Costello, who claimed: “Since the Columbine massacre in 1999, there have been at least 114 mass shootings, 1,300 victims.”
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