Rockefeller Institute’s Own Numbers Just Blew Up the Left’s Favorite Gun Statistic

CNN's Jake Tapper told viewers this month that mass shootings prove America has a gun crisis, not a crime crisis.

A little known government funded research institute just wrecked that entire narrative with its own numbers.

One single word buried inside a government database determines whether America has a gun crisis or a gang crisis.

Two Datasets Fifty Five Fold Apart on the Same Country

PJ Media columnist Kevin Downey Jr dropped a piece this week that conservative group chats are still passing around.

Downey pulled numbers straight from the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which tracks mass public shootings back to 1966.

Its count through mid August 2026 stands at 517 incidents and 1,741 deaths, according to the Rockefeller Institute's own factsheet.

Now compare that to the Gun Violence Archive, the outfit reporters cite every single time there is a shooting.

The Gun Violence Archive puts the death toll from mass shootings at 7,000 to 7,500 since 2013 alone, per its own published data.

That is not a rounding error.

That is two supposedly authoritative sources describing the same country and landing on wildly different realities.

This is not new.

The Second Amendment Foundation documented it years ago when it reported that the Gun Violence Archive logged 417 mass shootings in 2019 while the FBI counted just 30 for the same year.

The Gun Violence Archive was co-founded in 2013 by retired IBM systems architect Mark Bryant and philanthropist Michael Klein, according to the Second Amendment Foundation's investigation into the group.

One dataset says 30 shooters, the other says 417, and both claim to be counting the same year.

Why the Number Changes Depending on Who Is Counting

Here is the mechanism, and it is not complicated once someone explains it to you.

The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot, not including the shooter, in what it calls a fluid situation.

The Rockefeller Institute explicitly excludes shootings tied to gang violence or targeted militant and terroristic activity.

RAND's own gun policy research explains that roughly 70 to 80 percent of multi victim shooting incidents in America connect to domestic disputes or criminal activity, not the Parkland or Uvalde style rampages that dominate cable news.

The Rockefeller Institute laid out just how much this swings the numbers in its own analysis of 2023 data.

Using the Gun Violence Archive's broad standard, 2023 produced 659 incidents.

Using the narrower USA Today, AP, and Northeastern University standard, the same year produced 39.

Mother Jones, using an even tighter definition, counted 12.

Three separate counts, one calendar year, a 55 fold gap between the highest and lowest.

What the Rockefeller Numbers Say About Who Pulls the Trigger

Here is the part your local news anchor will never read on air.

Under the Rockefeller Institute's narrower definition, its own breakdown shows perpetrators are 54.6 percent white and 21.4 percent Black.

White Americans make up 56.1 percent of the population and Black Americans make up 13.5 percent, according to the demographic figures Downey cited alongside the Rockefeller breakdown.

Downey argues that once you switch to the Gun Violence Archive's broader definition, which folds in gang shootings the Rockefeller Institute deliberately excludes, the perpetrator numbers shift dramatically, and he puts the Black perpetrator share under that broader count at roughly 70 percent.

That is Downey's own analysis of the broader dataset, not a figure the Gun Violence Archive publishes as a standalone demographic statistic, and readers should treat it as his calculation rather than an official Gun Violence Archive release.

But the pattern he is pointing to lines up with what RAND already told us about domestic and criminal shootings driving the bulk of the broader count.

Pick the definition that hides gang violence, and you get a story about assault rifles and Republicans.

Pick the definition that includes it, and you get a story Chuck Schumer does not want on the evening news.

Gun control groups needed a number big enough to justify federal legislation, and 7,500 dead sounds a lot more urgent to a swing voter than 1,741.

That is not a coincidence, that is a marketing decision, and Mark Bryant built the machine that produces it.

The next time a senator waves around a mass shooting statistic on the floor of Congress, ask which definition he is using and watch him dodge the question.

Sources:

• Kevin Downey Jr, "Mass-Shooting Stats: Inconvenient Facts Vs. Liberal Lies," PJ Media, August 26, 2026.
• Rockefeller Institute of Government, "Mass Shootings: Why Does Definition Matter?," Rockefeller Institute of Government blog.
• Rockefeller Institute of Government, "Mass Shooting Factsheet," Rockefeller Institute of Government.
• RAND Corporation, "Mass Shootings in the United States," RAND Gun Policy in America analysis.
• Second Amendment Foundation, "Special Report: The Gun Violence Archive and Its Scaring of America," saf.org.