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Obama pushes 18 school shootings in 2018 narrative during speech. Here are the real stats.
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Obama pushes 18 school shootings in 2018 narrative during speech. Here are the real stats.

Former President Barack Obama echoed a false anti-gun narrative during a recent speech.

The claim, which circulated following the Parkland, Florida, shooting, was that the U.S. had seen 18 school shootings since the beginning of 2018. It has been debunked several times.

What are the details?

The Washington Examiner reported that Obama pushed the narrative during his keynote speech at the CRT 2018 health conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.

"If you ask me, the thing that broke my heart, particularly when now I see there have been, and I've gotta update this, ... 18 shootings in schools this year ... this year!" Obama told the audience during the speech.

He added, "And for the medical community, you see the statistics. The leading causes of death among young people in this country have all but, [car] traffic starts going down and stabilizing, gun-inflicted fatalities where you combine suicide and gun violence, it just keeps rising."

Turning his sights to the horrific Sandy Hook school shooting and the gun-control conversation that ensued as a result, Obama said:

Probably the thing that haunts me the most is the fact that after 20 6-year-olds were gunned down in the most brutal fashion possible — so much so that the police who found them had to get counseling and I had to spend hours with the parents after children they had sent off to school, almost toddlers, did not come home — despite that, I could not get this Congress to move on anything, even the most modest approaches to reducing gun violence in our society.

It was the worst day of my presidency. I've said it before. And the fact that we didn't try was shameful. It was embarrassing.

So what are the real details?

Fact-checking website Snopes reported that there have been seven "firearm attacks" that occurred during regular school hours in 2018, and five of those seven incidents resulted in injuries or death.

The site noted that, separately, there were two "firearm attacks" that occurred outside of regular school hours in 2018, and both incidents resulted in injuries or deaths. One of those incidents was a reported attempted robbery on a high school campus, and the other was during a party held on school grounds.

Two occurrences of "shots fired during school hours, unknown reason" were recorded. Neither occurrence resulted in injury or death.

Three occurrences of "unintentional gunfire during school hours" were recorded. One of the incidents resulted in injury or death.

One at-school suicide was recorded for 2018.

One occurrence of "stray bullets hitting school buildings during school hours" occurred, but resulted in no injury or death.

One occurrence of "stray bullets hitting school buildings not occurring during school hours" occurred, and also did not result in injury or death.

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