Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, declared in a Democratic presidential candidates' debate, "I was part of the first generation that saw routine school shootings. We have now produced the second school-shooting generation in this country. We dare not allow there to be a third." Another Democratic presidential candidate, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Cal.), invoked school shootings to justify confiscating millions of firearms across the nation: "It's not just the violence that they've caused; it's the fear, the immeasurable fear that our children live in because they are still on our streets. I want to get rid of that fear."

In reality, despite a tidal wave of misleading propaganda, the number of school shootings has fallen sharply over the past 30 years. But anti-gun activists in government and the media have done their best to persuade people otherwise.