Politifact evaluates the claim in the tweet as "False". Snopes (see below) evaluates the original, unmodified claim as "Mostly True"
From http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/mar/16/blog-posting/facebook-post-incorrectly-says-7182-students-were-/
Facebook post incorrectly says 7,182 students were killed in U.S. schools since 2012
By Allison Graves on Friday, March 16th, 2018 at 4:17 p.m.
...
The Avaaz news release stated that the shoes symbolize the children who have been killed by all gun violence since the Sandy Hook school shooting, not children killed in U.S. schools.
There isn’t one uniform way of tracking school shootings and deaths, but no matter which what you look at it, the 7,000-figure isn't accurate.
The New York Times published an analysis of the number of people who have been shot in school shootings on Feb. 15, the day after the Parkland school shootings.
Using data from the Gun Violence Archive, the Times found that 138 people have been killed in school shootings since Sandy Hook. That total includes school personnel who are not students, so the number of students would be even smaller.
...
More at link.
From
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/empty-shoes-memorial-washington-sandy-hook/
Does an 'Empty Shoes' Memorial in Washington, D.C. Represent 7,000 Children Killed by Guns Since Sandy Hook?
Seven thousand pairs of empty shoes on display at the U.S. Capitol were intended to represent child victims of gun violence since the Sandy Hook shooting.
...
According to a press release issued in advance of the event, the figure of 7,000 came from the Centers for Disease Control. No link to any supporting information was included, but Avaaz said that guns kill more than “1,300 American kids a year.” Approximately five years and three months passed between the Sandy Hook shooting and the demonstration; in that period of time by those figures, the number of children killed by guns would be roughly 6,825.
Using the CDC’s database search tool, we were unable to arrive at precisely the same numbers due to the way such information is catalogued and presented. The parameters available were slightly different, and we were able to access statistics for every recorded death of an individual under the age of 18 for the years 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 (the system does not yet have data for 2017). The four-year tally for all firearm deaths in that truncated period was 5,683, which per year broke down slightly higher at 1,421 firearm deaths on average among those under the age of 18. When extrapolated to the five-year, three-month period the empty shoes protest encompasses, the number is closer to 7,460.
We contacted Avaaz to ask about the source of their numbers, and they replied:
We arrived at the number based on CDC estimates of ~1300 kids killed by guns a year (a number the CDC calls conservative). Since the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Dec 2012 until now, the math shakes out to roughly 7000 kids (0-17) killed by guns since then.
...
More at link.
= new reply since forum marked as read
