Pull up a chair, folks, and let Uncle Servo tell you a story.
There's a popular website called Reddit. They have a pro-gun control forum. It has very few subscribers, and when they got tired of fending off cogent pro-gun arguments, they banned such things altogether. The result was that traffic pretty much slowed to nothing.
In response, one of their members decided to rebrand the idea. He started another forum,
in which they make fun of incidents exactly like this and use them to push for more gun control.
It's obnoxious, sure, but it's just an internet forum, right? Wrong. The founder decided to start a meme in the public mind that mass shootings are on the rise, and he even claimed that
we've had at least one per day since Newtown. He made
a slick website to present "data" to "prove" this allegation.
Of course, a skeptical person would (and has) realize that his definition of "mass shooting" is very different than the official FBI definition. He includes erroneous reports, gang violence, injuries with pellet guns...the list goes on.
Again, no big deal, right? Wrong. That "one mass shooting per day" claim has been used by every gun-control advocate I can think of, as well as by politicians up to and including the President.
Yes, the founder of that site is a liar, but his lie is big enough that the general public believes it.
And that all started because a guy thought it would be good to demonize gun ownership by making fun of gun owners who had oopsies like the one discussed here.