For the last few weeks we have been hearing how many mass shootings have taken place in 2015. It is an alarming statistic. It is also a total exaggeration. Put another way, you could call it a lie.

News organization after news organization has reported that the mass shooting in San Bernardino was the 355th mass shooting this year. Newspapers like The Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Times along with news programs like PBS, CBS, and MSNBC all reported the figure.

Fortunately, a number of liberals and conservatives have debunked the statistic. Mark Follman editor of Mother Jones says his count is about one-fifth the number often cited. Why such a discrepancy?

“The answer is that there is no official definition for ‘mass shooting.’ Almost all of the gun crimes behind the much larger statistic are less lethal and bear little relevance to the type of public mass murder we have just witnessed again. Including them in the same breath suggests that a 1 a.m. gang fight in a Sacramento restaurant, in which two were killed and two injured, is the same kind of event as a deranged man walking into a community college classroom and massacring nine and injuring nine others.”

He is being charitable. The 355 number comes from a group pushing gun control, and created a website that supposedly tracks mass shooting. It includes nearly every shooting so it can to make the number much larger than reality.

There is a larger lesson here: use your brain. Apparently many in the media did not. Think about this for a moment. Today we are in the 349th day of the year, and supposedly there have been 355 mass shootings. That is more than one a day. Does that make any sense? A discerning person should have stopped and questioned the figure.