Everytown has an AI that's all about tracking reports of so-called gun violence. It was a terrible idea the moment I heard about it, and now that it's out, we can see it's even dumber than I thought it would be.
And honestly, that's really saying something.
First, it's not really as interactive as, say, Grok or ChatGPT. Instead, it's really more like an interactive map that's just constantly being updated via media reports. It's as dumb as it sounds, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Gun control activists have always had a numbers problem. Everytown for Gun Safety just added an artificial intelligence (AI) problem as well.
Everytown, the billionaire Michael Bloomberg-backed gun control organization, launched EveryShot as an AI-powered database that tracks news reports involving criminal firearm misuse or the brandishing of firearms. The group presents its new tool as a “resource” for policymakers, journalists and researchers. But Everytown’s own disclaimer warns users that the tool’s outputs may be incomplete, inaccurate or otherwise unreliable.
That’s a glaring warning sign that also goes directly to credibility. Everytown cannot ask lawmakers to treat its gun control claims as authoritative while telling users not to rely on its own AI-generated data as factual or accurate evidence to back up its policy prescriptions.
Everytown wants lawmakers, reporters and the public to trust its gun control statistics. Its newest artificial intelligence tool tells them they should not.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
EveryShot relies heavily on media reports, meaning the tool is only as reliable as the coverage it scrapes.
Early crime reporting is often incomplete. Initial stories may omit whether a suspect was prohibited from possessing a firearm, whether charges were later changed or whether the firearm description was confirmed by law enforcement. Reporters frequently rely on preliminary information that can easily and predictably shift as investigations move forward.
EveryShot then uses artificial intelligence to classify those reports and produce searchable data, which is not the same as verified evidence.
Also noted was Ammoland's review of EveryShot, which conflates "legal" and "machine gun" in bizarre ways, such as labeling full-auto switches--which are illegal to buy, sell, or possess for ordinary Americans--as being legally owned machine guns, especially if they were added to lawfully purchased handguns.
Here's another one that was returned under that category. The individual arrested had a MAC 11, but there's nothing in this report saying whether it was a full-auto version or one of the semi-autos that are floating around. EveryShot simply decided it was full auto based on...well, probably Everytown's lack of understanding about guns.
Honestly, if Everytown wants to waste Michael Bloomberg's money, I'm here for it, but the issue is that this is likely to start showing up in news reports as some kind of authoritative source. Based on what we've seen so far, though, it shouldn't be.
When I talked about this previously, I noted just how much AI can get wrong on very simple things. It's an interesting tool with a lot of potential, and I've gotten some serious help from AI on various things in the past, such as dealing with some technical issues, but it's not capable of really understanding the nuance in some of these cases, or even that something like a MAC 11 can be semi-auto.
And that's if we're giving this the best reading possible, which I'm not remotely interested in doing. This is Everytown, after all, and they routinely twist facts to make an anti-gun argument. Garbage in/garbage out doesn't just happen because people don't know better. It can be the result of intentionally feeding an AI garbage.
We'll have to see if this turns into anything, but as some in the media are pulling away from citing the Gun Violence Archive, I'm concerned they'll turn to EveryShot instead, and that's not the least bit better.
