(CNN)In the Supreme Court decision overturning a New York gun law, the three liberal justices opened their dissent by citing data from two of the leading researchers of gun violence in America.
The first was the CDC. The second was the Gun Violence Archive.
"Since the start of this year (2022), there have been 277 reported mass shootings — an average of more than one per day. See Gun Violence Archive," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in June in the opening paragraph.
The dissent was just the latest example of the growing influence of the Gun Violence Archive, a tiny nonprofit that has for less than a decade attempted to log every single incident of gun violence in the US in real time. The organization has been cited by the Supreme Court, policymakers and media outlets like CNN primarily for its ongoing tally of mass shootings, which it defines as any incident in which four people are shot, excluding the shooter.
That increasing visibility is a sign of success for Mark Bryant, the executive director of the Gun Violence Archive. He told CNN he started noticing the phrase "according to Gun Violence Archive" in news articles and Google searches a few years ago and sees it as a positive.
"We realize that we are making a difference. We're making the conversation consistent," he said. "If they're using 'according to Gun Violence Archive,' they're using consistent vetted data, and that legitimizes their story as much as it does us."
Yet for all its influence in providing that data,...
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