It's more likely they were just misled or just misunderstood than they were maliciously spreading something they knew to be wrong. I gotta admit, I can see how a lot of people fall into the trap, there's no consistency with how these things are reported or recorded. Someone said earlier there have been "27 school shootings" this year in the US; and for me a "school shooting" kind of conjures up images of this Uvalde or Sandy Hook types of incidents. Where as that number includes any incident with a firearm on school property; even if it was outside school hours and had no student or staff involvement.
It's an individuals responsibility to vet the information they're being given, but there's a whole lot of very cleverly manipulated numbers being thrown around by a lot of different angles, and they're not necessarily "wrong", but just don't properly represent things. It's easy to see how someone could be misled by information that looks compelling, especially if they approached it with an angle in the first place.