Free Republic

This is news from Louisiana on Sunday. Seventeen people were shot but survived when gunfire erupted on on a playground where a block party was going in New Orleans. If you did not hear about it, do not be surprised. It was barely news. It is amazing to think that there was not a huge media blitz, that there were not the standard outrageous, grandstanding tweets, or the ridiculous parade of pseudo-experts on CNN and MSNBC to spend hours talking about gun control. The endless blog posts, the overwrought editorials. None of those. And why is that?

<p>Pakistan Wednesday hanged four men linked to the Taliban's massacre of more than 130 schoolchildren, with parents of victims saying they deserved "no forgiveness" as the attack anniversary approached.</p> <p>The executions, which officials said were carried out Wednesday morning at a prison in the northwestern city of Kohat, were the first in connection with the December 16 attack on an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The army has put the final toll at 151 killed, 134 of them children.</p>

This graphic gives needed perspective on the “epidemic” of mass shootings.  The question an unbiased observer might ask is “Why is such enormous attention given to such a tiny fraction of deaths?The answer is fairly easy to understand.  The media gains both monetary and political benefits from hyping these shootings. They gain monetary benefits from increased attention to their programs and advertiser base, but that does not explain why similar mass killings get far less coverage.    Clayton Cramer wrote a paper showing that mass killings with guns gets far more coverage than would be warranted by their numbers.He...

While I was fact checking today's Mises Daily article, I checked some correlation coefficients of my own so I didn't have to rely on Volokh's numbers as my only source.I approached the data a little differently than Volokh did and instead of using a subjective ranking by an organization like the Brady organization, I just looked at the rate of gun ownership in the state. After all, the argument is often that more guns and more gun owners leads to more violence.So, I looked at the correlation between the gun ownership rate (a percentage on the x axis) and the...

What Common-Sense Gun Control Looks Like Last Thursday, as Americans were still coming to grips with the tragic rampage in Oregon, President Obama addressed the American people. An hour before the president spoke, news outlets were confirming that the shooter in Oregon had targeted his victims based on their religion. Multiple eyewitnesses and relatives of the victims all said the shooter asked the victims to state their religion. Those who said "Christian" were shot in the head. Others were shot in the legs or other parts of their body. The president -- in 1,299 words -- never once discussed religious...

Common sense apparently does strange things to some progressive minds. Yesterday morning, speaking on Fox and Friends, Ben Carson said of a mass-shooting situation, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.’” The New York Times declared that his statement was “drawing widespread rebuke from his critics and reviving questions about his candidacy.” ABC News asked him to “clarify” his statement, leading to this rather amusing exchange: ABC: Dr. Carson can you clarify your statements on the Oregon shooting?...

By now the reader is well-aware of the recent school shooting that took place at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Another mass shooting, another excuse for the left-wing vultures to prey on the carcasses of the dead. Another opportunity for Pres__ent Obama to grandstand and huff and sigh and affect an air of righteous indignation. Another occasion for left-wingers to roll their eyes and complain about how even after this shooting, those dastardly right-wingers still won't support "common sense gun laws." The reason we don't, of course, is because the left-wingers are still making the same old, nonsensical, discredited...

It would seem we have another case of a bitter loser who snapped and shot up a college campus because he could not get a girlfriend in his adult life! While Liberals from the President to the brain dead think tank that calls itself MSDNC would love for you to believe that its the guns fault and that they have some grand plan to stop this type of mass shooting from happening again. The truth of the matter remains that the guns had very little to do with it as they are a smokescreen for the fact this loser had...

Joe Olson–the former president of Umpqua Community College–says the school only keeps one guard on shift at a time and that guard is unarmed. Olson left his position in June. He says one of the biggest debates at the school in 2014 was whether or not to hire armed officers. ~snip~ Breitbart News previously reported that the Umpqua campus is a gun free zone. Former U.S. Marshal Art Roderick suggested the gunman chose the campus for that very reason. ~snip~ Roderick’s words are bolstered by the former school president’s admission that “the school has only one security officer on duty...

"Somehow this has become routine," Obama also said, adding, "We've become numb to this." Ha! What a fool! "Numb to this?!" Obama is somewhat correct, but we--and he--should ask: why? Why have we become so "numb?" We are certainly not numb because of guns. If any of us are numb to the slaughter of our fellow citizens, it is significantly due to the many lies promoted my modern liberalism and the "values" it promotes. And speaking of "politicizing" things, given their rabid support for killing the most helpless and innocent among us--the unborn--when it comes to any form of violence--or...

Important read, but downloading the paper will get more attention for the research. An FBI report released on September 16th, 2014 makes the assertion that active shooter attacks and deaths have increased dramatically since 2000 – both increasing at an annual rate of about 16 percent. As the headline in the Wall Street Journal stated: “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI says.” But the FBI made a number of subtle and misleading decisions as well as outright errors. Once these biases and mistakes are fixed, the annual growth rate in homicides is cut in half. When a longer period of...

In reading about the horrific attack by the Tunisian mass shooter, on the beach on Friday, the 26th of June, 2015, it appears that he used two weapons systems.  An AKM rifle, commonly referred to as an AK47, almost certainly in 7.62x39 caliber, with several standard 30 round magazines, was used for most of the killing.  The rifle is seen above.  It has wooden furniture, the AKM muzzle brake, and a web sling.  It is missing the standard cleaning rod from under the barrel. Update: from a colleague on freerepublic: Appears to be an Egyptian Maadi [or MISR] AKM....

Revising earlier reports that two attackers were involved, authorities are now saying only one man was responsible for killing dozens of tourists and wounding dozens more at a Tunisian beach resort. Reportedly armed with a Kalashnikov initially concealed with an umbrella, it took an after-the-fact armed security team response to stop the killer from adding to his unarmed victim count . . . This is the second attack on tourists in Tunisia this year. In March, an attack at the National Museum killed at least 22 people, all but one of them tourists, showing that those interested in committing politically-motivated...

There is already a rush to call Dylann Roof’s murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston an “act of domestic terrorism.” This is a deliberate political strategy, intended by its ultra-liberal authors to transform this terrible tragedy into an indictment of American conservatism. “Terrorism” is a slippery term to define. Under U.S. law, terrorism is defined as "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” This is a perfectly good legal definition for the lawyers, but it...

Four people, including two police officers, were killed in a shooting in China's northern Hebei province on Tuesday, state television reported on its official microblog, a rare "mass shooting" in which five people were wounded. The four killed in Suning county included at least one suspect, China Central Television said, giving few other details. The case was still under investigation, it said.

The mass shooting that took place in Charleston, South Carolina Wednesday night is tragic beyond belief and the nation mourns for the victims and their families. While President Obama shared his grief in a press conference this afternoon, he also couldn’t resist turning the statement into a call for gun control.And then, quite predictably, he was off to fundraise and play golf. Pres Obama waves as he boards Air Force One embarking on 4 day trip to LA, SF & PSP for fundraising, a speech & golf. pic.twitter.com/Wg7FgAuLBw— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 18, 2015 Pres Obama wheels up en route...

Mass Killings Stopped by Armed Citizens has been my most popular article.  It was published on 16 December, 2012.  I had been collecting these incidents for a few years, ever since I noticed that the old media gave them virtually no coverage.  They received a little local coverage, but were ignored/spiked by the national media. In the original publication, there were eight incidents.  Readers quickly brought more to my attention, swelling the list to fifteen.  Over the last two years, seven more incidents have been added.  One of those, the SC Boiling Springs event, does not appear to be...

Some mass killings have occurred at clubs.  The most infamous has been the "Happyland social club" in New York City, where 87 people were murdered by arson in 1990.   An armed citizen may have stopped an attempted mass killing in El Paso, Texas on Sunday, the 16th of November.   A 23-year-old Hispanic man had been thrown out of the appropriately named "Club Khaos" at about 1 a.m.  He returned to the entrance of the club and started shooting.  He hit five people; one of them is in critical condition.  From the elpasotimes.com: A 21-year-old man was hit in the...

About an hour ago a shooter killed a guard at Ottawa's War Memorial. The same shooter, or another, then entered the Parliament Building where he was shoot by security personnel. Police are saying nearby Rideau Centre shopping mall is now on lockdown.

The families of three college students stabbed to death by a 22-year-old before he gunned down three more victims said the U.S. health and legal systems valued the rights of the mentally ill over those who become their victims. Police said Elliot Rodger, the son of a film director, stabbed the students in his apartment on May 23, before shooting and killing three more victims in the town of Isla Vista near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara. He then shot himself. "The system is clearly broken. It should have protected our sons, who were so...