Posted on 12/16/2012 6:52:11 PM PST by neverdem
A few things you won’t hear about from the saturation coverage of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre:
Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.
In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.
The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.
Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.
Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work.
First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobsen have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobsen. “I doubt it.”
Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.
Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.
I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.
“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”
Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.
Despite all of this evidence, the magical thinking behind gun-free zones is unlikely to be questioned in the wake of the Newtown killings. Having such zones gives people a false sense of security, and woe to the politician or business owner who now suggests that a “gun-free zone” revert back to what critics would characterize as “a wild, wild West” status. Indeed, shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.
In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problem,s they face as they carry out their evil deeds.
— John Fund is a national-affairs columnist for NRO.
Great article.
U.S. Murders: All 13,636; Hands and Feet 801; Assault Rifles: less than 348
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2912115/posts
I say ban high capacity gun-free zones.
Related?
(something happened with the “Uncle” statement that wasn’t?)
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8646646
Definitely related.
So “Uncle Jonathan Lanza” may be a fake.
I wonder if the reporters bothered to ask for an ID? If someone was presenting themselves as a close relative in a case like this, I’d want to see two forms of ID, say a picture drivers license and a major credit card with the same name.
From the message board link above- the page before has someone tagging the “Uncle” being Jonathan Lee Riches. Looks like the articles all got scrubbed when it was outed....
I’ve seen a statement from the CT police saying anyone presenting false information would be prosecuted. Probably only applies to statements to authorities, not lying to the press as this appears to be.
Ping since you were on the other thread where we were talking about this. It appears that “uncle Jonathan Lanza” is a scammer.
"...the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings. New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobsen have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened."
Exactly.
captain Zero needs to rush right in there with his pre-planned agenda that just needed an incident to put into motion.”””
An average of 10 kids in Chicago are killed every weekend in Chicago-—Obama’s ‘home town’.
Someone enlighten me about how many appearances Obama has made such as last night in Connecticut.
I don’t remember a single appearance.
As usual, Obama also shed crocodile tears—from the upper part of his eye, where no tears form—and when he ‘wiped’ his left eye—he used his middle finger-—AGAIN.
I have never seen a person who is more visible who likes more to use his middle finger to the populace.
What a scum bag he is.
I was wondering who was intended for the “bird” in that presser. The guy needs his ass kicked,
Remember when Nancy Pelosi told us everyone must be happy with Obamakkkare because, alas, she didn't see anybody who was unhappy. That was the botox talking.
I think it extends to the school/theatre/church/shopping center shooting situation ~ the big dog Democrat politicans fail to see the real emotions on the face of the people and imagine it's time to trot out the old failed policies of the hoary past.
Here's to Dick Durbin ~ I AM UNHAPPY DICK ~ give up the botox and we'll talk!
After posting I realized I misinterpreted the claim.
Under normal circumstances, students were not allowed to walk around with guns.
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