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posted by janrinok on Wednesday August 05 2015, @06:41PM   Printer-friendly

A new, government-backed study [PDF] answers a question that has been on the minds of some Americans amid this summer's headlines from Charleston, Chattanooga, and Lafayette. According to the research, mass public shootings are indeed occurring more frequently than ever before in the United States.

The findings, published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) last week, show that the average rate of mass public shootings has increased from one incident per year in the 1970s to 4.5 incidents per year from 2010 through 2013. The numbers corroborate a 2014 report from Mother Jones. Scholars from the Harvard School of Public Health and Northeastern University independently analyzed data that Mother Jones had collected, and the results showed a marked rise in the frequency of mass shootings in the last three decades. Notwithstanding the recent cluster of high-profile incidents, the CRS report also finds that over the past 14 years, the rate of increase has tapered off.

http://www.thetrace.org/2015/08/mass-shootings-congressional-report/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:27PM (#218750)

    Since when did 99.99999999% of gun owners cause too many needless deaths?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:49PM (#218767)

    > Since when did 99.99999999% of gun owners cause too many needless deaths?

    Well, roughly 30% of households own one or more guns. [theblaze.com] Out of about 116 million households nationwide [census.gov] that's 35 million households. SWAG that [statista.com] and say half of them are single adults and the other half are 2 adults. So that's roughly 53M gun owners.

    There are 21,000 gun suicides each year [cdc.gov] which equates to 4 needless deaths per 1000 gun owners. And that's without accounting for however many needless deaths are in the ~10,000 gun homicides each year.

    • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:02PM

      by dyingtolive (952) on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:02PM (#218830)

      ...which equates to 4 needless deaths...

      Is it old hat to use "citation needed" snark here?

      Let's find out: [citation needed]

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:17AM (#218934)

        Seems like he couldn't divide, based on the cited numbers the actual rate is 4 deaths per 10,000 owners. If you could divide you would have been able to catch that yourself.

    • (Score: 2) by GoonDu on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:09AM

      by GoonDu (2623) on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:09AM (#218911)

      >There are 21,000 gun suicides each year

      Breaking news: Suicidal people commit suicide with or without guns. This is actually less legitimate than "possession of arms prompts more mass shooting".

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:15AM (#218933)

        > Breaking news: Suicidal people commit suicide with or without guns.

        Actually, that is false. Simplistic, but false.

        There is a very strong correlation between gun ownership and suicide - researchers have found that for every 1% increase in gun ownership, there is a 0.5% to 0.9% increase in total suicides. [marginalrevolution.com]

        Another study found that gun owners in california have a 4x higher rate of suicide than the general population. [bostonglobe.com]

        Those findings are neither controversial nor out of line with the results of other studies.

        Most suicides are impulsive acts, committed at the peak of despair. If you can get past that peak, the urge subsides. Roughly 90% of failed suicides do not kill themselves in the next 10 years. [nih.gov] A gun makes impulsive suicide much easier to attempt and much more successful than other methods, like drug overdosing and suffocation/hanging.

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:02AM

      by mhajicek (51) on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:02AM (#218958)

      Are you saying people don't have the right to commit suicide? Or that in absence of a gun they wouldn't find another way, like hanging themselves in the closet with a belt or overdosing on sleeping pills?

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:28PM (#219277)

        > Are you saying people don't have the right to commit suicide?

        I am saying that 99.9% of all gun suicides are impulse decisions that are not made with a clear mind.

        > Or that in absence of a gun they wouldn't find another way, like hanging themselves in the closet with a belt or overdosing on sleeping pills?

        See other post upthread about a near linear correlation between increases in gun ownership and increase in suicide rates, not just gun suicides, all suicides so substitution is not a significant factor.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @09:20PM (#218783)

    Turns out there are over 10 billion gun owners on Earth.
    One wonders what the overall global population is now.

    Dude, you were supposed to pay attention in Arithmetic class.

    -- gewg_