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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/
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:51AM
There's been several:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defensive_gun_use [wikipedia.org]
1) 2007: A guy attacked some mega-church in Colorado Springs; he killed a couple of people but was shot by a female former police officer using her concealed weapon. He was hit several times and shot himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Colorado_YWAM_and_New_Life_shootings [wikipedia.org]
It is worth noting, I think, that the guy was rabidly any psychotically anti-Christian, because of psychological abuse by his parents. There's a lot of people who have severe mental problems because of their religious parents; a lot of these Christian sects should be investigated for the dangerous cults they are.
2) 2002: some guy attacked a law school in Virginia; some ex-cops and an ex-Marine used their guns (which they had to retrieve from their vehicles) to subdue and arrest him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting [wikipedia.org]
In both these examples, the assailant was not actually killed by the armed citizen.
3) 2007: In Quebec, cops violently and illegally invaded the home of a businessman, and he shot two of them, killing one. He was acquitted. The cops there are still mad about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Parasiris [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:21AM
Also the possibility of civilians being armed may act as a deterrent for people like bank robbers since something like that is much more unpredictable and hence harder for them to plan for when scoping out a bank.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 09 2015, @01:24AM
And when has it ever actually helped? In fact, how many armed citizens are going to step up if someone robs a bank? They're not robbing you personally, they're robbing a company. It's not something worth risking your life over. Just go read some of the pro-2A, concealed-carry forums sometime: people there don't carry so they can stop armed robberies and the like; they're not police. They carry to protect themselves and that's it. They're not even likely to pull out their gun to help you out (unless you're an immediate family member of course), because it's a giant legal liability to get involved like that. Sure, if someone is a mass shooter, they'll probably try to do what they can, but if someone is just robbing a bank or convenience store, it's not worth getting involved; you'll probably get shot. After all, you only know it's an armed robbery once the assailant pulls his weapon out and brandishes it. At that point, he has all the advantage, since your weapon is still tucked away somewhere. You really think you can draw, aim, and fire faster than he can re-aim for you?
I do think having a gun at home is probably a good deterrent for home invaders though: you (a house robber) don't know which houses are and aren't armed, and the occupants have the home advantage: they know the layout of the house intimately and you don't know it at all. But I don't really have any evidence to back this up; the counterpoint is that most criminals are mentally defective anyway, with their big problem being a complete lack of impulse control and ability to consider consequences of their actions. So reasonably-intelligent people like you think about things like deterrence factors, but most criminals don't consider that; they don't think they're going to get caught. It's just like stupid young male teenagers who are reckless because they think they're invincible, except the criminals never grow out of it, and also are usually sociopathic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:38AM
That last example is a huge stretch. Cops, with a warrant, exceeding their authority to enter a private residence (as determined ex post facto by a judge) doesn't even come close to qualifying as a "mass shooting."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 09 2015, @01:16AM
It doesn't? The guy had his whole family at home, and the cops even intentionally shot at the childrens' bedrooms. Sounds like an attempt at a "mass shooting" to me.
Honestly, I think the idea of civilians carrying around guns to deter "lone wolf" wackos like these theater shooters is silly. Jared Loughner (sp?) shot Gabby Giffords and others in Tucson, Arizona, an open-carry state that's chock full of gun nuts. I believe some bystanders there even had guns; it didn't help much.
However, it seems to me the real reason people should have guns is to keep the cops in check. They're the real threat to society, and a clear and present danger to the health and safety of every citizen living in it.