SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.