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Bloomberg School of Public Health: No Evidence ‘Assault Weapon’ Bans Reduce Mass Shootings
A new study from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that there is no evidence that “assault weapon bans” have any impact on “the incidence of fatal mass shootings.”
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, named after notorious anti-Second Amendment activist billionaire Michael Bloomberg, released the results of its study last week.
The study “did not find an independent association between assault weapon bans and the incidence of fatal mass shootings after controlling for the effects of bans on large-capacity magazines.”
The study, which analyzed fatal mass shootings in 45 states between 1984 and 2017, did find that “firearm purchaser licensing laws that require an in-person application or fingerprinting are associated with an estimated 56 percent fewer fatal mass shootings in states that have them.”
Bloomberg, who is running for president as a Democrat, has a history of trying to destroy Second Amendment rights. His anti-gun organization, Everytown for Gun Safety, has a history of using misleading or outright false statistics manufactured by gun control groups that he has financially backs to assist in his efforts.
The most recent example happened during the Super Bowl when Bloomberg aired a one-minute commercial that was full of false information.
The emotional ad claimed in writing: “2,900 CHILDREN DIE FROM GUN VIOLENCE EVERY YEAR.”
The claim from Bloomberg was categorically false at the cited number included adults and counted suicides as examples of gun violence.
Reason Magazine reported:
According to to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FactCheck.org notes, the average number of firearm-related deaths involving Americans 17 or younger from 2013 through 2017 (the period used by Everytown for Gun Safety) was about 1,500, roughly half the number cited by Bloomberg. Furthermore, nearly two-fifths of those deaths were suicides, meaning the number of minors killed each year by “gun violence,” as that term is usually understood, is about 73 percent smaller than the figure cited in Bloomberg’s ad.
The Daily Wire highlighted Bloomberg’s views on guns in an extensive profile piece on him last September:
Bloomberg’s anti-gun advocacy is perhaps the single most defining issue of his recent private citizen activism — and perhaps the single most defining issue of his 2020 presidential bid. He is very closely affiliated with and has helped fund Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, which are both groups deeply hostile to Second Amendment rights. He also co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns while he was mayor of New York City. Bloomberg supports “universal” background checks, which often serve as a rhetorical euphemism for the government serving as an intermediary in all private firearms transfers. Bloomberg believes that every gun owner should need a permit before making a gun purchase. He supports a ban on the undefinable sub-class of firearms referred to as so-called “assault weapons” — a line of thought that, if taken to its logical conclusion, could lead to the banning of all semi-automatic firearms in America.
In addition to promulgating false information about guns, Bloomberg has also repeatedly displayed ignorance on the issue, both on how guns operate and on what gun laws exist.
Bloomberg told Rolling Stone in 2014 that he did not know whether a minor was allowed to own a rifle, and later claimed that anyone who owns a gun is “pretty stupid.”
In a 2012 interview with ABC News, Bloomberg demonstrated that he does not know basics when it comes to guns, including what the difference between a semi-automatic and fully-automatic firearm is.
Democrat presidential candidate billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who spends tens of millions of dollars pushing for extreme gun control laws, demonstrates that he knows literally nothing about firearms.pic.twitter.com/SCjpNdQm6h
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra)
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 21 2020, @04:54PM (11 children)
This is true, 81% of mass shootings since 2009 used a handgun
However, when an 'assault rifle' is used six times as many people end up getting shot.
Mass Shootings in America - 2009 to 2020 [everytownresearch.org] (I chose this time period specifically because it's after the assault weapons ban expired)
The true culprit behind the increase in victims is the high capacity magazine, and not the fact that it's an assault rifle. When pistols with a high capacity are used the victim count goes up as well.
And that's actually the point the Bloomberg study is trying to make. If we regulate the high capacity magazines we don't need to ban assault rifles.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @05:16PM (6 children)
That site you linked to is juking their stats, HARD. They define a mass shooting as being 4+ people being shot *AND KILLED*. It's not a mass shooting if 20 people are shot and 3 are killed...? Come on. They're using that specific data point to create lies by cherry picking a sample, instead of actually doing statistics. They're also playing similarly fast and loose with their categories. The Colorado movie theater shooter [wikipedia.org] showed "dangerous warning signs"? What exactly were they? Being weird? He had been working on his phd and had even received a grant from the National Institute of Health, all his weapons were purchased legally and at dealers so he had to pass background checks, he had 0 past criminal history, etc.
Here [fbi.gov] are the FBI crime tables. They provide a mostly bias free survey of what gun crime in the US looks like.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 21 2020, @05:36PM (1 child)
The Colorado movie theater shooter did trigger some warnings.
1. His psychologist remarked on his instability, and if memory serves correctly, commented on that fact to some authority official - which was ignored.
2. He was prescribed anti-depressants and other drugs - always a warning sign.
3. "Weird" isn't a crime. I suspect that 75% or more of Soylentils are weird in at least a couple of ways. I mean, come on, man - Aristarchus, Buzzard, 'Zumi, me, and all of those IRC users on #soylent who plot global domination? Yeah, 75% or more. But "weird" is something of a warning signal.
Virtually all of the mass shooters have displayed warning signs, which were ignored by people in authority, even when people went to the trouble of reporting them. The Las Vegas shooter seems to have come out of nowhere, but the Cruz kid in Florida had been reported to the FBI, FFS!! Boston bombers had been reported to the FBI by no less than Russia's intel community!
"Hey, Bob, you have a couple terrorists up in Boston, who went for terror training in our of our backwoods districts."
"Well, that's really interesting, Ivan. But, we're not going to take your word for it, because we don't trust Russians!"
A few months later, KABOOM!! KABOOM!!
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 21 2020, @06:49PM
6 Red Flags That Foreshadowed The Aurora Tragedy [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 21 2020, @05:52PM (3 children)
There's no official definition of a mass shooting so for tracking trends you do need to define the term in some objective manner. 4+ people dead seems pretty reasonable to me. The FBI defines a mass killing as 3+ people dead.
Seems like if they wanted to play games they'd use 3+ so it'd increase the numbers...
If that's such a great link why don't you use it to tell us what percentage of mass shootings used rifles? Be sure to define the term mass shooting first, though!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @08:51PM
Different AC but I find it humorous that this started started off by mentioning with the statistics, but apparently not knowing what they were. The oldest official measure of these sorts of events is "mass killings," which was originally defined as the killing of 4+ until the IAVCA redefined it in 2012 as 3+ killings. In order to keep statistics consistent and comparable, most groups still use the 4+ definition in research by looking at the report for actual victims for flagged "mass killings."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 22 2020, @02:16PM
Do you not see what you did? They did it intentionally, I'm not sure if you did. You just swapped from mass shooting, which is what everybody discusses, the "mass killings." They did the 4+ KILLED (instead of shot) to juke their stats. It's surprisingly hard to kill people, even with a gun. You need to be trained, proficient, and obviously very determined. So they are intentionally biasing their sample to a certain group of people, instead of just looking at mass shootings.
The Uniform Crime Reports include incidents of multiple homicide. For instance in 2017 there were a total of 1,733 [fbi.gov] multiple homicides. Considering there were a total of 403 homicides where a rifle was used, it's safe to say that rifles make up a negligible chunk. To give that figure some context, 1,591 people were killed with pointy things, 467 were killed with blunt things, and 696 people were beat to death with hands/fist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 22 2020, @02:25PM
To put this another way, imagine you banned 100% of rifles and you cast a magic spell to make them all disappear.
You would notice literally ZERO change in weapon homicides per year. The 300-400 killed by rifles per year is literally less (far less) than the normal statistical swings in pistol homicides. By contrast you would have just dealt a crippling blow primarily to the millions of people that use rifles for hunting, collecting, marksmanship, and self defense.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @06:57PM (2 children)
All rifles, including obsolete wooden stock ones, killed less than 300 last year.
This is less than fists and feet, less than sharp objects like knives, and less than doctors with bad handwriting.
Doctors with bad handwriting killed about 7000 last year. If we want to save lives, it'd be better to focus on something that matters.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday February 22 2020, @12:31PM (1 child)
Long before I knew her a my wife's birth-control prescription was misread by a pharmacist as a prescription for a fertility drug. Fortunately no pregnancy.
Subsequently she became a doctor.
She took a calligraphy course. But she still typed her prescriptions.
-- hendrik
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday February 22 2020, @09:34PM
Probably why even the schools gave up on cursive writing.
Some of those prescriptions were real pieces of art. Picasso and Calder could never compare.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Sunday February 23 2020, @04:10PM
I was shooting IPSC during the high capacity magazine ban. One of the shooters put it like this.
The difference it makes is [releases drop-free mag from gun while grabbing replacement from belt and slapping it in place, in ~0.5sec] that much.
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