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And it's important to note that these different gun laws don't actually meaningfully affect crime, particularly something as exceedingly rare as a mass shooting

by pc86 1y ago

And it's important to note that these different gun laws don't actually meaningfully affect crime, particularly something as exceedingly rare as a mass shooting.

ShrimpHawk 1y ago
Citation needed
- Aloisius 1y ago
  RAND did a decent review.[1] They do show supportive evidence of some gun laws having a meaningful effect on violent crime, so I'm not sure what they're referring to. For instance, it appears that child access prevention laws, specifically, are associated with a significant reduction in firearm homicides.[2] RAND does complain that there is insufficient or limited evidence in a lot of areas though, like effect on mass shootings. [1] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-science-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-gun-policies.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-s... [2] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-access-prevention/violent-crime.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-acce...
dTal 1y ago
The rate is about two mass shootings per day in the USA. I would not call that "exceedingly rare". The rate in the UK, a country with strict gun laws, is about 1-2 a year.
- rascul 1y ago
  There are too many ways to define mass shooting. Wikipedia has approximately 1/day for 2025 so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
  - dTal 1y ago
    1 a day, 2 a day... does it matter? It's still 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than a culturally similar country with strong gun control.
    - pc86 1y ago
      It matters if you care about being accurate, and having a reasonable definition. It's the same reason you don't include suicides in figures about gun violence if you're actually interested combating gun violence and not just scoring political points. Half the definitions at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States#Definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_... don't even exclude gang violence, drug violence, or organized crime. Statistically if you're not involved with gangs or drugs, you're not going to be involved in a gang or drug related shooting. The majority of those killed or injured are at least peripherally involved. So you should immediately question to credibility and motived of any organization that wants to talk about "mass shootings" which by definition are scary because they're random and unprovoked but then want to include a huge number of incidents are driven by crime, drugs, and gangs, none of which is random or unprovoked.

by pc86 1y ago

And it's important to note that these different gun laws don't actually meaningfully affect crime, particularly something as exceedingly rare as a mass shooting.

ShrimpHawk 1y ago

Citation needed

Aloisius 1y ago
RAND did a decent review.[1] They do show supportive evidence of some gun laws having a meaningful effect on violent crime, so I'm not sure what they're referring to. For instance, it appears that child access prevention laws, specifically, are associated with a significant reduction in firearm homicides.[2] RAND does complain that there is insufficient or limited evidence in a lot of areas though, like effect on mass shootings. [1] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-science-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-gun-policies.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-s... [2] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-access-prevention/violent-crime.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-acce...

dTal 1y ago

The rate is about two mass shootings per day in the USA. I would not call that "exceedingly rare". The rate in the UK, a country with strict gun laws, is about 1-2 a year.

rascul 1y ago
There are too many ways to define mass shooting. Wikipedia has approximately 1/day for 2025 so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
- dTal 1y ago
  1 a day, 2 a day... does it matter? It's still 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than a culturally similar country with strong gun control.
  - pc86 1y ago
    It matters if you care about being accurate, and having a reasonable definition. It's the same reason you don't include suicides in figures about gun violence if you're actually interested combating gun violence and not just scoring political points. Half the definitions at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States#Definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_... don't even exclude gang violence, drug violence, or organized crime. Statistically if you're not involved with gangs or drugs, you're not going to be involved in a gang or drug related shooting. The majority of those killed or injured are at least peripherally involved. So you should immediately question to credibility and motived of any organization that wants to talk about "mass shootings" which by definition are scary because they're random and unprovoked but then want to include a huge number of incidents are driven by crime, drugs, and gangs, none of which is random or unprovoked.