4 ms·

Just a quick note on your last paragraph, because that reminded me of the other data I looked at. I don't have the exact data handy (I'm doing some before bed h

Just a quick note on your last paragraph, because that reminded me of the other data I looked at. I don't have the exact data handy (I'm doing some before bed hacker news browsing on my tablet), but I think it was assembled by, I want to say, a site called Mother Jones..? It was a google spread sheet of some kind. Anyway, it was a table with every mass shooting in the history of the US, the number of fatalities, and the weapon types used. After I finished playing with the FBI's data, I started to wonder if the ban was not to stop the kind of day-to-day gun crime, but to prevent the mass shooting, High profile, high fatality events like the recent school shooting, or the Aurora movie theater shooting, or any similar event. So, I pulled the data from that collection, and could find absolutely no correlation between rifle involvement in a mass shooting and the number of fatalities. Our worst shooting, with (going from memory here) 33 fatalities was the Virginia tech masacre. It involved absolutely no rifles, or shotguns, just the lowly handgun. I'll have to double check all the numbers tomorrow, but if I believe that in the 10 most dealy mass shootings in our history, of the 22 or so weapons used, only 4 or 5 of the were rifles. To my number crunching, rifle usage was pretty inconsequential in the number of fatalities -- which I'll admit was pretty damn unintuitive. But that's what the data shows, so given all that information, it's tough for me to figure out a reason for the administration pushing for the ban.

bmelton 14y ago
I have a hard time swallowing the Mother Jones data whole, because I know on issues that I am very informed on, their data has shown to be misleading in the past. Here's a fun statistic though, since you're in the process of number crunching -- every mass shooting in the US since 1950 (except for perhaps that Gabby Gifford shooting in Arizona) has occurred in a 'gun free zone', where the shooters had the highest probability of completing their shooting sprees with the least fear of being stopped. Of those, most telling (to me at least) is the Aurora, CO shooting, because while Colorado is generally a fairly well armed state, the shooter bypassed six other theaters that were closer to his home, including the largest theater, where he could have done the most damage, in lieu of taking his gun into the one nearby theater that specifically disallowed guns from being carried inside.
- BryantD 14y ago
  That's a myth. Consider the Clackamas Town Center shooting: Nick Meli had a concealed carry permit and was carrying a weapon, although he correctly didn't take a shot. We could argue about whether or not the shooter saw Meli and committed suicide as a result, but that's irrelevant: the shooter didn't choose a gun free zone.
  - MrMember 14y ago
    It depends on how you characterize "gun free." In many states signs prohibiting firearms don't carry the weight of the law. That is, if you are found to be carrying you can be asked to leave (and charged with trespassing if you refuse), but that's it. From my understanding the mall in Clackamas is a posted "gun free zone," but the posted signs don't actually carry any legal weight.
    - BryantD 14y ago
      Ah, didn't know that! But aren't we walking a fairly narrow line here? In order for this to be a meaningful distinction, we have to assume that mass shooters a) plan their attacks, b) are smart enough to choose gun free zones, and c) are dumb enough not to know that a gun free zone isn't necessarily free from guns?
      - bmelton 14y ago
        I think that in many cases, we would find that yes, mass shooters do plan their attacks (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora) and actually have long fantasies about them. Calling mass shooters stupid is, I think, a naive assertion. They're obviously flawed, but not necessarily in a way that makes them less effective at planning or committing violence. And while 'c' is potentially valid, I think that what you'd find is that, as most citizens tend to fall into the 'law abiding' category, where there are signs posted disallowing guns, you'd find that most citizens won't carry them. So even if the 'gun free zone' is not found to be 100% devoid of guns, you are almost certain to find it less armed than if signs weren't posted.
snkashis 14y ago
Is this the Mother Jones dataset you were talking about? http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... I made a detailed visualization of it @ http://www.caerusgeo.com/surveys/299/public http://www.caerusgeo.com/surveys/299/public

bmelton 14y ago

I have a hard time swallowing the Mother Jones data whole, because I know on issues that I am very informed on, their data has shown to be misleading in the past. Here's a fun statistic though, since you're in the process of number crunching -- every mass shooting in the US since 1950 (except for perhaps that Gabby Gifford shooting in Arizona) has occurred in a 'gun free zone', where the shooters had the highest probability of completing their shooting sprees with the least fear of being stopped. Of those, most telling (to me at least) is the Aurora, CO shooting, because while Colorado is generally a fairly well armed state, the shooter bypassed six other theaters that were closer to his home, including the largest theater, where he could have done the most damage, in lieu of taking his gun into the one nearby theater that specifically disallowed guns from being carried inside.

BryantD 14y ago
That's a myth. Consider the Clackamas Town Center shooting: Nick Meli had a concealed carry permit and was carrying a weapon, although he correctly didn't take a shot. We could argue about whether or not the shooter saw Meli and committed suicide as a result, but that's irrelevant: the shooter didn't choose a gun free zone.
- MrMember 14y ago
  It depends on how you characterize "gun free." In many states signs prohibiting firearms don't carry the weight of the law. That is, if you are found to be carrying you can be asked to leave (and charged with trespassing if you refuse), but that's it. From my understanding the mall in Clackamas is a posted "gun free zone," but the posted signs don't actually carry any legal weight.
  - BryantD 14y ago
    Ah, didn't know that! But aren't we walking a fairly narrow line here? In order for this to be a meaningful distinction, we have to assume that mass shooters a) plan their attacks, b) are smart enough to choose gun free zones, and c) are dumb enough not to know that a gun free zone isn't necessarily free from guns?
    - bmelton 14y ago
      I think that in many cases, we would find that yes, mass shooters do plan their attacks (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora) and actually have long fantasies about them. Calling mass shooters stupid is, I think, a naive assertion. They're obviously flawed, but not necessarily in a way that makes them less effective at planning or committing violence. And while 'c' is potentially valid, I think that what you'd find is that, as most citizens tend to fall into the 'law abiding' category, where there are signs posted disallowing guns, you'd find that most citizens won't carry them. So even if the 'gun free zone' is not found to be 100% devoid of guns, you are almost certain to find it less armed than if signs weren't posted.

snkashis 14y ago

Is this the Mother Jones dataset you were talking about? http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... I made a detailed visualization of it @ http://www.caerusgeo.com/surveys/299/public http://www.caerusgeo.com/surveys/299/public