Mass shooting on campus in Oregon

Let's all remember who the biggest backers are of the NRA; gun manufacturers. Why cannibalize your own demand? Everyone else is a proxy for them.

 

OK. So carry permits are up. It's still only about 4% of the public that has one, and it doesn't mean they are carrying on a daily basis, because they often can't bring their firearm to work, or other places they might visit on a daily basis.

Then there's the fact that the shootings happen at soft targets, including "gun free zones".

You've really offered no evidence that having an armed populace would not reduce the number, frequency, or effectiveness of mass shootings.

 

Do you think that people should be able to bring guns into court rooms?

 

You've really offered no evidence that having an armed populace would reduce the number, frequency or effectiveness of mass shootings.

 

So, concealed carry permits are up. Gun sales are up. Gun manufacturing is up. Mass shootings and active shooter incidents continue a 13-year upward trend. Yet none of this constitutes evidence that having an armed populace fails to reduce the number frequency or effectiveness of mass shootings?

Ohhhhhkay.

 

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, everyone is owning and carrying a gun. And let's say, mass shooters are deterred by that.

But who's to say that there wouldn't be more individual shootings in situations that normally wouldn't merit a shooting? More road rage shootings, more shootings at Walmart because someone cut in line, a lot more shootings at college parties with drunken frat kids, more Zimmermans who shoot people who don't look like them.

How do we know that we won't be replacing the occasional 10-person mass killing with a half-dozen additional incidents per day that kill one or two people?

 

The first three pieces of evidence you proffer don't necessarily mean we have a more armed populace. An increase in concealed carry permits, for example, could simply have resulted from concealed carry permits becoming easier to get (i.e., people carried without them but became more inclined to get/have them).

The continuing upward 13-year trend may be informative, but it may also be spurious (or an artifact created by strategic measurement/data choices).

Finally, you're ignoring the possibility that mass shootings might have been higher but for how armed (or not) the populace is. Mass shootings that aren't even contemplated don't show up in your numbers.

This is one of those things that is very, very difficult to tease out for us armchair social scientists. We don't have access to the raw data, and what data we do have access to is highly contaminated with advocacy.

 

I think the hypothesis is that the people likely to do those things are carrying now anyway, and the people who respect the law won't carry until they are told they can, legally, and would be unlikely to act rashly while carrying.

 

So, YF, if

If gun manufacturing, gun sales and concealed carry permits all jumped by at least double since 2008, I'm comfortable with the assumption that more Americans are now armed than were in 2007. It's really a stretch to surmise that gun manufacturers sold 10.8 million firearms in 2013 only to people who already owned them.

You can read the entire FBI report for the data, including methodology, scope, etc. The stated goal of the FBI report is "provide federal, state, and local law enforcement with data so they can better understand how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these incidents." Take that for what it's worth.

You're right, I can't account for shootings that don't occur. However, it seems highly unlikely that there has been a rise in the number potential shooters who were scared off from carrying out a plan because of higher gun ownership, while simultaneously there has been a rise in the number of shooters who actually follow through. There's a very low probability that's the case, and since there is zero evidence to suggest that is the case, I think that possibility can be dismissed, given what we know.

 

I suppose.

Barring that, you should be able to check and later retrieve your gun.

A courtroom is a secure environment, not just a gun free zone, so the need for self defense really isn't there.

 

I haven't attempted too.

That doesn't make your argument any better.