Let’s start out by stating what we all agree on: Mass shootings are horrible. They shouldn’t happen, and we should do what can be done to prevent them and decrease the number of deaths from them. We all agree on that.
What we don’t agree with anti-2A zealots about is what will reduce death tolls in those horrible situations.
Anti-2A types have the knee jerk emotional reaction that regulating and banning guns is the solution. Which, obviously, hasn’t stopped massive amounts of gun violence in Chicago and Baltimore, for example, or mass shootings in many other parts of the world with strict gun control.
What evidence shows, though, is that something completely different from gun control correlates to decreased death counts in mass shooting situations. And the data is crystal clear on this (hat tip to here for the lead). The abstract from a paper by Carl Moody gives us a summary of what you need to know (the download link for the paper is here). Moody writes,
The fact that an individual is willing to commit the most serious crime that carries with it the most serious punishment means that that person is unlikely to be deterred by laws with less serious consequences. This situation is compounded by the fact that many multiple victim public shooters are expecting, even planning, to die in the commission of their crimes. Combining newly developed and traditional difference-in-differences methodologies, we analyze several policies that have been suggested as possibly effective in reducing deaths due to mass public shootings. We find that none of the proposed policies significantly reduce such deaths. However, we find evidence that mass public shooting deaths are lower in places that allow the carrying of concealed firearms.
Wait, really? “Public shooting deaths are lower in places that allows the carrying of concealed firearms?”
Yes, really.
And that’s always been (and always will be) the case. Because a person carrying concealed on site can shoot back to stop the active shooter.
Evidence shows that active shooters specifically target areas that they think don’t allow carrying of firearms so that they can be the only one with a gun. If anti-2A zealots really wanted to stop mass shootings, then, they would be pushing for more people to both train with firearms and carry daily.
The fact that they don’t push for that tells you the truth about how little that they really care about death tolls in gun deaths except as an excuse to push their agenda.
