Mass shootings "hotspots" don't correlate to laws

[AlexanderA]

We can't draw any conclusions from mass shootings (in relation to the strictness of gun laws) because, statistically, there are so few of them.

 

[Old Dog]

We can't draw any conclusions from mass shootings (in relation to the strictness of gun laws) because, statistically, there are so few of them.

Well, given that the mainstream media and the anti-gun faction has been allowed to frame the narrative and defines "mass shootings" as any event where 4 or more individuals suffer gunshot wounds, regardless of fatalities, statistically, there are a lot of them... especially in places such as Chicago, DC, Atlanta, Houston, Louisville, Baton Rouge, et al -- mostly gang and/or drug related shootings, but enough going on to allow anyone that so desires to tweak the statistics to support their agenda...

So, no WE can't draw any conclusions, but the other side certainly can, and does.

 

[tarosean]

Well, given that the mainstream media and the anti-gun faction has been allowed to frame the narrative and defines "mass shootings" as any event where 4 or more individuals suffer gunshot wounds, regardless of fatalities, statistically, there are a lot of them... especially in places such as Chicago, DC, Atlanta, Houston, Louisville, Baton Rouge, et al -- mostly gang and/or drug related shootings, but enough going on to allow anyone that so desires to tweak the statistics to support their agenda...

So, no WE can't draw any conclusions, but the other side certainly can, and does.

This..

They count everything involving a GSW

Gun Violence Archive

www.gunviolencearchive.org

 

[stillquietvoice]

there wasn't enough information in the source data to make a valid claim, including criteria for a mass even, location within the state ie city or suburbs. Several could be grouped together bars, clubs, and schools are gun free zones typically.

52% didn't fit any criteria? They either didn't look hard enough or didn't like their resulting data.

 

[buck460XVR]

Wait, so FOUR of the top TEN states for "mass shootings" (IL/MD/DE/DC) have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, while NINE of the TEN states with the least amount of "mass shootings" have some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country?

One has to ask if the reason those states with the most restrictive gun laws, have them because of the high violent crime rate to start with? In areas of high mosquitoes and deer tick infestations, the use of bug spray is very high, yet it does nothing to reduce the overall mosquito/tick population. Does this mean that bug spray does not work, even tho it reduces the number of bites? Just like those states with the least restrictive guns laws......is it possible that it is because crimes committed with firearms is low to start with?

While folks here always use these types of examples in arguments that gun laws do not work, how do we know? Could/would crime rise even more if those states loosened those restrictions? I certainly don't know, yet I wonder how others, without being a prognosticator with some form of clairvoyant abilities know? Quotes like the one above, tend to suggest that lessening gun laws in high violent crime states, would reduce violent crimes to levels of those in less restrictive states. Is this a known variable or wishful thinking?

I am most certainly not preaching for more gun restrictions, nor am I anti-gun. What I am, is skeptical of how others determine what works and what doesn't, when it comes to reducing crimes committed with firearms. What I am preaching is to use legitimate examples of what and what does not work for the prevention of crimes committed with firearms and to use more deductive reasoning to reach conclusions than those inductive approaches which are contaminated with emotion and bias. I am also preaching that we not use those weak and incorrect assumptions as the main basis of our pro-2nd arguments. This is something I see us blaming the antis for all the time. We need to practice what we preach.

 

[tommy.duncan]

It's a popular myth amongst "gun people" that more guns = less crime and it's a popular myth amongst "anti's" that less guns = less crime. Neither is right or wrong. It's a cultural/moral issue, not a hardware/tool availability issue.

Brother, you can't be more right!!

 

[film495]

Wait, so FOUR of the top TEN states for "mass shootings" (IL/MD/DE/DC) have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, while NINE of the TEN states with the least amount of "mass shootings" have some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country?

No respect for this media outlet since it cannot even extrapolate this conclusion from its own statistics.

statistics. shake out what you want to prove and ignore the rest no matter how obvious it is.

 

[bearcreek]

I am also preaching that we not use those weak and incorrect assumptions as the main basis of our pro-2nd arguments. This is something I see us blaming the antis for all the time. We need to practice what we preach.

Exactly. Way too much emphasis has been placed over the years on defending gun rights based on either self defense from civilians or hunting.

 

[shafter]

It's a popular myth amongst "gun people" that more guns = less crime and it's a popular myth amongst "anti's" that less guns = less crime. Neither is right or wrong. It's a cultural/moral issue, not a hardware/tool availability issue.

I agree largely with this. You take all the guns out of any small town America and the crime rate would probably stay the same. If the people are good then guns don't change anything. If the people are bad then they'll use guns for bad reasons. I don't believe guns have a large deterrent effect because most people who own them don't carry and most criminals are acting under the influence and aren't making rational choices about their odds of being stopped.

 

[GEM]

One problem with statistical analyses nowadays is p hunting. Analyzing every possible aspect of the data until one reaches significance (probably due to a Type 1 error), discarding significance that doesn't fit your belief structure. These correlational, regression studies lack real causal relations power. Is the crime rate up due to the CCW types committing the crimes? Never really mentioned. On the other hand, I've seen some pretty lame progun stat baloney. A very famous gun scholar once proclaimed that mandatory lock boxes produces more rapes. At a conference, with equally accomplished progun researchers, I questioned that and asked if we had cases of rapes that occurred because the victim could not reach a lock box in time. The answer - Nope - and we all just shook our heads. Sigh. So lock boxes mandated, rapes increase - but no causal analysis or look for evidence such causality. That's a problem with a lot of gun research from econometric or regression techniques.

 

[hso]

It's not the guns that are the problem. Blaming guns is a cop-out. We have some real problems to solve. Blaming guns gives some people an easy way out. It's not enough to "do something" about the problems. It requires us to do something much more difficult, something that actually works.

And that's the root of the problem and solution. It is a socioeconomic/societal issue and they're difficult to address vs. blaming the tool used in the violence.

 

[bearcreek]

statistics. shake out what you want to prove and ignore the rest no matter how obvious it is.

Correct. So, for example, the pro "gun rights" side ignores statistics that could indicate that guns are often obtained in places where they're easier to get. The anti "gun rights" side ignores statistics that could indicate that high gun ownership rates don't increase violent crime. Both sides cherry pick the stats to "prove" their point.

 

[481]

One problem with statistical analyses nowadays is p hunting. Analyzing every possible aspect of the data until one reaches significance (probably due to a Type 1 error), discarding significance that doesn't fit your belief structure. These correlational, regression studies lack real causal relations power. Is the crime rate up due to the CCW types committing the crimes? Never really mentioned. On the other hand, I've seen some pretty lame progun stat baloney. A very famous gun scholar once proclaimed that mandatory lock boxes produces more rapes. At a conference, with equally accomplished progun researchers, I questioned that and asked if we had cases of rapes that occurred because the victim could not reach a lock box in time. The answer - Nope - and we all just shook our heads. Sigh. So lock boxes mandated, rapes increase - but no causal analysis or look for evidence such causality. That's a problem with a lot of gun research from econometric or regression techniques.

The reliance upon p ≤ 0.05 as a dogmatic ''line in the sand'' for test significance is generally regarded as being anachronistic these days especially as a ''stand alone'' measure of significance (definitions of which vary widely), and research doing so should be rightly viewed as being somewhat 'suspect'.

In addition to reporting the exact p-value, I'd prefer to see complex research like this evaluated through a combination of ANOVA (analysis of variance) and CI (confidence interval). Complimentary to the merits of ANOVA, the CI for the difference between two true (i.e., population) means or proportions, based on the observed difference between sample estimate, provides more useful information than a p-value, no matter how exact, for the probability that the true difference is zero. The confidence interval reflects the precision of the sample values in terms of their standard deviation and the sample size.

 

[NorthBorder]

Everytown Research?

If two armed felons kicked in my front door and screamed, "Die CDW4ME, die!!!" and I managed to defend myself killing both of them in the process...
That hypothetical incident of what would be legal self defense is likely reported as two gun deaths by Everytown.
Do they separate lawful self defense versus murder in their gun death numbers? I doubt it.

And don't forget that under their rules that define a mass shooting, so this would be characterized. A drive by shooting where gunshots were exchanged would be a mass shooting. Under that definition they have concluded that the US has experienced over 800 mass shootings this year.

That is why a certain writer (Twain?) said many years ago that: "There are lies, then there are damned lies, then there are statistics."

And these anti gun organizations prove this almost daily.

 

[Old Hobo]

The elephant-in-the-room truth that has not nor ever will be discussed in the media is that mass shootings fall into two categories, gang warfare and copycat murders.

Semi-automatic firearms have been widely available in this country for over 100 years now. Think about the all the M1 carbines that American civilians obtained after WWII.

So, why all the nut-case shootings happening now? Easily explained; the loonies saw the event and the murderer on TV.

The mass media generate mass reports every time a mass shooting occurs. We are a nation of 300 million people. Of any given population, 3% have pre-psychotic or overtly clinical psychotic mental illness. Unfortunately, a very high percentage of these folk are receiving ZERO medical care for their illness. Mentally ill people often incorporate what they see on television and read online into their delusional reality. In the mind of a psychotic, there is no differentiation between fame and infamy. Delusions of grandeur motivate many to have the need to be in the news.

The mass media gives mass-murderers tens of millions of dollars worth of coverage and nationally so (even international coverage). Commit a mass murder and the mass media will publish your name and your twisted manifesto.

Mass-murders in this country are over 90% copy-cat murders.

I would say that the press is inadvertently a party to this. But is this really inadvertent? Personally, I don't think so. The press is the 5th column for the international left. Socialist and communist dogma has it that "sacrifices must be made". If your pro-centralized-government cause needs the people to be disarmed, then their weapons must be demonized so as to soften-up the populace to accept such firearm registration then firearm bans. So, if you are part of the liberal media and a mass-shooting happens, what to do?! Just publish publish publish ... make sure this gets as much coverage as you can muster. Also, make sure that the perpetrator gets seen by the nation. It's what the nutcase wanted in the first place. Make sure his face and loony belief-system is shown across the nation ... for days on end. Could this generate the next mass shooting? Hmmmmm ... well, "Sacrifices must be made."

 

[GEM]

The copy cat, media inducing effect has been reported and documented by criminologists and other social science researchers for many years. Scholarly articles, op-eds, etc. have been produced, esp. after Columbine. They are ignored and the media presents everything that the experts say will encourage the next rampage. Whether this a plot or just 'if it bleeds, it leads' or pure playing of politics for votes, maybe all.

The lack of quality mental health care and diagnosis is a factor but pro-active steps leads to folks getting all excited by red flag laws and gun seizure fears from over application of such. Can't have it both ways. A LGS called in a guy who gave them the willys and he was planning a rampage, then the store was denounced as traitors to the RKBA.

 

[trigger puller]

One of the popular arguments anti gun rights people make for stricter national gun laws is that the guns in high crime, strict gun law regions/states come from low restriction states. This is true in many cases. Guns are bought via straw purchases and then brought to places like Chicago, NYC, LA, old Mexico etc. where they can be sold for a profit.

Yep, and the people making the straw purchases are still criminals. Us law abiding gun owners aren't selling our guns to criminals....

 

[481]

Everytown Research?

If two armed felons kicked in my front door and screamed, "Die CDW4ME, die!!!" and I managed to defend myself killing both of them in the process...
That hypothetical incident of what would be legal self defense is likely reported as two gun deaths by Everytown.
Do they separate lawful self defense versus murder in their gun death numbers? I doubt it.

Nope. Clearly that would be a COVID-related death.

 

[trigger puller]

The elephant-in-the-room truth that has not nor ever will be discussed in the media is that mass shootings fall into two categories, gang warfare and copycat murders.

Semi-automatic firearms have been widely available in this country for over 100 years now. Think about the all the M1 carbines that American civilians obtained after WWII.

So, why all the nut-case shootings happening now? Easily explained; the loonies saw the event and the murderer on TV.

The mass media generate mass reports every time a mass shooting occurs. We are a nation of 300 million people. Of any given population, 3% have pre-psychotic or overtly clinical psychotic mental illness. Unfortunately, a very high percentage of these folk are receiving ZERO medical care for their illness. Mentally ill people often incorporate what they see on television and read online into their delusional reality. In the mind of a psychotic, there is no differentiation between fame and infamy. Delusions of grandeur motivate many to have the need to be in the news.

The mass media gives mass-murderers tens of millions of dollars worth of coverage and nationally so (even international coverage). Commit a mass murder and the mass media will publish your name and your twisted manifesto.

Mass-murders in this country are over 90% copy-cat murders.

I would say that the press is inadvertently a party to this. But is this really inadvertent? Personally, I don't think so. The press is the 5th column for the international left. Socialist and communist dogma has it that "sacrifices must be made". If your pro-centralized-government cause needs the people to be disarmed, then their weapons must be demonized so as to soften-up the populace to accept such firearm registration then firearm bans. So, if you are part of the liberal media and a mass-shooting happens, what to do?! Just publish publish publish ... make sure this gets as much coverage as you can muster. Also, make sure that the perpetrator gets seen by the nation. It's what the nutcase wanted in the first place. Make sure his face and loony belief-system is shown across the nation ... for days on end. Could this generate the next mass shooting? Hmmmmm ... well, "Sacrifices must be made."

The media is certainly driving the sensationalism and "fame." I personally think, if the media would stop reporting "Active Shooter" situations and

The elephant-in-the-room truth that has not nor ever will be discussed in the media is that mass shootings fall into two categories, gang warfare and copycat murders.

Semi-automatic firearms have been widely available in this country for over 100 years now. Think about the all the M1 carbines that American civilians obtained after WWII.

So, why all the nut-case shootings happening now? Easily explained; the loonies saw the event and the murderer on TV.

The mass media generate mass reports every time a mass shooting occurs. We are a nation of 300 million people. Of any given population, 3% have pre-psychotic or overtly clinical psychotic mental illness. Unfortunately, a very high percentage of these folk are receiving ZERO medical care for their illness. Mentally ill people often incorporate what they see on television and read online into their delusional reality. In the mind of a psychotic, there is no differentiation between fame and infamy. Delusions of grandeur motivate many to have the need to be in the news.

The mass media gives mass-murderers tens of millions of dollars worth of coverage and nationally so (even international coverage). Commit a mass murder and the mass media will publish your name and your twisted manifesto.

Mass-murders in this country are over 90% copy-cat murders.

I would say that the press is inadvertently a party to this. But is this really inadvertent? Personally, I don't think so. The press is the 5th column for the international left. Socialist and communist dogma has it that "sacrifices must be made". If your pro-centralized-government cause needs the people to be disarmed, then their weapons must be demonized so as to soften-up the populace to accept such firearm registration then firearm bans. So, if you are part of the liberal media and a mass-shooting happens, what to do?! Just publish publish publish ... make sure this gets as much coverage as you can muster. Also, make sure that the perpetrator gets seen by the nation. It's what the nutcase wanted in the first place. Make sure his face and loony belief-system is shown across the nation ... for days on end. Could this generate the next mass shooting? Hmmmmm ... well, "Sacrifices must be made."

report "terrorist attacks," this might help reduce these attacks. "Active Shooter" while this is an accurate description that police and other first responders need to know, it really, truly is a Terrorist Attack, domestic or otherwise. "Active Shooter" sounds like the name of a video game, which is why these nut cases choose ARs. Video Games have glamorized the AR. If the media starts reporting these monsters as "terrorists" it just might be less glamouras and help lessen the numbers of psycho's trying to do it.

 

[denton]

The reliance upon p ≤ 0.05 as a dogmatic ''line in the sand'' for test significance is generally regarded as being anachronistic these days especially as a ''stand alone'' measure of significance (definitions of which vary widely), and research doing so should be rightly viewed as being somewhat 'suspect'.

In addition to reporting the exact p-value, I'd prefer to see complex research like this evaluated through a combination of ANOVA (analysis of variance) and CI (confidence interval). Complimentary to the merits of ANOVA, the CI for the difference between two true (i.e., population) means or proportions, based on the observed difference between sample estimate, provides more useful information than a p-value, no matter how exact, for the probability that the true difference is zero. The confidence interval reflects the precision of the sample values in terms of their standard deviation and the sample size.

Sir Ronald Fisher, the most prominent statistician of the 20th century, was once asked what he thought the right cutoff was for statistical significance and he replied, Oh, about 1 in 20. That is the origin of .05 as the criterion.

For most industrial processes, it's a good choice for decision making. There are times than .1 is more appropriate, and others where .01 is not good enough.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

he media is certainly driving the sensationalism and "fame." I personally think, if the media would stop reporting "Active Shooter" situations

Then folks would be cryin' about how the media was hiding violence from the public and failing to report active situations that are a danger to the local community, sort of like telling them to not report an active fire or tornado.

The media is a two edge sword. They serve some very real purposes and some we don't like.

Sir Ronald Fisher, the most prominent statistician of the 20th century, was once asked what he thought the right cutoff was for statistical significance and he replied, Oh, about 1 in 20. That is the origin of .05 as the criterion.

I believe your Fisher story to be a bit more involved than that. Here is a nice paper on the matter...

https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/528Readings/CowlesDavis1982.pdf

 

[481]

Then folks would be cryin' about how the media was hiding violence from the public and failing to report active situations that are a danger to the local community, sort of like telling them to not report an active fire or tornado.

The media is a two edge sword. They serve some very real purposes and some we don't like.



I believe your Fisher story to be a bit more involved than that. Here is a nice paper on the matter...

https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/528Readings/CowlesDavis1982.pdf

It (desired p-value) is always going to be somewhat subjective in that there those who see very small p-values as sort of a ''guarantee'' that their analyses will withstand some extraordinary degree of scrutiny where others are more content to allow ANOVA to carry the load, so to speak. A p-value of 0.05 might be considered to be arbitrary, but in most applications, it is likely sufficient which is why Fisher likely chose 0.05. As p-value approaches zero (with the number of zeros to the right of the decimal point increasing), there is probably a point at which the increase in ''certainty'' is more illusory than real.... diminishing returns and all that.

 

[denton]

It (desired p-value) is always going to be somewhat subjective in that there those who see very small p-values as sort of a ''guarantee'' that their analyses will withstand some extraordinary degree of scrutiny where others are more content to allow ANOVA to carry the load, so to speak. A p-value of 0.05 might be considered to be arbitrary, but in most applications, it is likely sufficient which is why Fisher likely chose 0.05. As p-value approaches zero (with the number of zeros to the right of the decimal point increasing), there is probably a point at which the increase in ''certainty'' is more illusory than real.... diminishing returns and all that.

Double Naught Spy, an interesting read. Thanks for posting. I enjoyed it.

It's very common for shooters to evaluate load parameters with certainty far below .05. The result is often a whole lot of wasted time and reloading supplies, but it's fun, so what the heck....

In most cases, you don't really know the p value with great certainty. For typical industrial sample sizes, you might get a solid number in the .1 position, a shakey number in the .01 position, and a totally wishful number in the .001 position. So fretting about .049 being significant and .051 not being significant is kind of a waste of time. Statistics is the art of never having to say that you are certain, after all.

In trying to evaluate different industrial processes, experience has shown that .05 works well enough. If it leads to a wrong decision, it won't be disastrously wrong. If we're talking about something that we're going to shoot into the whole population of the country, then .01 replicated a few times by different teams may be good enough. For an exploratory study, .1 is pretty common, though I have seen situations where even .25 was used.

So, yes, we agree that .05 is arbitrary. It's simply a matter of how much risk of being reversed you are willing to accept. I generally say that .05 is the dividing line between an exploratory study and a confirmatory study.

 

[bearcreek]

The media is certainly driving the sensationalism and "fame." I personally think, if the media would stop reporting "Active Shooter" situations and


report "terrorist attacks," this might help reduce these attacks. "Active Shooter" while this is an accurate description that police and other first responders need to know, it really, truly is a Terrorist Attack, domestic or otherwise. "Active Shooter" sounds like the name of a video game, which is why these nut cases choose ARs. Video Games have glamorized the AR. If the media starts reporting these monsters as "terrorists" it just might be less glamouras and help lessen the numbers of psycho's trying to do it.

"Terrorist" attack, by definition, necessitates a political or religious motivation. Most "mass" shootings in the US do not meet that definition.


There may be some truth to the idea that these killers choose AR's on occasion, (although most mass shooting are committed with handguns, not AR's) because of video games, but I suspect that they choose them most of the time for similar reasons that all Americans should own at least one. They're widely available, are very close to what the military uses, and are an efficient fighting tool. They fall under the purview of the 2A specifically because they are a "weapon of war", which, unfortunately, but inevitably, make them a "good" tool for killing lots of people quickly. If they weren't good at that, they'd be nearly useless for 2A purposes.

 

[481]

Statistics is the art of never having to say that you are certain, after all.

Or, I'm sorry.