Is There Room For More Than Tears In America's Gun Control Debate?
It would seem something as tragic as a mass shooting would be easy to identify; but it’s not.
In 2019 the number of mass shootings in America ranged from 6 to 503 with deaths varying from 60 to 628 for an average of 1.24 to 10 deaths per incident.
The difference arises from differences in how mass shootings are defined. Some sources include 3 or more fatalities, others 4 or 6. Some include only “indiscriminate” shootings excluding gang violence, domestic violence, armed robbery, etc. while others include these events.
Mother Jones’ editor Mark Follman, an advocate for gun control, in December 2015, explained the absurdity, “Even as these mass shootings have grown more frequent…they are a tiny fraction of America’s gun violence and remain relatively rare. Yet many news outlets keep declaring that there have been upwards of “355 mass shootings this year” or “more than one mass shooting per day.” This wildly inflated statistic isn’t just misleading the public – it’s stirring undue fear and may be encouraging bad policies.”
Follman is right. Most of American corporate media hypes fear to prey on emotions. Despite being manipulative it’s highly effective. Today 50% of Americans fear being shot in a mass shooting - a risk roughly 1600x less than dying from cancer. For this risk 1/2 of Americans are willing to forego the cornerstone tenant of this nation: freedom.
No one debates survivors’ pain or the resoluteness of, e.g., #Neveragain organizers to change America’s gun laws, but can gun control public policy be based solely on appeasing 1000’s of survivors’ pain when the 2nd amendment confers freedom to own a gun to 330M?
Below are screenshots from Excel worksheets used to analyze mass shootings from 3 different sources in support of an article published by American Thinker - all of which are anti-gun advocates: Mother Jones, NBC School Shooting Tracker and Washington Post; along with an explanation of WaPo’s methodology that makes victims of school shootings nearly equivalent to school enrollment.