Predator Obama Wrote:
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> Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the
> United States
>
>
> When we first collected much of this data, it was
> after the Aurora, Colo. shootings, and the air was
> thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the
> tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t
> talk about reforming our gun control laws.”
>
> Let’s be clear: That is a form of
> politicization. When political actors construct a
> political argument that threatens political
> consequences if other political actors pursue a
> certain political outcome, that is, almost by
> definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s
> just a form of politicization favoring those who
> prefer the status quo to stricter gun control
> laws.
>
> Since then, there have been more horrible,
> high-profile shootings. Jovan Belcher, a
> linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, took his
> girlfriend’s life and then his own. In Oregon,
> Jacob Tyler Roberts entered a mall holding a
> semi-automatic rifle and yelling “I am the
> shooter.” And, in Connecticut, at least 27 are
> dead — including 18 children — after a man
> opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
>
> If roads were collapsing all across the United
> States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely
> see that as a moment to talk about what we could
> do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists
> were detonating bombs in port after port, you can
> be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the
> nation’s security measures. If a plague was
> ripping through communities, public-health
> officials would be working feverishly to contain
> it.
>
> Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated
> tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable
> but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is
> not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose gun
> laws. But as others have observed, talking about
> how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a
> string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.”
> It’s much too late.
>
> What follows here isn’t a policy agenda. It’s
> simply a set of facts — many of which complicate
> a search for easy answers — that should inform
> the discussion that we desperately need to have.
>
> 1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United
> States.
>
> Mother Jones has tracked and mapped every shooting
> spree in the last three decades. “Since 1982,
> there have been at least 61 mass murders carried
> out with firearms across the country, with the
> killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts
> to Hawaii,” they found. And in most cases, the
> killers had obtained their weapons legally:
>
> 2. 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last
> 50 years took place in the United States.
>
> Time has the full list here. In second place is
> Finland, with two entries.
>
> 3. Lots of guns don’t necessarily mean lots of
> shootings, as you can see in Israel and
> Switzerland.*
>
> As David Lamp writes at Cato, “In Israel and
> Switzerland, for example, a license to possess
> guns is available on demand to every law-abiding
> adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both
> nations. Both countries also allow widespread
> carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits
> Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical
> advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel
> ‘have rates of homicide that are low despite
> rates of home firearm ownership that are at least
> as high as those in the United States.’”
>
> *Correction: The info is out-of-date, if not
> completely wrong. Israel and Switzerland have
> tightened their gun laws substantially, and now
> pursue an entirely different approach than the
> United States. More details here. I apologize for
> the error.
>
> 4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five
> have happened from 2007 onward.
>
> That doesn’t include Friday’s shooting in
> Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The AP put the early
> reported death toll at 27, which would make it the
> second-deadliest mass shooting in US history.
>
> 5. America is an unusually violent country. But
> we’re not as violent as we used to be.
>
> Kieran Healy, a sociologist at Duke University,
> made this graph of “deaths due to assault” in
> the United States and other developed countries.
> We are a clear outlier.
>
> As Healy writes, “The most striking features of
> the data are (1) how much more violent the U.S. is
> than other OECD countries (except possibly Estonia
> and Mexico, not shown here), and (2) the degree of
> change—and recently, decline—there has been in
> the U.S. time series considered by itself.”
>
> 6. The South is the most violent region in the
> United States.
>
> In a subsequent post, Healy drilled further into
> the numbers and looked at deaths due to assault in
> different regions of the country. Just as the
> United States is a clear outlier in the
> international context, the South is a clear
> outlier in the national context:
>
> 7. Gun ownership in the United States is declining
> overall.
>
> “For all the attention given to America’s
> culture of guns, ownership of firearms is at or
> near all-time lows,” writes political scientist
> Patrick Egan. The decline is most evident on the
> General Social Survey, though it also shows up on
> polling from Gallup, as you can see on this
> graph:
>
> The bottom line, Egan writes, is that “long-term
> trends suggest that we are in fact currently
> experiencing a waning culture of guns and violence
> in the United States. “
>
> 8. More guns tend to mean more homicide.
>
> The Harvard Injury Control Research Center
> assessed the literature on guns and homicide and
> found that there’s substantial evidence that
> indicates more guns means more murders. This holds
> true whether you’re looking at different
> countries or different states. Citations here.
>
> 9. States with stricter gun control laws have
> fewer deaths from gun-related violence.
>
> Last year, economist Richard Florida dove deep
> into the correlations between gun deaths and other
> kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found
> was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more
> stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness
> were not correlated with more deaths from gun
> violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps,
> perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun
> control laws appear to have fewer gun-related
> deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is
> not causation. But correlations can be
> suggestive:
>
> “The map overlays the map of firearm deaths
> above with gun control restrictions by state,”
> explains Florida. “It highlights states which
> have one of three gun control restrictions in
> place – assault weapons’ bans, trigger locks,
> or safe storage requirements. Firearm deaths are
> significantly lower in states with stricter gun
> control legislation. Though the sample sizes are
> small, we find substantial negative correlations
> between firearm deaths and states that ban assault
> weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and
> mandate safe storage requirements for guns
> (-.48).”
>
> 10. Gun control, in general, has not been
> politically popular.
>
> Since 1990, Gallup has been asking Americans
> whether they think gun control laws should be
> stricter. The answer, increasingly, is that they
> don’t. “The percentage in favor of making the
> laws governing the sale of firearms ‘more
> strict’ fell from 78% in 1990 to 62% in 1995,
> and 51% in 2007,” reports Gallup. “In the most
> recent reading, Gallup in 2010 found 44% in favor
> of stricter laws. In fact, in 2009 and again last
> year, the slight majority said gun laws should
> either remain the same or be made less strict.”
>
> 11. But particular policies to control guns often
> are.
>
> An August CNN/ORC poll asked respondents whether
> they favor or oppose a number of specific policies
> to restrict gun ownership. And when you drill down
> to that level, many policies, including banning
> the manufacture and possession of semi-automatic
> rifles, are popular.
>
> 12. Shootings don’t tend to substantially affect
> views on gun control.
>
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/20
> 12/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-
> in-the-united-states/?tid=pm_pop
A bunch of cherry-picked and slanted stats from Mother Jones. Who'd have guessed?