NRA's black commentator becomes Web sensation - "NRA released an ad in March promoting his first video praising the gun rights group for championing the right of blacks to bear arms during Jim Crow and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.“The same government who at one point hosed us down with water, attacked us with dogs and wouldn’t allow us to eat at their restaurants told us we couldn’t own guns when bumbling fools with sheets on their heads were riding around burning crosses on our lawns and murdering us,” Noir says in the video as “Washington elitism” flashes across the screen.It was not a misreading of history, according to UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”Winkler said that the armed Black Panthers of the 1960s, despite criticism by then-Republican California Gov. Ronald Reagan and many conservatives, paved the way for the NRA’s current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment: that citizens should be able to carry guns in public, not just for hunting, but for protection, including protection against government tyranny."
Strange, liberals tell us that gun control was in response to racist white people scared of black men with guns, and that the NRA didn't stand up for black gun owners' rights
Mother of 5 shot, killed at Chuck E. Cheese in Iowa during argument with another mom
"An armed society is a polite society"
Jefferson Gun Outlet Shooting In Louisiana Leaves Three Dead - "A man opened fire in a Louisiana gun store on Saturday, killing two people and injuring two others, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said.The shooter himself was then killed when several people fired back to stop him, officials said... the man was asked to unload his gun before coming inside and then began shooting... Family members of Williams have expressed confusion and doubt over whether the 27-year-old instigated the attack. According to NOLA.com, his mother posted on Facebook that her son "was murdered.""
"More guns, less crime"
Women, minorities rush to get concealed carry permits, up 34% - "He found that women and minorities are leading in the new applications. “Permits for women and minorities continue to increase at a much faster rate than for either men or whites,” he said. That finding parallels reports from gun stores that women and minorities are buying weapons and signing up for concealed carry classes at a brisk pace."
So gun control is racist and sexist!
Facebook - "Part of what makes law-enforcement more deadly in the United States could be referred to as “the gun trap“. When people cite how many fewer people are killed by European police departments, one feature they neglect to mention is that many of these officers do not carry guns. Needless to say, there are interactions that go wrong, but because both the citizens and the police often do not carry guns, the odds of this turning deadlyare much lower. In both recent cases in Louisville Kentucky, the reason that Breonna Taylor and David McAtee were killed had to do with very confusing situations regarding the police and a totally understandable instinctual reaction of self-defense, but the only reason these to turn deadly was that one or both parties had guns.It is completely understandable why Breonna Taylor‘s boyfriend started firing his gun, he did not even know it was the police trying to get in the house, and for what other reason would someone fire a gun if not for a self-defense situation such as this? And naturally it is understandable that when police officers have incoming gunfire they also feel the need to defend themselves. It is because of this deadly dynamic that Breonna Taylor is dead, for absolutely no crime committed.Likewise, David McAtee saw something fired near the head of his niece, and for what other reason would one brandish a gun if not for a self-defense situation such as this? Once he fired the gun the police similarly thought they were under attack and fired back.As long as both the citizens and the police have guns tragedies such as this are bound to occur, even beyond the scope of how much race plays a factor"
Facebook - "Firearms instructor demonstrates why it is important (in the US at least) to:
1) comply with police instructions
2) keep your hands in sight
3) no sudden movements
A US police officer needs to guard against situations like this, and draw faster than someone who has already decided to draw, while not drawing on someone who isn't armed, but is being an idiot by not complying. And do this all while under scrutiny of a (usually left leaning) population who knows nothing."
Kongsberg: Bow and arrow attack appears to be terrorism - officials - "A deadly bow and arrow attack in Norway which left five people dead appears to have been an act of terror, Norway's security service (PST) said. However a motive has not yet been determined. The suspect, a 37-year-old Danish citizen named Espen Andersen Brathen, had converted to Islam and there were fears he had been radicalised."
The pro gun crowd keeps crowing about how banning guns doesn't save any lives since criminals will just kill with other weapons, not realising that their logic is self-defeating: you don't need guns to "protect" yourself if any other weapon is just as effective
Firearm Prevalence and Social Capital - "Across the U.S. states, higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with significantly lower levels of mutual trust and civic engagement."
Not surprising. If you're always afraid someone's going to shoot you...
Is an armed society a polite society? Guns and road rage - "Similar to a survey of Arizona motorists, in our survey, riding with a firearm in the vehicle was a marker for aggressive and dangerous driver behavior."
Liberal road rage - "Ironically, the researchers’ regression results also show that liberals are much more likely to engage in road rage (both making obscene gestures and driving aggressively) than conservatives, and that the difference is larger than the difference for whether one had carried a gun in the car at least once."
Moved from 2017. Original comments:
"Original article: Is an armed society a polite society? Guns and road rage by David Hemenway, Mary Vriniotis, Matthew Miller. In Accident Analysis & Prevention Volume 38, Issue 4, July 2006, Pages 687–695
The original claim this was responding to was that people with guns were more likely to engage in road rage
Maybe the Jedi mind trick will be to claim that liberals are ruder on the roads because they are faced with obnoxious conservative drives who justifiably make them angry (one person claimed that conservatives have more diverse social media feeds than liberals because they just follow liberals to troll them; someone else claimed that liberals are more likely to unfriend or block people on social media because conservatives have no friends)"
Partygoers bludgeon gunman to death with bricks after fatal shooting in Texas - "A gunman who opened fire on a backyard party in Texas was chased and killed by guests throwing landscaping bricks"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is good guys with bricks
Handgun waiting periods reduce gun deaths - "Handgun waiting periods are laws that impose a delay between the initiation of a purchase and final acquisition of a firearm. We show that waiting periods, which create a “cooling off” period among buyers, significantly reduce the incidence of gun violence. We estimate the impact of waiting periods on gun deaths, exploiting all changes to state-level policies in the Unites States since 1970. We find that waiting periods reduce gun homicides by roughly 17%. We provide further support for the causal impact of waiting periods on homicides by exploiting a natural experiment resulting from a federal law in 1994 that imposed a temporary waiting period on a subset of states."
Confronted with the evidence that Nevada gun shows increase California gun deaths, one cope I saw was that California was a special case because "there are so many gun free zones that any law abiding citizen isn't going to have a means of self defense in public places"
Weird. I thought criminals will get guns even if guns are made illegal. Therefore gun control and regulation have no effect on gun crime at all
Changes in firearm mortality following the implementation of state laws regulating firearm access and use - "Many US states have tried to regulate firearm storage and use to reduce the 39,000 firearms-related deaths that occur each year. Looking at three classes of laws that regulate children’s access to firearms, the carrying of a concealed firearm, and the use of a firearm in self-defense, we found that state laws restricting firearm storage and use are associated with a subsequent 11% decrease in the firearms-related death rate. In a hypothetical situation in which there are 39,000 firearms deaths nationally under the permissive combination of these three laws, we expect 4,475 (80% CI, 1,761 to 6,949) more deaths nationally than under the restrictive combination of these laws.
Although 39,000 individuals die annually from gunshots in the US, research examining the effects of laws designed to reduce these deaths has sometimes produced inconclusive or contradictory findings. We evaluated the effects on total firearm-related deaths of three classes of gun laws: child access prevention (CAP), right-to-carry (RTC), and stand your ground (SYG) laws. The analyses exploit changes in these state-level policies from 1970 to 2016, using Bayesian methods and a modeling approach that addresses several methodological limitations of prior gun policy evaluations. CAP laws showed the strongest evidence of an association with firearm-related death rate, with a probability of 0.97 that the death rate declined at 6 y after implementation. In contrast, the probability of being associated with an increase in firearm-related deaths was 0.87 for RTC laws and 0.77 for SYG laws. The joint effects of these laws indicate that the restrictive gun policy regime (having a CAP law without an RTC or SYG law) has a 0.98 probability of being associated with a reduction in firearm-related deaths relative to the permissive policy regime. This estimated effect corresponds to an 11% reduction in firearm-related deaths relative to the permissive legal regime. Our findings suggest that a small but meaningful decrease in firearm-related deaths may be associated with the implementation of more restrictive gun policies."
Good old guns suddenly replace liberal values in this Blue state - "After months of embracing criminal reform, which had a knack for keeping criminals on the streets, California’s elite are taking measures – like panic-buying guns – that show they’re not so different from conservatives after all... the philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, wife of famous music executive Clarence Avant, was shot and killed at her home during a burglary attempt. The tragic twist to the story is that the man accused of the murder, Aariel Maynor, 29, had been just released from prison on parole – too early, critics contend – in what appears to have been yet another case of liberals coddling criminals to the detriment of society. To add insult to injury, just hours after Avant, 81, was murdered, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who the Heritage Foundation has described as a “Soros-backed rogue prosecutor,” was advocating for the elimination of additional prison time for criminals found guilty of brandishing a firearm during a crime. While it remains unclear what the long-term consequences of this kid-glove approach will be for the political left, one thing is beyond doubt: Many Democrats are responding to the uptick in crime in ways that place them directly at odds with their progressive beliefs, most notably on the question of gun control. Despite the Second Amendment being a source of contention for the left, liberals are now actively purchasing firearms and enrolling in shooting classes. LA County Sheriff Alejandro Villanueva told the New York Post that his department has received 8,105 concealed carry weapon applications and approved 2,102 of them since he entered office in December 2018, compared to his predecessor having issued 194 permits in four years. While some of those numbers certainly include conservatives, Joel Glucksman, a private security executive, clarified that liberals have shelved their political beliefs out of concern for their safety when he told The Post: “Even hardcore leftist Democrats who said to me in the past, ‘I’ll never own a gun’ are calling me asking about firearms.” Aside from arming themselves, Californians are investing heavily into expensive security accessories, like bullet-proof cars, safe rooms inside of their homes, bunkers, and private security firms to patrol their neighborhoods around the clock. And not a little ironically, considering the Democratic Party’s move to grant thousands of illegal migrants entry into the US from south of the Rio Grande, palatial properties are being surrounded with barbed wire fences, security cameras, motion detectors, and large dogs. With no loss of hypocrisy, wealthy liberal homeowners can readily appreciate the importance of protecting their homes with every technological innovation under the sun, yet when it comes to protecting the American border they defer to the vacuous platitudes of political correctness... With a liberal exodus into conservative states underway, will those Democrats fleeing blue cities and states box up their politics and bring them along, thereby having the effect of changing the political face of their new homes, or will they embrace the political traditions of their new homes that made such a move desirable in the first place?"
Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home - "After controlling for these characteristics, we found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4). Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance... A majority of the homicides (50.9 percent) occurred in the context of a quarrel or a romantic triangle. An additional 4.5 percent of the victims were killed by a family member or an intimate acquaintance as part of a murder-suicide. Thirty-two homicides (7.6 percent) were related to drug dealing, and 92 homicides (21.9 percent) occurred during the commission of another felony, such as a robbery, rape, or burglary. No motive other than homicide could be established in 56 cases (13.3 percent)... People who keep guns in their homes appear to be at greater risk of homicide in the home than people who do not. Most of this risk is due to a substantially greater risk of homicide at the hands of a family member or intimate acquaintance. We did not find evidence of a protective effect of keeping a gun in the home, even in the small subgroup of cases that involved forced entry. Saltzman and colleagues recently found that assaults by family members or other intimate acquaintances with a gun are far more likely to end in death than those that involve knives or other weapons. A gun kept in the home is far more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than it is to be used to kill in self-defense. Cohort and interrupted time-series studies have demonstrated a strong link between the availability of guns and community rates of homicide. Our study confirms this association at the level of individual households."
For all the obsession about "self defence", your gun at home is more likely to be used to shoot someone you know than a stranger. The majority of the time you're going to kill someone you know in anger (or otherwise not in self defence), and a minority of the time you're going to kill someone in self defence as they invade your property
You’re More Likely To Die From Lightning Strike Than In Mass Shooting
Ironically, the people who say this also obsess about how they need a gun to "defend" themselves, even though the chance that that will help is also tiny
Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership, and Homicides: Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock - "Do firearm purchase delay laws reduce aggregate homicide levels? Using variation from a 6-month countrywide gun demand shock in 2012/2013, we show that U.S. states with legislation preventing immediate handgun purchases experienced smaller increases in handgun sales. Our findings indicate that this is likely driven by comparatively lower purchases among impulsive consumers. We then demonstrate that states with purchase delays also witnessed comparatively 2% lower homicide rates during the same period. Further evidence shows that lower handgun sales coincided primarily with fewer impulsive assaults and points towards reduced acts of domestic violence."
Previous version whose abstract in some ways is more enlightening: Dynamics in Gun Ownership and Crime - Evidence from the Aftermath of Sandy Hook - "Gun rights activists in the United States frequently argue that the right to bear arms, as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, can help deter crime. Advocates of gun control usually respond that firearm prevalence contributes positively to violent crime rates. In this paper, we provide quasi-experimental evidence that a positive and unexpected gun demand shock led to an increase in murder rates after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the resulting gun control debate in December 2012. In states where purchases were delayed due to mandatory waiting periods and bureaucratic hurdles in issuing a gun permit, firearm sales exhibited weaker increases than in states without any such delays. We show that this finding is hard to reconcile with standard economic theory, but is in line with findings from behavioral economics. States that saw more gun sales then experienced significantly higher murder rates in the months following the demand shock, as murders increased by 6-15% over the course of a year."
In other words, this natural experiment shows that more guns cause more crime (in this case, murders)
Keywords: more guns more crime
Rik Andino's answer to Do soldiers keep their service weapons after they are discharged? - Quora - "You don't even get to take your service weapon home with you while you're serving. You only keep your service weapon while you're on duty (in a billet that requires it) or while you are in a combat zone. Or if needed to shoot for practice or qualification at a rifle or pistol range... You have to check out a weapon in the armory, and you will need written authorization to get a weapon and bullets as well."
From a Former Sgt in the US Marine Corps
One gun nut asserted that in the event of an invasion one couldn't wait, so everyone should get weapons now. I pointed out that soldiers do not have access to arms and ammo all the time
Gun nuts are really excited over Ukraine. Apparently they think their country is going to be invaded too, so everyone needs a gun.
Jeff Cooper quote - "If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore what he must be taught to fear is his victim."
Fascinating insight into the gun nut mentality. Weird how even if you ignore studies on the effects policing in the US, in other developed countries the police and legal system affect what criminals do. Also if the felon does not fear the police, why would he fear his victim?
Spike in violent crime follows rise in gun-buying amid social upheaval - The Washington Post - "Americans purchased millions more guns than usual this spring, spurred in large part by racial animosity stoked by widespread protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as well as anxiety over the effects of the covid-19 pandemic. That gun-buying binge is associated with a significant increase in gun violence across the United States... “In a society fraught with racial tension, it is not clear that dismantling the police and seeing more private citizens purchase guns will lead to a safer world.” "
So much for more guns, less crime
Will a Gun Keep Your Family Safe? Here’s What the Evidence Says - "In 2015, David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and Sara Solnick, an economist at the University of Vermont, analyzed national government surveys involving more than 14,000 people and reported that guns are used for self-protection in less than 1 percent of all crimes that take place in the presence of a victim. They also found that people were more likely to be injured after threatening attackers with guns than they were if they had called the police or run away. In a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993, researchers found that having a gun in the home was linked with nearly three times higher odds that someone would be killed at home by a family member or intimate acquaintance. Studies using more recent data have come to the same conclusion. In a 2019 study, researchers found that states with high levels of household gun ownership have more domestic gun homicides than other states do... In a 2017 study published in Science, Philip Levine and his colleague Robin McKnight found that where gun sales increased after Sandy Hook (as indicated by increases in background checks), rates of accidental death rose, too. They estimated that 60 additional people, including 20 children, were killed in the aftermath of Sandy Hook because of the excess guns people purchased... when people are concerned about home defense, they are less likely to store their guns safely — in a locked cabinet or safe, ideally in a separate place from ammunition. (Gun owners who don’t take safety courses are also less likely to store their guns properly, she and her colleagues found.) Yet in homes where firearms are unsafely stored, family members are more likely to be hurt or killed by their guns. The other big concern about guns right now is suicide... “Gun owners aren’t more likely to be suicidal.” But when gun owners do become suicidal, “they’re more likely to die,” because suicide attempts using guns are far more fatal than attempts by other means... concealed carrying puts people more, rather than less, at risk. “Any movements towards greater gun carrying – whether motivated by the coronavirus or legislative or judicial relaxation of restrictions on gun carrying – will come at the price of higher levels of violent crime,” says John Donohue, a law professor and economist at Stanford University. In a 2019 study, Donohue and his colleagues found that a decade after states passed “shall-issue” concealed carry laws, also known as right-to-carry laws, which make it easy for gun owners to get concealed carry permits, violent crime rates rose 13 to 15 percent higher than in states with more conservative “may issue” laws. In 2017, other researchers found shall-issue laws to be associated with higher homicide rates, particularly from handguns. And in a 2018 working paper, British economist Christoph Koenig and Dutch economist David Schindler reported that American states with the largest increases in gun sales after Newtown experienced 6 to 15 percent more murders over the course of the following year compared with other states."
Many Americans have fantasies about defending themselves, so they don't mind an increased risk of dying
One dead, multiple people injured in California church shooting - "churchgoers subdued the shooter and hogtied him with extension cords"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with an extension cord
Meme - "CONCEALED CARRIES HAVEN'T DETERRED MASS SHOOTINGS
OPEN CARRIES DIDN'T STOP THE CRAZIES
IT'S TIME TO LEGALIZE OPEN POINTING
"DOES EVERYONE FEEL SAFE? I FEEL SAFE!"
"SO SAFE."
"YOUR CHANGE, SIR.""
Mental Illness Not a Factor in Most Mass Shootings
Keywords: mental health
Mental illness isn't main driver of mass shootings, experts say
Meme - "WAIT, SO PEOPLE CAN SAY WHATEVER THEY WANT?"
"YEAH!"
"OH! LET'S GIVE THEM GUNS!"
"LMAO! THIS COUNTRY'S GOING TO BE LIT!"
Meme - "SECOND AMENDMENT SCOREBOARD
TYRANTS OVERTHROWN: 0
COWORKERS, STUDENTS, SPOUSES, STORE CLERKS ETC KILLED:"
Why Italy Has a Gun Culture—But No Mass Shootings - "Italians own an estimated 8.6 million guns, but we've never had a single school shooting. Not one... Anyone over 18 can own a gun in Italy, as long as they meet certain criteria. They have to apply for a firearms license, take a firearms safety course at a gun range, and have no criminal record. Their physician has to sign a certificate affirming that the potential gun owner does not suffer from drug addiction or mental health issues. These rules also apply if you inherit or are otherwise gifted a gun. After that, new gun owners must register the firearm with their local police station within 72 hours of taking possession of it. If gun owners sell or give a gun to someone else, they too have to notify local authorities within 72 hours of the gun leaving their hands. To carry the gun outside your home you need either a hunting license or a sporting license (to take the gun to a shooting range), and you can have the gun in your vehicle or on your person only when you are engaged in or en route to or from one of those activities. Concealed carry permits exist in Italy but are very difficult to obtain. You have to prove that your line of work puts you at enough risk that you need to carry a concealed weapon for your own safety. And this license has to be renewed every year. Compare that to the United States, where specific gun laws vary by state; in Texas, one of the states with less stringent restrictions, there’s no state registry of guns, meaning you don’t need to register your gun if you inherit it; there’s no background check required with private sales; and anyone with a standard gun license may carry a rifle openly. While persons 18 and up who are not convicted criminals can apply for a gun purchase permit and usually obtain one, any red flags in their behavior could result in their firearms being seized by local authorities. For example, I know of two separate incidents where individuals in my town verbally or physically threatened others. When the carabinieri (local police) were alerted to these threats, they contacted the individuals and ordered them to come to the police station and turn over their weapons. (The police knew which weapons they owned because they were registered.) In both cases, the individuals peacefully surrendered their guns rather than risk arrest. At least a year passed before they were able to reclaim their weapons, and they did so only after they received a doctor’s certificate attesting to their mental stability... Studies have established a link between social welfare programs and reductions in violence, perhaps because when people’s most basic needs of shelter, healthcare, and sustenance are met, they are less prone to violence. In Italy, the national healthcare system—combined with rigid protocols for gun ownership—make it less likely that violent or mentally disturbed people will fall through the cracks or get their hands on guns."
Polls consistently show high support for gun background checks - "For years, polls have shown a majority of Americans support gun background checks for all buyers. Some polls show overall support in the ballpark of 90%. Support is lower among Republicans, but polls still indicate majority backing."
88 percent in new poll support background checks on all gun sales - "79 percent strongly or somewhat support “barring gun purchases by people on the federal no-fly or watch lists.” Seventy-five percent, meanwhile, strongly or somewhat support “creating a national database with information about each gun sale,” and 67 percent support banning assault-style weapons."
MYTH: 98% of Mass Shootings Occur in Gun-Free Zones - "Researcher John Lott claimed that 98% or more of mass shootings from 1950 to the present occurred in gun-free zones. Lott’s false claim is based on a basic error. For the period 1977–1997, Lott counts each individual mass shooting death as an entire mass shooting incident. Even after Lott corrected his mistake, he made a new claim that 94% of mass shootings occurred in gun-free places, which is also based on flawed data and contradicts other research that concludes that 12% to 13% of mass shootings occur where guns are prohibited... hose errors include misclassified shootings (e.g. Umpqua and Hialeah) and not adhering to his own mass shooting definition for cases from 1950–1976. Furthermore, his corrected data does not include the August 2019 shootings in El Paso and Dayton, both of which occurred in areas that allow firearms. Other research that looked at the relationship between mass shootings and gun-free zones contradict Lott’s 94% claim. A 2016 study by researchers from University of Massachusetts Boston, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Stanford University found that the vast majority of high-casualty mass shootings occur in places where guns are allowed or not explicitly banned. Between 1966 and June 2016, only 12% of US mass shootings involving six or more victims occurred in a gun-free zone, and only five percent occurred where civilian gun possession was prohibited. Another study of US mass shootings involving four or more fatalities between 2009 and 2015 found that only 13% occurred in a gun-free place. “Successful civilian uses of guns to stop a mass shooting were incredibly rare and about as common as armed civilians being shot while attempting to respond to mass shooting incidents,” the study states. The study also concluded that no evidence finds that right-to-carry laws reduce mass shootings or the number of shooting victims."
Do 98 percent of mass public shootings happen in gun-free zones? - The Washington Post - "Founded by economist John R. Lott, CPRC is cited regularly by gun-rights advocates. Lott found that 98.4 percent of mass shootings occurred in gun-free zones between 1950 and July 10, 2016. Some quick Googling turned up another study — from the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety — that found that 10 percent of mass shootings between 2009 and 2016 took place in gun-free zones. Using data that Lott provided, we tightened the time frame so we could compare his research with the Everytown study. Under Lott’s methodology, we found that about 86 percent of mass public shootings took place in gun-free zones from 2009 to 2016... Everytown identified 156 mass shootings between 2009 to 2016. Lott found 28 mass public shootings over the same period... Lott tightens his definition, excluding shootings that resulted from gang or drug violence or during the commission of a crime... Lott is very clear that he looks only at “mass public shootings.”... Louis Klarevas, a University of Massachusetts professor and the author of “Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings,” dismissed Lott’s reasoning, noting that plenty of mass shootings occurred in residential settings and querying why those victims should be overlooked. Everytown’s director of research and implementation, Sarah Tofte, went further. “The claim that so-called ‘gun-free zones’ attract mass shooters doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” she told us via email. “It’s just not what the numbers show. We look closely at the data on mass shootings, and it shows that relatively few take place in areas where civilians are prohibited from carrying firearms. In fact, the vast majority of mass shootings take place in private homes and are often tied to domestic violence.” The organization’s data found that incidents that took place in private homes accounted for 63 percent of the total number of mass shootings they examined between 2009 and 2016. It’s not only the discrepancies between how Lott and Everytown define “mass shooting” that contribute to their differing estimates — there is also disagreement about how to define “gun-free zone.”... he wrote that gun-free zones are “places where only police or military policy are classified, places where it is illegal to carry a permitted concealed handgun, places that are posted as not allowing a permitted concealed handgun, places where ‘general citizens’ are not allowed to obtain permits or where permits are either not issued to any general citizens or to only a very tiny selective segment.” In layman’s terms, Lott’s definition is so wide that the White House, where there are snipers on the roof, would be considered a gun-free zone. His data set classifies the shootings that took place at Fort Hood and the Washington Navy Yard as having occurred in gun-free zones. Klarevas disputed Lott’s characterization — wondering how “a place can be a gun free zone if guns are present?”... Lott’s original data set — which Trump referenced — spans from 1950 to 2016, but the admittedly vague concept of “gun-free zones” entered the lexicon only in the early 1990s, when two federal laws that restrict guns in and around schools were passed. Before 1990, Klarevas said, only certain government facilities (post offices, for example) explicitly prohibited firearms. So where did the prior 40 years of data come from? Lott used a wide definition of “gun-free zone” to compile this data. He said he included anyplace where a “general citizen” wasn’t able to carry a concealed weapon. This included any state that didn’t have either a right-to-carry or concealed-carry law."
