Media: Stop Shouting Fire! in Crowded Schools

School shootings have gone up dramatically since 1990. What has changed? First, the Gun Free School Zone act, sponsored by Joe Biden, went into effect, was found unconstitutional, and was then reenacted with intense lobbying by President Clinton. School shootings have increased at least four fold since the act was implemented, making schools a popular target full of unarmed victims for mass shooters.

Second, the major media, with a clear desire to pass anti-gun legislation in a media-induced emotional frenzy, has given school shootings enormous coverage far beyond other events that are as horrific. This coverage amounts to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded school.

As is well documented in Loren Coleman’s book “The Copycat Effect”, published in 2004, when the media create a firestorm of coverage of events such as this, it provides incentive for unstable individuals to do the same sort of crime.
We may be grateful that the media is so intent on disarming the population. If it promoted arson attacks as spectacularly as it does mass shootings, the death toll could be much higher.

What restraint could be applied by the media to reduce these attacks in the future, without violating the first amendment? Author Coleman has some suggestions, a few of which I mention below:

1. Accept that these stories have an effect and that the way they are covered is important.

2. Stop glamorizing the deaths with wall to wall coverage.

3. Stop using cultural stereotypes about the perpetrators or victims.

4. Do not give details about the killing. That serves as a road map for copycats.

5. Give alternatives, such as seeking help or counseling.

I would rather not see legislation restricting the First Amendment, just as I would rather not see any legislation restricting the Second Amendment.
However, restricting the ability of the media to sensationalize and glamorize these mass shootings would be far more likely to reduce them than would any legislation mandating that no more magazines of over 10 rounds be added to the existing stock of over a hundred million.

©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

 Update: Clayton Cramer recieved an award for media ethics, writing about this in 1993!

'Gun Free' Zones Attract Killers

A few things you won't hear about from the saturation coverage of the Newtown school massacre:

•Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

•In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

•Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

•The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

•Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that "gun-free" zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don't work.

More here

Iowa officials open to armed guards in schools

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Several top state officials on Friday said the National Rifle Association's proposal for all United States schools to post armed guards is worth considering.

Jason Glass, director of the Iowa Department of Education, said the guards should be trained police officers. Many larger Iowa schools already have officers assigned at least part time.

Glass said he will not formally propose the addition of armed officers at all Iowa schools, and neither will Gov. Terry Branstad. But it's possible a state lawmaker will, Glass said, noting he doesn't know of a firm proposal in Iowa yet.

More Here

Thoughts on school shootings

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1. Mass murderers who plan on killing themselves after the spree are not deterred by posthumous legal penalties. Really. Trying to disarm everyone who can theoretically snap is impossible — witness the Russian cops doing mass shootings against the disarmed population.

2. Mandatory lock-downs deny escape to those whose only hope is being a swift and difficult target. Interior doors usually have glass sections and do little to stop armed intruders.

3. At the colleges where I taught in the past decade, about 25% of the teachers and engineering school students carried pistols, up to 10% of the graphic design students. When VT shooting happened, a co-worker said “Thank god our students carry! If this crap happens here, we can hide behind them.” Granted, I wasn’t teaching at a K-12, but the same reasoning applies to them. In a typical school with a hundred or more staff and teachers, it’s likely that a half-dozen armed first responders are on site, and at least one of them would be close enough to fight back.

Source

Parents back NRA call for school guards

TAMPA (FOX 13) - One week after 20 first-graders and six adults were killed by an armed gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, the nation's most powerful gun organization presented their plan to halt school shootings. "With all the foreign aid the U.S. does, with all the money in the federal budget, can't we afford to put a police officer in every single school?" said the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre. LaPierre says the best way to fight fire is with fire. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," continued LaPierre.

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"I think it's great. It's the best thing that they can come up with," said parent Itania Guillen.

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Fla. gun instructor says he'll train any teacher

FORT MYERS, Fla. - With the whole nation asking how to stop school shootings, one Southwest Florida gun instructor thinks he has the answer. Alecs Dean, president of International Firearm Safety Inc. here, is offering free gun training to any interested teacher. "If two teachers call me tomorrow and say, 'Hey, we want to take this training,' then I'll give them training tomorrow," he said.

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YouTube: VIDEO: NRA President’s Report: David Keene on the Push to Protect Our Children

Video that shows the NRA message unfiltered by hostile media. Much different from what you saw on the old media networks.

Video Here

NRA’s Press Conference of 12/21/12: An almost masterful strike. (Part 1)

Read this, and compare it to the coverage of the event by the media

I caught the press conference live like many people did and by the time it finished I could not stop but smile thinking that the old coots can deliver harm to the politicians and play a mean game of PR chess to the Media and the Opposition.

David Keene set the tone by telling the Media that no questions would be taken after LaPierre’s words and that the NRA would be available for questions starting Monday. This pretty much said to the boys and girls of the press that: 1) We know you don’t like us so fuck you and sit pretty, 2) By Monday, regular people would have time to digests our proposal and 3) We really don’t care what you say and you’ll probably shoot yourself in the foot

I am going to analyze point by point using the transcript of Wayne LaPierre’s speech available at the NRA’s website:

Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

I still think too much time passed for the NRA to come out. A week in our modern communications time is forever. The only advantage was that the “conversation” coming from the Opposition was stuck in the forever old talking points. Plus plenty of Gun Rights activists took on the Social Media and the Blogosphere helping to counter the B.B.

Now, we must speak … for the safety of our nation’s children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

Ouch! Game changer. For the whole week, the only crap we heard and read was the chant “GunControlGunControlGunControlGunControlGunControlGunControlGunControl” but little if nothing on what to do now. Average Mom & Dad are not particularly worried about future discussions in Congress but if they are gonna see the kids again after dropping them in school in the morning.

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.…….We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers. Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

Two distinct points here: Repetition that the imaginary force field called Gun Free Zones is not working and that politicians were responsible for creating such stupidity and they know it doe not work because instead of trusting their lives to the imaginary force field, they gave armed people taking care of them. To summarize: Politicians have not given 2 craps about your kid’s life since the introduction of the Gun Free Schools program.

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day……….

This whole paragraph has been reviled in the media. In fact the moment it came out, the Twitter feeds exploded with accusations of Fear-mongering and Paranoia by the NRA. The problem is that they (and everybody else) know damn well another attack like that will happen but having the NRA throw it at their faces was not something they enjoyed.

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark?

This is ” Dear Media: We know you don’t like us so fuck you and sit pretty,” Part 2. From now on we can say foam was literally coming from the mouths of almost every journalist in the country that has been covering Sandy Hook or any other school attack or mass killing. A well deserved spanking IMHO and one the Media cannot deny.

Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade. So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years!

It is the Executive’s turn to taste some. A direct accusation saying “you talk about “gun violence, but you ain’t doing squat about it!”

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

And here we have the broadside against the Media. Some have decried the bundling of the video game industry with the rest of the media, but they are indeed part of the same people who have no problems both calling us killers and they selling violence while washing their hands in the whole process. Are video games responsible for the violence? In my opinion they do not create killers but the already scrambled in the brain pan may be overly influenced by them. But there is no doubt that Hollywood has a long and wide strip of hypocrisy denouncing violence while making cash fist over hands with it. Pointing out is a way to make them look stupider than usual.

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow morning: “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything!” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word “gun” automatically become a bad word?

“Dear Media: We know you don’t like us so fuck you and sit pretty, Part 3.” No need to expand much.

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn’t a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your 6 living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in their schools?

“What makes you so special you can have all the security you want, but my babies are supposed to have none?” This one has to hurt. No mater what kind of explanation you can come up with, trying to counter the argument will result in you appearing to be a callous jackass who does not care for kids.

More on the next post. Trying to keep it at a somewhat digestible size.

Source

Trends In Mass Shootings

The trend will be your friend if you are the NRA, Hollywood,or video game manufacturers trying to deflect blame for rising gun violence in America. Per both mass killing expert Alan Fox, there is no particular evidece suggesting we are in the grip of a rising wave of mass shootings. A Mother Jones team has put together their own database of mass shootings since 1980 (timeline) and their chart suggests a similar conclusion.

And for the factually oriented, this paper by criminologist Duwe from 2006 (hat tip to Jesse Walker of Reason) is fascinating. The media loves a narrative, which is why we read and talk about gun killings and exclude mass killings that used fire or bombs. Also, crimes involving strangers in public places are much more dramatic than banger-on-banger shoot-outs (e.g., the St. Valentine's Day massacre) or one monster wiping out the rest of his family, so they draw more coverage.

To be fair, the psychology of that is clear, but let me belabor the obvious: most of us have a pretty good idea whether we are involved with violent criminals or are in a potentially violent and abusive relationship so the idea of getting randomly gunned down in a movie theatre or a restaurant or having the kids shot in school is more personally problematic, and hence more "newsworthy".

Well - this background is interesting but I don't think actual facts will have much of a role to play in Obama's upcoming "conversation", in whch we are all supposed to show fresh thinking. Let me quote him from his press conference:

Over these past five days, a discussion has reemerged as to what we might do not only to deter mass shootings in the future, but to reduce the epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country every single day. And it’s encouraging that people of all different backgrounds and beliefs and political persuasions have been willing to challenge some old assumptions and change longstanding positions.

I doubt whether Obama's final proposals will challenge any assumption he has held over the last twenty years. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, as an example of the fact-free analysis I anticipate from the emotionally based community, this Times guest piece is a laugh riot in which a French professor ruminates about the rising tide of massacres:

Adam Lanza was a young man. Jacob Roberts was a young man. James Holmes is a young man. Seung-Hui Cho was a young man. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were young men.

And a bit later:

Does the heroic young man still make sense today, or has his value already been depleted? ...

There is also the issue of race. Not all of the men I listed in the beginning of this piece are Caucasian. However, take a moment and imagine what the archetypical image of a mass murderer in the United States looks like. Is he white in your mind? This image can only be attributed to the truth of those patterns that have established themselves,

Duwe from 2006 touched on that point - the media does favor a certain narrative:

But as Table 1 shows, the heavily publicized typifying examples used by claimsmakers are hardly representative of mass murder. Indeed, compared to mass killings in general, the 56 cases used as typifying examples were more likely to involve larger body counts, stranger victims, public locations, assault weapon use, workplace violence, interracial victim-offender relationships, older, suicidal offenders, and slightly more likely to involve gun use and white offenders.

I don't want to leap to conclusions but it is possible that the NY Times and other big media are more comfortable with stories involving white shooters (normally the Times avoids reporting the race of an alleged criminal). The Mother Jones team provides an example of this liberal mindset in action as they describe their database of 62 incidents:

Forty four of the killers were white males. Only one of them was a woman.

Sixty-two incidents involving sixty-four killers (Columbine and Westside Middle School involved partners) are in the database. That means there are nineteen non-white male killers. And what is the racial breakdown? Apparently the authors know, and the answer may be available at the website but it is eluding me. They do have pictures of some of the killers, and I see an American Indian (Jeffrey Weise) and more Asians than one would expect from normal crime statistics.

Still, whites represent about two-thirds of the killers despite being more than two-thirds of the population, so some other ethnic groups are over-represented. Yet the authors are not making the breakdown easily available. Hmm...

Are these young men? More Mother Jones:

The average age of the killers was 35...

And where do the killings take place?

Half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (12 and 19, respectively); the other 31 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, government buildings, and military bases.

Well, the French professor has a fascinating theory about a zero-sum world in which the empowerment of blacks and women has left youg white men dispossessed, enraged, and prove to violence. That may not jibe with the trendless nature of mass shootings, the white under-representation among the shooters or the generally declining crime rate over the last twenty years, but hey - she has a piece in the Times and I don't, so go figure.

EERIE: Aurora, Colorado is the site of the Columbine killings (strictly speaking, Littleton is close by), the movie theatre shooting of 2012 and the Chuck E. Cheese killings of 1993 (that is on the timeline but not the interactive map). The Chuck E Cheese incident was a workplace killing with four dead; the shooter is on death row and does not fit the racial profile favored by the Times contributor. But geez, Aurora is not even that big a town and it has 5% of all the mass shootings in America over the last thirty years.

Source

John Lott: Gun Restrictions Leave People Vulnerable and Helpless

When bad things happen with guns, the desire to ban guns is to take away guns is understandable. But doing that can often make problems worse.

For example, it might seem obvious to protect people by banning guns in areas. But law-abiding citizens, not those intent on committing terrorist acts, obey these bans. Instead of making places safer, disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks. With just one single exception, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the United States in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.

This isn't random. If it were, 98 or 99 percent of the attacks would occur in areas where people are allowed to carry concealed handguns for protection. Yet, all these attacks are squeezed into the tiny areas where guns are banned.

Take the Aurora, Colo. tragedy. There were seven movie theaters showing the premiere of the Batman movie within a 20-minute drive of the killer's apartment. Only one banned guns, posting signs warning permit holders that their guns weren't allowed. Yet, the killer didn't go to the theater that was closest to his home. Nor did he go to the largest theater. He went to the single one where he didn't believe that others would be able to protect themselves.

There is a simple way of understanding this point. If a violent criminal were ever stalking you or your family, would you put a sign in front of your home announcing that you didn't own a gun? Probably not. Yet, even though no one puts up those signs in front of their homes, we put up those signs on all sorts of other areas.

more here

MO:County Police Chief Recommends Arming School Personnel

ST. LOUIS COUNTY (KMOX) - St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says it is time to talk about arming civilian school personnel following Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, comparing it to arming airline pilots after September 11, 2001.

“I see it no differently,” he said. “Pilots have been armed now for many many years, we’ve not had another hijacking and the issue is, for the bad guy, he doesn’t know which airplane he’s getting on, if the pilot is armed or not.”

Fitch said the killing will not be stopped by legislation or laws. “If there’s somebody that’s really hellbent on doing something like this, they’re not going to care what the law is.”

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Disastrous Gun Law Sparked School Shootings

From 1900 to the late 1990’s, there were no mass shootings in schools. Lest it be thought that guns were uncommon in schools, that was not the case. Guns were commonly brought to school for shooting competitions, hunting after school, for teachers to trade or show to each other or their students, or for show and tell. Guns were even made in shop class under the supervision of the shop teacher. Guns were common in gun racks in pickup trucks in the school parking lot. Even today, many schools provide special dispensation for students to take off from school for deer hunting season.

During the height of gun control fever during the first Bush Presidency, the Congress passed the Gun Free School Zones act of 1990. It was designed to make it impossible for ordinary people to carry guns most places, because it forbid the carrying of guns within a thousand feet of a school. If you overlap the 1000 foot gun free zones that surround schools in most cities and towns, no one can go about their daily business without intersecting one of these zones at some time.

The Gun Free School Zone act was quickly challenged in the courts, and found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court under the interstate commerce clause, in U.S. v. Lopez, 1995. The reasoning was simple: If merely possessing a gun within a thousand feet of a school was interstate commerce, and therefore subject to federal regulation, what could possibly be construed as not interstate commerce? Virtually everything would then be controlled by the federal government. As the Constitution means something, the interstate commerce clause must mean something. If all of life can be controlled by the federal government, the clause means nothing.

President Clinton blew a gasket when the Gun Free School Zone act was found unconstitutional. He fiercely lobbied congress to pass a replica act, slightly modified. He threatened to keep congress from adjourning to go home to run for office if they did not pass the replica act. They passed the new Gun Free School Zone act in 1996. Since then, federal prosecutors have been very careful not to prosecute many cases under the act, not wanting to present the Supreme Court with another test case.

The results of the Gun Free School Zone act’s passage have been devastating. The first mass shooting in a school since before 1900 occurred in 1997. As prominent researcher John Lott has noted, mass shooters are attracted to defenseless victim zones. While zones that ban armed citizens are a tiny percentage of the nation’s area, according to Lott, only one of the “successful” (four or more victims) mass shootings in the past thirty years occurred outside of a defenseless victim zone (gun free zone).

Why do mass shooters chose defenseless victim zones? Because they want the fame that goes with the media attention that a mass killer gets, and to get the attention, they have to kill a lot of people. If they are stopped by an armed citizen, they lose their chance to make the “record books”, and there is no point in mass killing.

Armed citizens stop about one in ten of mass killings before they become “successful”, but they are rarely mentioned because of this fact. Most of these life saving actions occur outside of defenseless victim zones.

Mass Killings Stopped by Armed Citizens Link

We have a real world counterexample to the Gun Free School Zone act in Israel. Israelis were confronted with a similar problem after the Maalot massacre in the 1970s They responded by allowing teachers, responsible older students, and volunteer parents to be armed in their schools. They have not had a child shot in a school since.

Israeli School Solution Link

Since the Gun Free School Zone act was passed for the second time in 1996, 13 mass school shootings have occurred. This unconstitutional law has been a disaster and should be repealed.

Note: The Frontier Middle School shooting, which happened in 1996, does not make most lists of mass school shootings becaue only three people were killed before the shooter was subdued by gym coach Jon Lane. It occured in the breif period after the 1990 law was struck down by the Supreme Court and before the 1996 Gun Free School Zone Act was passed.

Dean Weingarten

Update: Ever wonder why we have these insane zero tolerance policies about guns in schools? You know, where an eagle scout and honor student has his life ruined because he tried to do the right thing?

The 1996 Gun Free School Zone act is the reason. If schools do not implement "zero tolerance" policies, they lose federal funding, so school administrators are scared to death of being accused of not following the insane "zero tolerance" rules. Just another cut at cultural genocide of the gun culture (a fair proxy for Western Civilization) by the left.

Correction: It is not the Gun Free School Zone Act of 1996, as listed above, it is the Gun Free School Act of 1994, which is a separate law passed two years earlier, during the Clinton regime.

Clackamas Concealed Carry Showdown – The Full Story

Yesterday, Jason at easybakegunclub.com interviewed Nick Meli, the Oregon concealed carry permit holder who, as we mentioned earlier, confronted Clackamas mall killer Jacob Roberts. The article (reprinted here with permission) reveals new information about Meli’s role in the incident.

The news is a funny thing sometimes. When something shocking comes out, everyone rushes to get more and more information as quickly as possible. When it comes to active shooter or active gunman situations, that rush for information often runs into the chaos of the situation. We saw that with the Newtown, Connecticut shooting where media outlets worldwide put the picture and information of the wrong person up as the gunman only to have egg on their face later. In Portland, Oregon, that same rush for information had the mainstream media skip past the fact that a concealed carrier confronted an active shooter and caused him to abandon his plans, run for a service corridor and stairway and kill himself as these shooters typically do . . .

Full story with pictures here

One in Ten Mass Shootings Stopped by Armed Citizens; Most Occur Where Guns are Banned

In the best published study of mass shootings, it was found that 99 had occurred between 1980 and 2010. We know that a number of mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. All but one of the “successful” mass shootings occurred in areas where armed citizens are banned. A comparison of mass shootings stopped by 911 response vs mass shootings stopped by citizens indicates that when citizens are able to stop the killing, they prevent 84 percent of the deaths.

Mass shooting study link

Mass shootings Stopped by Armed Citizens

Armed Citizen stopped shooting average 2.3 deaths, 911 response average, 14.3 deaths (84% reduction)

Definitions and precise numbers vary by researcher, but it is clear that at least 10 percent of mass shootings are stopped by armed citizens. I believe this is the minimum number, the actual number may be much higher, because when a citizen stops an intended mass shooting early, it never becomes a successful mass shooting and may never become a news story of note. For example, in the recent Clackamas Mall shooting, an armed citizen may well have cut the killings short without firing a shot. While we can never be certain, a large percentage of mass shooters stop killing and commit suicide when they are confronted with armed force.

Clackamas CCW video

The problem of quantifying mass shootings stopped by armed citizens is exacerbated by the inablility to know the intentions of a dead attacker. Some attackers leave notes, making their intentions clear, as did the Santa Clara shooter in 1999, or the AT&T store shooter in 2010. Some announce their intentions, or otherwise indicate that they intend to kill many people. But these are the rare cases. If an attacker attempts to kill many, but is stopped at the beginning of the attack or after a few shots are fired, it is impossible to know if a mass killing was stopped, or if it was only one of thousands of more ordinary crimes stopped by armed citizens.

Santa Clara Shooting Link

AT&T Store shooting Link

It is clear that the number of mass shootings has decreased as the number of armed citizens has increased. Three decades ago, there were very few citizens with concealed carry permits. Most states did not allow concealed carry. The increase in concealed carry states mostly occurred after 1994, and the bulk of concealed carry permits have been issued after the turn of the new millenium. Even today, less than 2.6% of the population has concealed carry permits, and 30 percent of the population of the country live in states where it is very difficult to obtain a permit, or in the case of Illinois, impossible. The first decade of the millennia showed a remarkable drop in mass shootings, a 44 percent reduction, according to Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections . These numbers are compatible with research published in 1999, that showed a drop in mass shootings with increased concealed carry permits.

Growth of CCW permits:

Current number of CCW permits:

Mass shooting study link

Mass shootings in gun free zones link

Link to paper

While it is too early in this decade to determine if the trend will continue, reducing the number of places that ban armed citizens will likely result in more citizens being able to stop the mass shootings in the early stages, sometimes before any innocents are killed.

Dean Weingarten