Found this left-leaning, very biased, and questionably done article. Still I find it VERY interesting in its methods and outcome.
The next mass shooting will take place on February 12, 2014, in Spokane, Washington. It will be committed by an emotionally disturbed, 38 year-old white man who will kill seven people and wound six more at a place he used to work using a semi-automatic handgun he purchased legally in the state.
That, at least, is what a look at the data on past such shootings might indicate. We’ll say at the outset: Every assertion in the first paragraph is a function of probability, not fact. The next mass shooting — which will happen somewhere, sometime — will almost certainly not be in that place at that time. But a look at the historic data on such killings, compiled and shared by Mother Jones magazine, makes each of those predictions defensible.
OK this would have been a really cool article save the “Data compiled and shared by Mother Jones” bit. I’m not saying the data is garbage, I’m just saying Mother Jones has such a bee up their ass for taking away all my guns I’d need to go over every shred of data, or compile my own set and repeat this story using FBI and CDC data before I’d trust it.
Still read the whole article and you’ll see it really isn’t relevant because it is pointy-headed intellectualism at its maximum. I rather admire it for its hardcore geekyness. Essentially they took all of the “Mass Shootings” by Mother Jones’ standards. (I’ll note that running a quick search of the page there are none of the MASSIVE gang shootings from Chicago here, nor did Mother Jones warrant the Mattapan Massacre in Boston as a “Mass Shooting”…so their whole “White Male” data appears to be because gang shootings are discounted because they are) And created an “Average”.
Of course we’ll note that the latest Mass shooting has killed 12 people, and the shooter used a pump-action shotgun. Hence the geekyness. You see “Averages” are as common as outlier, and sometimes impossible…when was the last time you saw a family buy two and a half children’s admissions to an amusement park? Also the average IQ for humans is around 100, but to find somebody with an IQ of EXACTLY 100 is a rarity, even when you factor in that a person with an IQ of 100 will score between 94 and 106 on the best tests.
Of course the big take away from this is that even with this pile of biased data it still can’t support the case for gun control. You can’t ban semi-auto handguns because A) Its illegal per Heller and McDonald, but B) Because that’s also the most common DEFENSIVE gun, so for all the lives you allegedly “Save” from a ban, you’ll have even more people in the ground from violent assault.
There’s no point in passing a law where people can’t bring guns to their place of employment, because these mass-shooting locations already did that, and I’d argue that those rules EMPOWERED the killer.
Last, you want to attempt to make it a crime for White Males to own guns? Uh-huh.
Further all of those earnest statements assumed the law will actually WORK. Look at my brief rebuttal about black males with guns. Chicago and Boston? Yeah mass murder, and by people who could not legally own a firearm. The Mattapan slaying was a feud in the illegal drug trade. The drugs the parties were dealing are OUTRIGHT banned, just like the felony gun possession committed by the murderer…just like murder.
So yeah, thanks anti-gun people, you made our argument FOR us. What we need is a REAL change, not the game plan of the 1960s. End “Gun Free Zones”. Make it so no retribution can be taken against somebody LAWFULLY carrying a gun. Trust me, if they can carry without incident at the grocery store, and at the movie theater, or at the local burger joint, they aren’t going to turn into a psychopath at the office, at the post office, and on an airplane.
Further you would really make things more difficult for the very rare deranged people who do think shooting everybody in sight is a cool idea. Certainly by averages (and by “Averages” I mean “Without a very few exceptions”) these people choose locations like Columbine, Like Virginia Tech, Like Fort Hood, Like the Washington Navy Yard, because they know that SWAT response will be at LEAST 4 minuets, and in that time they will be a GOD.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed-man is King….that also goes for the land of the disarmed. Do you want the one psychopath with a Remington 870 or a GLOCK 19 to be King?
