Everytown for Gun Safety Misleads the Public regarding Gun Free Zones and Mass Shootings
Say it isn’t so, Mr. Bloomberg.
The Crime Prevention Research Center published an article in September of 2014 showing research they’d done to counter Everytown for Gun Safety’s research regarding mass shootings occurring in gun free zones. Everytown for Gun Safety tried to include shootings that didn’t fit the FBI definition of mass shootings or occurred in private residences. They recently published an update to the article:
Via Crime Prevention Research Center:
UPDATE: While the first part of the discussion here goes through each mass public shooting from 2009 to 2014 discussed in the Bloomberg report, further down in this post we have updated cases up through 2015 and the sources of older cases dating back to 1950. At the end of the post we have a response to Everytown’s response to our post. Using the data from 1950 through February 2016 has three mass public shootings in places where general citizens are allowed to have guns — that is just over 1 percent of the shootings over that period.
ORIGINAL POST: Why does anyone pay attention to Bloomberg’s claims on guns? Take their previous discussions on mass public shootings. As we have previously pointed out, Bloomberg’s groups have made serious errors on the number (see also here) and trends of school shootings. Well, that hasn’t stopped the media from sympathetically covering Everytown for Gun Safety’s recent report on mass shootings (see also here).
Everytown for Gun Safety’s recent report on mass shootings contains many errors. In addition, it muddies the discussion on mass public shootings by including shootings in private homes along with ones in public places, and the vast majority of the cases they include are in private homes. But there is a distinction between what motivates mass public shooters who are committing their crimes to get media attention and those who engage in attacks in private residences.
There are four mass public shootings since at least 1950 that have not been part of some other crime where at least four people have been killed in an area where civilians are generally allowed to have guns. These are the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) restaurant in Carson City, Nevada on September 6, 2011, the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson, Arizona on January 8, 2011, [UPDATE] the Dallas shooting of police on July 7, 2016 that left five dead, [UPDATE] the Kalamazoo shooting on February 20, 2016 where four people died in one attack at a Cracker Barrel restaurant and two others in another one (while the Cracker Barrel restaurant didn’t ban guns, Uber does ban its drivers from carrying guns and the killer was on the job when he did the shootings and the shooting was done while he was in his car).
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