Gun Control: A Survey of the Police.

[Torillian]

Kasz216 said:

Additionally, Lott's research isn't really wrong or weird. It just defines mass shootings slightly differently then the FBI's way of doing it to make it more scientifically useful.

The usual classification is any shooting that kills four or more people. Which isn't really a useful classification because if you'll note the report Torillian posted you see a lot of "Mass shootings" are "family annihilator" murder suicides and shootings resulting in people fleeing the police.

Not really similar to the type of people who plan to go into a public place and just start shooting random people until they are stopped or killed.


Additionally, you'll note they don't consider Navy yards and such gun free zones. Even though they are, because you can't actually posses guns inside the navy yards or other military bases.

Soldiers with guns patrol the outsides, but that's like argueing a school isn't a gun free zone because the police patrol by it.

 

It's not really done in a weird way.  So much as in the way of somebody who would run an expierment to see something would phrase things.   

The question being "Are people who mass shoot aquantinces/strangers in a murder/suicide type situation more likely to pick places in which guns are not expected."

But the navy Yard doesn't fit that description at all.  You can't just discount the armed guards there, so you can't say "oh he picked that place because he knew to expect less resistance, because in fact he was in a shoot out with armed guards before police arrived.  You can say that he wouldn't expect to see random civilians with weapons, but you can't say that he'd be less likely to come across someone with a gun because that's exactly what armed guards are.  

And no, you can't say that it's the same as a school because the police don't have checkpoints throughtout a school with weapons ready.  If you had a school that had as many armed guards as the Navy Yard then yes I think it would be disingenuous to call such a place a "gun free zone".  It's an "armed civilian" free zone but it is certainly not a gun free zone.