Reporter and Cameraman gunned down live on TV

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**Vaktathi**

HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

You already have the possibility of "attacks" on rights, though. The Constitution isn't some magical document written by God, and it's silly to act like it is.

I'm an atheist, so I certainly don't think it's anything produced by any deity. However, It defines the fundamental structure of our government and contains many essential protections against the abuse of that system.

It's something written by humans. They can make mistakes. The second amendment has not borne out its imagined function. The militias that were imagined to be able to resist the federal government do not exist.

That aspect is only one of a number of aspects. However, yes, it was intended, and still is, that the state not have a monopoly on the means of force.

However, "militias" were also precursors to the modern US military, the nation was intended to be defended by citizen soldiers, not originally by a professional soldiery. When the US went to war in the 19th century, this was generally done by mobilizing state militias into Federal service. The US has no permanent mandate to maintain a vast standing military. The US has had vast and powerful armed forces before, only to draw them down dramatically, particularly following the US Civil War and the First World War. Will the modern massive US military establishment survive into the far future? Who knows, but the constitution is built on the assumption that this is not so.

Not only do they not exist, but

1. they cannot exist. You cannot make a militia that can resist the federal government militarily. The value of professional soldiery (commitment, training, funding for equipment, like tanks and jets and drones) is too great.

In open conventional warfare? Sure.

However, the lessons of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, and Iraq, should be more than clear enough to show that even relatively minimally equipped forces can drain and eventually force the capitulation (in some form or fashion) of great powers.

I mean, the US dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than they did on Germany and Japan combined, won every conventional battle, and still was forced out. The Soviets encountered much the same problems in Afghanistan. For all the tanks, smart weapons, jets, aircraft carriers, missiles, extensive training, and funding the US military has had, it wasn't enough to sculpt Iraq into the form we wanted it. It hasn't pacified Afghanistan.

That said, the Federal government is not the only government within the US. There are State, County, Municipal, City, etc governments. It is within living memory that such institutions abused their power over their citizens, or protected those who did, in ways that resulted in physical and in some cases lethal harm to certain sections of their populations. Part of the problem gun control has such a controversial history in the US is because quite frequently it was enacted in a discriminatory manner or in response to racial tensions, from CA's Mulford Act to the revisions of the 1834 Tennessee state constitution, and dozens of others.

2. the whole scenario is incoherent. There is not going to be a point where Obama declares himself supreme dictator of the United States and the military unanimously supports him and the only defense of the people is that they rise up together.

You're barking up the wrong tree here, you won't find me amongst the crowd desperately hoping for this scenario, expecting "No-Bama" to declare himself God Emperor of the US and take his rightful place as the anti-christ in 2016

. Yes, we have crazies like that. No, that's not really the scenario we're envisioning.

Frankly, you're already seeing immense government overreach and abuse of power and most of you don't care.

The average person doesn't care about anything that doesn't immediately affect them, be it in the US or elsewhere, nobody is going to grab their guns and start shooting however over data collection. That doesn't mean people don't care however.

That's what it's going to look like. There isn't going to be a moment where the true enemy is revealed and it's you vs them.

I'm sure that in all probability, you're absolutely right. However, the fact that the government does not have a monopoly on the use of force does mean that some more...fantastical...wings of the US political spectrum are never going to get to actually enact things like Schindler's List style neighborhood clearings of illegal immigrants.

All you're left with, in the end, are the same arguments everyone else has the world over, and for the most part they're not very good. People generally shouldn't have tools whose only purpose is to end the lives of other people.

Only if you're ignoring the above points, self defense, hunting, and sporting purposes.

That's how you get awkward situations like the 2012 London Olympics where UK shooting competitors could not train for their events with target pistols in England, Wales or Scotland

It seems to me that there's probably a link between how trigger happy your police are and the ubiquity of guns there. I don't mean to say you can't make improvements to your police forces - you certainly can. But I don't think the current problem came out of nowhere, and one of the causes is probably the extreme likelihood that someone could pull a gun on them.

Again, addressing the underlying socio-economic issues that generate such violence and crime, and addressing issues with police training and the justice system, will save a lot more lives for the relative investment in time and effort. Even if you start confiscating guns, the last guns that are going to get taken off the streets are, well, the guns on the streets and those unwilling to follow the law.

Gun violence (and indeed, violence in general) levels in the US tend to be concentrated heavily in certain areas, strongly tied to socio-economic factors. In most areas, violence (and gun violence) levels aren't particularly out whack with most of industrialized Europe, which should be indicative that, guns or no, the problem is with social, cultural, and economic factors, not firearms specifically.

Actually, it seems like I was wrong here and your states should be able to do pretty much whatever they want with gun laws without changing the constitution, even setting aside the possibility that the federal government might be able to as well.

How so? Federal protections are incorporated into applying to the states.

Now, states have some leeway, there are *some* things they can do. Hence why some things are legal in Nevada that are not in California, but those have been increasingly challenged and struck down of late as well. They can put in restrictions on magazine capacity, certain features like folding stocks, and things like that, but they can't just "do anything".

So you seem to have reasonably clear legal paths to banning guns if you have the political will to do so.

Even if you did have such a clear path, such political will simply does not exist, and never has within the US.

You do have lots of issues you should work on, I agree. You should just work on gun violence, too. The vast majority of people do not need a tool whose only purpose is to kill other people.

There's lots of purposes for firearms, killing other people is not their only purpose. Even amongst weapons of similar caliber you can get varying uses. However, ultimately, even if we accept that it is the only purpose, the view that such are not needed is not shared by everyone.

It's a really big problem, and maybe none of us will be alive to see the end of it, but you can start making inroads now.

Again, the problem isn't really with guns in and of themselves. They're with deranged individuals and social, cultural, and economic factors that are exacerbated in certain areas.

**Smacks**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
You claimed the stats were cherry picked. Demonstrate this or concede the point

I claimed that some of the data on gunfacts had been cherry picked and was misleading. Since you insist on me going there and finding an example, I have:

Here is quote from http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-in-other-countries/

"Fact: Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population)"

This "fact" is misleading because the definition of "violent crime" and how crimes are recorded is different in the UK, and includes such violence as (real example) a woman who threw a biscuit at someone, and a child who brushed his sibling with a stinging nettle.

I have been to South Africa and the idea that the UK has more violent crime is just insane.

So now I have provided an example for you, which was easy to find. So I stand by my assertion that gunfacts has an obvious bias, and can't be trusted as an impartial source of information.

You claimed more gun control resulted in less crime. That was demonstrated to be false.

That's an oversimplification of what I claimed, and you didn't demonstrate anything.

Were they all legal experts? How many self defense claims turned out to be criminal acts (with evidence please) as your "potential" is not sourced.

I've linked it for you before. And you seem to have found it again. If you aren't going to acknowledge it then suit yourself. However, it is evidence that guns are more likely to be used aggressively to intimidate, rather than as a last resort for self defence. If true, that undermines your whole argument. I think it is true, I've seen how people drive cars, I find it hard to believe that people who are so irresponsible behind the wheel, would suddenly become responsible when behind the trigger.

Crime, society, laws, and customs do. Of course if you want to ignore recent data and scientific studies you are more than welcome to. Next time you have a headache just ask your doctor to drill a hole in your head to let the evil spirits out. If you're going to ignore recent developments you may as well do it properly

15 years was hardly the drill in your head era of medicine. And I'm not ignoring recent studies. That is the most recent study of it's kind, trying to examine how guns are actually being used, as opposed to how people are claiming to use them.

And what about Bugs Bunny? I didn't mention him either, but if you have to resort to ad hominems and attempting to bring up events from 18 years ago to discredit current studies (which I did not enter into this discussion) and an entire group of people then that shows how untenable your position is. Even if we accept your criticism how do the actions of one individual show "the gun rights agenda is misaligned with the truth of the situation"?

I still see John Lott's more guns less crime ideas being put forward. That is still the agenda that is pushed by groups like the NRA. But again the US has the most guns, and they don't have less crime than anywhere else, so the idea is clearly not reflected by reality, thus not aligned with what is true.

**d-usa**

Protip on statistics: if you rely on a population that is so small that a single shooting dramatically changes the incident rate, then you are using gakky statistics.

**angelofvengeance**

USA: 38 rampage attacks in the space of 5yrs... Does that not say something to you guys?

**d-usa**

Just for gaks and giggles, here are the rates from the table above comparing the US to the rest of the countries combined:

Fatalities per 1,000,000:
US - 0.72
All others - 0.56

Incidents per 1,000,000:
US - 0.12
All others - 0.06

**Vaktathi**

angelofvengeance wrote:
USA: 38 rampage attacks in the space of 5yrs... Does that not say something to you guys?

It does, but the issue is how do we address issues with people wanting to go out and commit these massacres or thinking they're somehow a good idea. Address the underlying problem and you'll save a whole lot more lives.

**angelofvengeance**

You fix it with strict firearms control measures..

**Vaktathi**

angelofvengeance wrote:
You fix it with strict firearms control measures..

Firearms control isn't going to stop people from wanting to kill other people, nor remove the means to do so.

Likewise, short of mass confiscation, and it's associated legal, social, and practical issues, there aren't really gun control measures one can introduce that would stop most of these incidents (and that's assuming people don't just use knives, clubs, bats, fists, etc)

**Henry**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
For a little perspective on how other countries compare with the US for mass killings

Not even in the top 5 of more developed nations.

Well done Dreadclaw, you win the internetz today for wilful misuse of statistics.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vaktathi wrote:
angelofvengeance wrote:
You fix it with strict firearms control measures..
Firearms control isn't going to stop people from wanting to kill other people, nor remove the means to do so.

You're right on those two counts but that ignores how easy the act is made with guns, which is a contributing factor to how quickly violence escalates.
(although any sort of gun control in America is pissing in the wind due to the saturation of weapons)

**Smacks**

That list also just happens to include the Anders Breivik incident, which was the single worst attack by a lone gunman ever. He accounts for almost half of the "rest of the world kills" on his own. And 8 of those people were actually killed when he bombed the parliament building, not during the shooting. I don't know if it's fair to conflate terrorist attacks with rampage killings.

The list also conveniently starts starts just after the Virginia Tech massacre, which was the biggest in US history. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it could be another example of selective sampling.

**Vaktathi**

Henry wrote:

You're right on those two counts but that ignores how easy the act is made with guns, which is a contributing factor to how quickly violence escalates.
(although any sort of gun control in America is pissing in the wind due to the saturation of weapons)

Sure, in some instances a gun can make things worse than a knife, particularly if a large group of people are involved, but, as you said, the saturation of weapons makes removing them both impossible and politically poisonous, thus making concentration on the underlying problems all the more important.

Gun massacres the likes of sandy hook, Virginia Tech and others are a relatively recent phenomenon. When my grandfather was a child he brought his rifle to school and that was not an uncommon thing, and you could mail order automatic weapons (with no background check, no age verification, etc) and have them delivered by the US Postal Service straight to your door.. Crazy and angry people were just as common then, if not moreso, why were there no such massacres in schools or of reporters in places taking public interviews? That's the real question the needs to be answered.

Common violence, stuff like robberies and back alley killings, are down to probably their lowest levels in history, even in the US. The high profile killings are exactly that, high profile. They're shock events. Violence and killing as a whole is down, but shockingness (particularly as most such massacres of the past were generally criminal on criminal, such as the St Valentines Day massacre) of their nature is up.

**Henry**

Smacks wrote:
That list also just happens to include the Anders Breivik incident, which was the single worst attack by a lone gunman ever. He accounts for almost half of the "rest of the world kills" on his own. And 8 of those people were actually killed when he bombed the parliament building, not during the shooting. I don't know if it's fair to conflate terrorist attacks with rampage killings.

The list also conveniently starts starts just after the Virginia Tech massacre, which was the biggest in US history. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it could be another example of selective sampling.

Precisely. The UK slots in at number ten in his table, but if instead of the years in the sample they were any five year period between 1997 and 2009 the UK would have a deaths per 100,000 due to massacres of zero.

God knows how far back you'd have to go to find another incident in Norway, but I wouldn't be surprised to find if, by not including 2010, Norway had a massacre deaths total of zero going all the way back to World War Two. (I couldn't find any other Norway examples with a quick search)

**HiveFleetPlastic**

Vaktathi wrote:
HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

You already have the possibility of "attacks" on rights, though. The Constitution isn't some magical document written by God, and it's silly to act like it is.
I'm an atheist, so I certainly don't think it's anything produced by any deity. However, It defines the fundamental structure of our government and contains many essential protections against the abuse of that system.

It's something written by humans. They can make mistakes. The second amendment has not borne out its imagined function. The militias that were imagined to be able to resist the federal government do not exist.
That aspect is only one of a number of aspects. However, yes, it was intended, and still is, that the state not have a monopoly on the means of force.

However, "militias" were also precursors to the modern US military, the nation was intended to be defended by citizen soldiers, not originally by a professional soldiery. When the US went to war in the 19th century, this was generally done by mobilizing state militias into Federal service. The US has no permanent mandate to maintain a vast standing military. The US has had vast and powerful armed forces before, only to draw them down dramatically, particularly following the US Civil War and the First World War. Will the modern massive US military establishment survive into the far future? Who knows, but the constitution is built on the assumption that this is not so.

The only thing I want to note here is that even when the American constitution was written they understood the power of professional soldiers, that being what led them to create a standing army in the first place when so many were worried that it would be abused. As I point out, the second amendment was put in place to help protect against this (and then almost immediately made pointless by the militias not being maintained).

Vaktathi wrote:

Not only do they not exist, but

1. they cannot exist. You cannot make a militia that can resist the federal government militarily. The value of professional soldiery (commitment, training, funding for equipment, like tanks and jets and drones) is too great.
In open conventional warfare? Sure.

However, the lessons of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, and Iraq, should be more than clear enough to show that even relatively minimally equipped forces can drain and eventually force the capitulation (in some form or fashion) of great powers.

I mean, the US dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than they did on Germany and Japan combined, won every conventional battle, and still was forced out. The Soviets encountered much the same problems in Afghanistan. For all the tanks, smart weapons, jets, aircraft carriers, missiles, extensive training, and funding the US military has had, it wasn't enough to sculpt Iraq into the form we wanted it. It hasn't pacified Afghanistan.

The problem with your examples is they are foreign powers invading another country. They are not the government of that country cracking down on its own citizens. That changes the political landscape a lot.

If you were planning on orchestrating a resistance against an invading power, sure, maybe it'd be OK (though it could also be unnecessary, since you could deploy the guns at the time that occurred). Against your own government it's likely it would be both bloody and ineffective.

Vaktathi wrote:
That said, the Federal government is not the only government within the US. There are State, County, Municipal, City, etc governments. It is within living memory that such institutions abused their power over their citizens, or protected those who did, in ways that resulted in physical and in some cases lethal harm to certain sections of their populations. Part of the problem gun control has such a controversial history in the US is because quite frequently it was enacted in a discriminatory manner or in response to racial tensions, from CA's Mulford Act to the revisions of the 1834 Tennessee state constitution, and dozens of others.

It seems citizen-owned guns weren't effective in preventing those abuses, though?

Vaktathi wrote:

2. the whole scenario is incoherent. There is not going to be a point where Obama declares himself supreme dictator of the United States and the military unanimously supports him and the only defense of the people is that they rise up together.
You're barking up the wrong tree here, you won't find me amongst the crowd desperately hoping for this scenario, expecting "No-Bama" to declare himself God Emperor of the US and take his rightful place as the anti-christ in 2016 . Yes, we have crazies like that. No, that's not really the scenario we're envisioning.

If only that was true of all Americans!

Vaktathi wrote:

All you're left with, in the end, are the same arguments everyone else has the world over, and for the most part they're not very good. People generally shouldn't have tools whose only purpose is to end the lives of other people.
Only if you're ignoring the above points, self defense, hunting, and sporting purposes.

That's how you get awkward situations like the 2012 London Olympics where UK shooting competitors could not train for their events with target pistols in England, Wales or Scotland

I don't think self-defense is a valid reason for legalising civilian gun ownership. The problem is it causes guns to proliferate, which makes you less safe than you'd be if you just couldn't own a gun in the first place.

I don't know how effective guns are for pest control, but it could be a valid use. Alternatively, maybe it's a possible use that isn't worth it due to the risks it causes. Sporting shooters can learn to throw horseshoes or something.

Vaktathi wrote:

It seems to me that there's probably a link between how trigger happy your police are and the ubiquity of guns there. I don't mean to say you can't make improvements to your police forces - you certainly can. But I don't think the current problem came out of nowhere, and one of the causes is probably the extreme likelihood that someone could pull a gun on them.
Again, addressing the underlying socio-economic issues that generate such violence and crime, and addressing issues with police training and the justice system, will save a lot more lives for the relative investment in time and effort. Even if you start confiscating guns, the last guns that are going to get taken off the streets are, well, the guns on the streets and those unwilling to follow the law.

Gun violence (and indeed, violence in general) levels in the US tend to be concentrated heavily in certain areas, strongly tied to socio-economic factors. In most areas, violence (and gun violence) levels aren't particularly out whack with most of industrialized Europe, which should be indicative that, guns or no, the problem is with social, cultural, and economic factors, not firearms specifically.

I definitely think you should work on all that stuff. I'm even willing to say they're more important issues than gun ownership. You can work on both at the same time, though.

Hey, thumbs up! It's nice to be able to have a reasoned discussion about it. I've learned a lot about the second amendment today!

**Dreadclaw69**

Smacks wrote:
I claimed that some of the data on gunfacts had been cherry picked and was misleading. Since you insist on me going there and finding an example, I have:

Here is quote from http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-in-other-countries/

"Fact: Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population)"

This "fact" is misleading because the definition of "violent crime" and how crimes are recorded is different in the UK, and includes such violence as (real example) a woman who threw a biscuit at someone, and a child who brushed his sibling with a stinging nettle.

I have been to South Africa and the idea that the UK has more violent crime is just insane.

So now I have provided an example for you, which was easy to find. So I stand by my assertion that gunfacts has an obvious bias, and can't be trusted as an impartial source of information.

So to disprove the statistics that I provided you quoted sources that I did not bring up in this discussion? That is an interesting line of argument.

Smacks wrote:
That's an oversimplification of what I claimed, and you didn't demonstrate anything.

It is what you claimed. It was wrong; http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/300/661745.page#8088905
"But I believe if you look at the specific cities over time, gun crime had actually dropped since tighter gun controls were introduced."
I specifically mentioned Chicago and District of Columbia which have strict gun control but also higher crime. You seemed content to ignore both these examples.

Smacks wrote:
I've linked it for you before. And you seem to have found it again. If you aren't going to acknowledge it then suit yourself. However, it is evidence that guns are more likely to be used aggressively to intimidate, rather than as a last resort for self defence. If true, that undermines your whole argument. I think it is true, I've seen how people drive cars, I find it hard to believe that people who are so irresponsible behind the wheel, would suddenly become responsible when behind the trigger.

So because you provided it before you don't ever have to do it again, but you're happy to argue against something that I haven't used as a source in this discussion? I asked you for the link to be sure we are discussing the same thing, if you are unprepared to do so then that speaks volumes as to your intention. This is the link I found;
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

We analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Center, we examined the extent and nature of offensive gun use. We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, we investigated how and when guns are used in the home. We found that guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime

You are ignoring actual statistics from the FBI, CDC, and other reputable sources in favour of phone surveys. I have acknowledged it. In fact it is impossible for me to have not acknowledged it when previously I discussed how unreliable it was, and how much had changed since 1997 (increasing gun ownership, decreasing crime levels, etc.). You evidence is unsound and outdated. The fact that you use your own opinion that because people in the UK are "so irresponsible" behind the wheel then US citizens should not own guns as a serious line of argument is beyond ridicule. The plural of anecdotes is not data

Smacks wrote:
15 years was hardly the drill in your head era of medicine. And I'm not ignoring recent studies. That is the most recent study of it's kind, trying to examine how guns are actually being used, as opposed to how people are claiming to use them.

You are absolutely ignoring recent studies. I provided evidence from the recent CDC study, and recent stats from them and the FBI. Your response was to say"Secondly, the data is sourced from the FBI, CDC etc... but it is also cherry picked, sometimes in quite a misleading way." so rather than actually show this cherry picking of the stats you went to attack a source not discussed.

For your convenience here are some more recent stats again as you ignored them (as predicted);
http://iom.nationalacademies.org/Reports/2013/Priorities-for-Research-to-Reduce-the-Threat-of-Firearm-Related-Violence.aspx

Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004)

.

“Overall crime rates have declined in the past decade, and violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past 5 years,” the report notes. “Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of firearm-related violent victimizations remained generally stable.” Meanwhile, “firearm-related death rates for youth ages 15 to 19 declined from 1994 to 2009.” Accidents are down, too: “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

From the Center for Disease Control
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_us.html

Also from the CDC;
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18319&page=R1

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

“Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

Smacks wrote:
I still see John Lott's more guns less crime ideas being put forward. That is still the agenda that is pushed by groups like the NRA. But again the US has the most guns, and they don't have less crime than anywhere else, so the idea is clearly not reflected by reality, thus not aligned with what is true.

Did I enter his work in this discussion? No. If you want to keep tilting at windmills that is your prerogative, but it is hardly productive. I see that you still are attempting to claim that your ad hominem against one individual is enough to discredit millions of law abiding Americans who peacefully enjoy their rights without harming anyone else.

When can we expect to see evidence from you that guns are a net detriment to society? This is a point you claim to want to discuss, yet are wholly disinterested in discussing it.

angelofvengeance wrote:
USA: 38 rampage attacks in the space of 5yrs... Does that not say something to you guys?

That we could use a great deal more investment in mental health services as the overwhelming majority of these incidents were caused by people with mental health issues. And also the the NICS background system has approved people it had no business approving

angelofvengeance wrote:
You fix it with strict firearms control measures..

So the best way to stop an statistically insignificant event from happening is to strip the rights of millions of the law abiding? Do you drive? If so a great analogy would be that you surrender your car keys, license, and get a paltry buyback when the next drink driving incident occurs where someone gets killed (an event that happens more than shootings, has a higher kill count, and from an object not designed to cause harm)
I also like this analogy;

Henry wrote:
Well done Dreadclaw, you win the internetz today for wilful misuse of statistics.

MIsleading would have been if I only gave the first column. I was honest enough to how plenty of other data also for posters here to examine

Smacks wrote:
That list also just happens to include the Anders Breivik incident, which was the single worst attack by a lone gunman ever. He accounts for almost half of the "rest of the world kills" on his own. And 8 of those people were actually killed when he bombed the parliament building, not during the shooting. I don't know if it's fair to conflate terrorist attacks with rampage killings.

So for the purposes of statistics we should ignore a pertinent sample? The irony of this from the poster who claimed that the FBI and CDC stats were cherry picked (with no evidence of this either) just beggers belief.

Smacks wrote:
The list also conveniently starts starts just after the Virginia Tech massacre, which was the biggest in US history. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it could be another example of selective sampling.

I do not know the reason for this either. If you have the figures there would that have jumped the US to the top of the list?

**Ensis Ferrae**

Vaktathi wrote:

Common violence, stuff like robberies and back alley killings, are down to probably their lowest levels in history, even in the US. The high profile killings are exactly that, high profile. They're shock events. Violence and killing as a whole is down, but shockingness (particularly as most such massacres of the past were generally criminal on criminal, such as the St Valentines Day massacre) of their nature is up.

I remember visiting the LA area in the late 90s.... Growing up in Oregon, my parents had the nightly habit of watching local news "for the weather".

The LA local news went something like this "Good evening, I'm Tom Tucker. Tonight on Channel 5 news, in LA there were 10 robberies, 4 convenience stores held up, 7 muggings and 3 murders... Here's Joe with news on the Rams" That was in the "preamble" never to be mentioned again in a half hour news cast.

Yes, mass shootings are terrible things, and yes, guns may have made the opportunity and means worse. But the fact still remains that in a country the size of the US, with the size of it's population, the fact that school shootings are STILL national news headlines, is because they are so rare. And because they are rare, I fail to see a reason why we need to destroy the rights of millions more people, just to stop a couple nutters.

**Henry**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Henry wrote:
Well done Dreadclaw, you win the internetz today for wilful misuse of statistics.

MIsleading would have been if I only gave the first column. I was honest enough to how plenty of other data also for posters here to examine

I make no claim that you have been misleading, but I maintain that you have wilfully been misusing. You compared gun violence in that table between countries to make the claim that the US was not even in the top five.
One of the first rules of statistics is to account for outliers. The closest country for numbers of acts carried out was Germany - and they had three! The country at the top has had one, a single, 1, ein, Un, a solitary act of mass violence in the last seventy years!

If somebody killed four people today in Luxembourg, they would have a deaths per 1,000,000 of 7.9, putting it second on your table. It would be rediculous to suddenly start talking about the outrageous amount of mass murder being carried out in Luxembourg because a single event does not create a pattern.

What I'm saying is that at such low occurrences of mass murder being carried out in other countries, your table is meaningless for saying the US is not in the top five.

**Ensis Ferrae**

Henry wrote:

If somebody killed four people today in Luxembourg, they would have a deaths per 1,000,000 of 7.9, putting it second on your table. It would be rediculous to suddenly start talking about the outrageous amount of mass murder being carried out in Luxembourg because a single event does not create a pattern.

What I'm saying is that at such low occurrences of mass murder being carried out in other countries, your table is meaningless for saying the US is not in the top five.

It's also, in the eyes of most of us in the US, a table that shows how meaningless it is to remove millions of firearms from law abiding citizens.

**Henry**

Using the table to argue that would be just as daft as arguing the opposite.

**d-usa**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Henry wrote:

If somebody killed four people today in Luxembourg, they would have a deaths per 1,000,000 of 7.9, putting it second on your table. It would be rediculous to suddenly start talking about the outrageous amount of mass murder being carried out in Luxembourg because a single event does not create a pattern.

What I'm saying is that at such low occurrences of mass murder being carried out in other countries, your table is meaningless for saying the US is not in the top five.

It's also, in the eyes of most of us in the US, a table that shows how meaningless it is to remove millions of firearms from law abiding citizens.

It does show that Europe has less per capita incidents and deaths than the US.

**Ensis Ferrae**

d-usa wrote:

It does show that Europe has less per capita incidents and deaths than the US.

While true, it does, as Smacks likes to point out, ignore "other factors"

**Smacks**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So to disprove the statistics that I provided you quoted sources that I did not bring up in this discussion? That is an interesting line of argument.

It's pointless arguing with you because you just bounce the goal post all over the place. Before you posted anything I said gunfact.info is not a reliable source and has a strong bias. You demanded I demonstrate, so I provided and example of it being unreliable. Then you posted your list of rampage killings, which a whole bunch of people commented on how skewed and unreliable the data was.

So I was right in what I said. You have lost this part of the argument. The statistic you posted afterwards (which weren't even from gunfacts) are a separate issue.

Smacks wrote:
That's an oversimplification of what I claimed, and you didn't demonstrate anything.

It is what you claimed. It was wrong; http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/300/661745.page#8088905
"But I believe if you look at the specific cities over time, gun crime had actually dropped since tighter gun controls were introduced."
I specifically mentioned Chicago and District of Columbia which have strict gun control but also higher crime. You seemed content to ignore both these examples.

I was replying to Cincy and he didn't say what city he was talking about. But Chicago is an okay example, most of the efforts at controlling guns where undermined by lax laws in the surrounding territories. But if you measure from 1965 murder rates have still gone down, so you could infer from that that gun control worked. I won't do that, because I think there are just too many variables to draw any conclusion. It would be nice if you could display the same degree of objectivity with your data.

if you are unprepared to do so then that speaks volumes as to your intention.

Indeed, I'm not really here to try and prove gun control one way or another. I don't think that's possible with the current data, and if you think it is, then you are misguided. However, there are some people here who bring some pretty strong biases, people who are so paranoid or zealous (for lack of a better word) that guns might be banned, they are willing to advocate for things like convicted felons having the right to bear arms, and argue that the murder of school children is "not really a big deal", you know, in the grand scheme of things perspective. Which I think is interesting to talk about.

You are ignoring actual statistics from the FBI, CDC, and other reputable sources in favour of phone surveys.

No I'm not, it is completely different data. If you can't tell the difference between "self defence injury data", and "data which examines whether guns are being used legally", then it isn't possible to have a discussion with you. Your method of arguing isn't just limited to moving the proverbial goalposts, you also pick up the proverbial ball and turn it into a banana.

The fact that you use your own opinion that because people in the UK are "so irresponsible" behind the wheel then US citizens should not own guns as a serious line of argument is beyond ridicule.

1: I didn't say anything about the UK, I've been to America. Almost got run over in NY.
2: I did not say "therefore", It was not a syllogism, it was a statement about the likelihood of 100% of people behaving responsibly.
3: I did not say US citizens should not own guns. I have said in this very topic that I would like you to have access to more guns. Gun control is not the same as banning guns.

So I agree, if you completely misrepresent someone, and everything you attribute to them is a lie, then they probably will sound "beyond ridicule". Well done!

Your response was to say"Secondly, the data is sourced from the FBI, CDC etc... but it is also cherry picked, sometimes in quite a misleading way." so rather than actually show this cherry picking of the stats you went to attack a source not discussed.

You're right, I did do that, sorry. What I should have said is that gunfact.info might use "reliable sources", but they also present lots of information in a bias way. We have already seen more than one example of them doing that, and you should already know the site is bias, they practically say so on the front page. I'm not going to sift through the whole site looking for a specific FBI or CDC example. Maybe there is one, maybe there isn't. The point is the site has a clear bias, which makes it unreliable.

For your convenience here are some more recent stats again as you ignored them (as predicted);

How did I ignore it, I have acknowledged everything you linked. Even the injury data stuff, which has nothing to do with anything? What Am I supposed to say? "Gee thanks DC! I see from this injury data, that background checks are unnecessary"

The way evidence usually works, is that you make a point, and if I disagree, you can then post evidence that corroborates your point.

What you are doing is just posting random evidence, then saying "refute this!" and when I say "why? I don't even disagree with that?", and then you're like "Ha! you have ignored my evidence as I predicted!"

So for the purposes of statistics we should ignore a pertinent sample? The irony of this from the poster who claimed that the FBI and CDC stats were cherry picked (with no evidence of this either) just beggers belief.

Again I said the gunfacts.info stats were cherry picked. And it's not really ironic when you just posted a graph with cherry picked statistics. No one said we should ignore it, but it's important to understand that the range includes the worst years in Europe ever, though I'm sure that won't skew the results. However, even when you cherry picked the single worst year in Europe ever, America still had way more deaths per capita when D combined the populations. And that is without including the other European populations that had 0 deaths, which is crazy.

Smacks wrote:
The list also conveniently starts starts just after the Virginia Tech massacre, which was the biggest in US history. I don't know if that's on purpose, but it could be another example of selective sampling.

I do not know the reason for this either. If you have the figures there would that have jumped the US to the top of the list?

The USA is already at the top of the list, which was demonstrated when D merged the European populations. The only reason USA appeared 5th was because it was being compared to countries with micro populations, where 1 incident massively skews the results per capita.

If you're going to try and say something with statistics, at least try and do it in an honest way. Don't just dump a graph that erroneously suggests Sweden has more rampage killings than the USA, and act like it has anything to do with reality.

**Psienesis**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:

Common violence, stuff like robberies and back alley killings, are down to probably their lowest levels in history, even in the US. The high profile killings are exactly that, high profile. They're shock events. Violence and killing as a whole is down, but shockingness (particularly as most such massacres of the past were generally criminal on criminal, such as the St Valentines Day massacre) of their nature is up.

I remember visiting the LA area in the late 90s.... Growing up in Oregon, my parents had the nightly habit of watching local news "for the weather".

The LA local news went something like this "Good evening, I'm Tom Tucker. Tonight on Channel 5 news, in LA there were 10 robberies, 4 convenience stores held up, 7 muggings and 3 murders... Here's Joe with news on the Rams" That was in the "preamble" never to be mentioned again in a half hour news cast.

Yes, mass shootings are terrible things, and yes, guns may have made the opportunity and means worse. But the fact still remains that in a country the size of the US, with the size of it's population, the fact that school shootings are STILL national news headlines, is because they are so rare. And because they are rare, I fail to see a reason why we need to destroy the rights of millions more people, just to stop a couple nutters.

Rare?

There's been 95 school-shooting incidents since Sandy Hook, and that just 3 years ago.

**Ouze**

Rare, in the context of violent crimes. We've got nearly 15,000 murders a year or so in the US, right? How many of that percentage are in rampage shootings/spree killings? Not even 150 a year, probably? Like 1% of all murders.

3 times as many people die every year in Chicago alone just due to largely gang violence. And, per capita, Chicago doesn't even crack the top 10 for murders even though they have a numerically high number.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to prevent them, or remediate the causes of them - we should always try to have less violent crime when possible. Statistically, though - rare.

**Psienesis**

Rarity should be compared to like crimes. As an example, of mass-shootings, how many of them take place in K-12 educational centers?

**Ouze**

I don't know. Is it possible to locate such a statistic? I suspect even if it's not been "officially" aggregated, it's so uncommon a poster could probably assemble that number just from wikipedia or the news or something.

My gut feeling is that most rampage/spree killings happen in the workplace rather than schools.

**motyak**

If we have nothing related to the topic left to talk about, and are just rehashing the usual talking points, perhaps we're done here. I mean I love an OT gun thread as much as the next MOD but we seem to be well into our usual rhythm here, so why continue?

**Smacks**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Yes, mass shootings are terrible things, and yes, guns may have made the opportunity and means worse. But the fact still remains that in a country the size of the US, with the size of it's population, the fact that school shootings are STILL national news headlines, is because they are so rare. And because they are rare, I fail to see a reason why we need to destroy the rights of millions more people, just to stop a couple nutters.

I think "destroy the rights of millions" is perhaps a little hyperbolic. There are also millions(billions) of people in Europe, many of them own guns, go hunting, do target shooting etc... And I don't think they feel that their rights have been "destroyed" just because the government is able legislate over firearms. Gun control doesn't and shouldn't mean banning all guns.

**Grey Templar**

The difference is nobody in Europe has this right, we do in the US.

So yes, it would indeed infringe on the rights of millions of people. About 300 million to be precise.

**Psienesis**

Not easily, but digging around a bit:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9414540/A-history-of-mass-shootings-in-the-US-since-Columbine.html wrote:
Excerpted from the above:

June 2013 - John Zawahri, an unemployed 23-year-old, kills five people in a rampage which begins at his father home and ends in Santa Monica College's library.

September 2013 - Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy man, engages police in a running firefight in the Washington D.C. industrial complex before being shot and killed. Thirteen people were killed and three injured.

June 2015 - White supremacist, Dylann Roof, begins shooting in a historic black church in an attempt to start a race-war. He kills nine people.

August 2015 - Vester Lee Flanagan II aka Bryce Williams shoots dead two former colleagues from the WDBJ7 news team.

So, discounting shootings at schools, we have four events.

And then this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#2010s

Which does not post/quote well in table format, but here goes. I've removed examples that were obvious single-target attacks that simply happened to be at a school (many of these single-victim attacks are not so clear), or cases where someone attacked a police officer on school grounds and was apprehended or killed (since those aren't really germane), and have also removed from the list those that, on first reading, seem to be fights between individuals that escalated into injuries of bystanders. Readers may want to view the page above and decide whether any I've included should be removed, or if those I've removed should be included. In either case, there are a *lot* more school-related shootings than those in non-school places, even if the number of casualties is often less.

Wiki link above wrote:
January 10, 2013 Taft, California 0 2 A gunman entered a science classroom of Taft Union High School with a 12 gauge shotgun and opened fire. A 16-year-old male student, identified as Bowe Cleveland, was shot in the chest and critically wounded. Another student was shot at, but was not hit. The classroom teacher, Ryan Heber, convinced him to drop his weapon, and the gunman followed his order and was later arrested. Additionally, Heber suffered a minor wound from being grazed by a shotgun pellet during the ordeal. The gunman was suspected to be a 16-year-old student of the school, Bryan Oliver. Cleveland and the other student that was shot at are both believed to be intended targets of the gunman. On January 14, Oliver was charged with two counts of attempted murder and assault with a firearm.[378][379]

January 15, 2013 St. Louis, Missouri 0 2 A gunman shot an administrator in his office on the fourth floor of Stevens Institute of Business and Arts, wounding him. The suspected gunman, Sean Johnson, a part-time student, shot and wounded himself on a stairwell. Both the administrator and Johnson were hospitalized in stable conditions. Johnson was charged with three felony charges, including assault.[380]

January 15, 2013 Hazard, Kentucky 3 0 Two people were shot and killed and a third person was wounded at the parking lot of Hazard Community and Technical College. The third victim, 12-year-old Taylor Cornett, died from her wounds the next day. 21-year-old Dalton Lee Stidham was arrested and charged with three counts of murder.[381]

January 16, 2013 Chicago, Illinois 1 0 A 17-year-old boy, Tyrone Lawson, was shot to death in a parking lot of Chicago State University. The shooting happened after high school basketball games were being held on the university campus, and Lawson was a spectator at the event. Police arrested two people after the shooting and recovered a weapon.[382]

March 18, 2013 Orlando, Florida 1 0 At the University of Central Florida, 30-year-old student James Oliver Seevakumaran pulled a fire alarm went off at the Tower 1 dormitory. According to plans he had written, Seevakumaran intended to attract a large amount of people inside the building to gather and shoot them. He then pointed a handgun at his roommate and threatened to shoot him inside their dormitory room. Seevakumaran released his roommate who ran into a bathroom to call 911. Seevakumaran then fatally shot himself in the head. Authorities found an assault weapon, a couple hundred rounds of ammunition and four homemade bombs inside his backpack.[387]

April 12, 2013 Christiansburg, Virginia 0 2 Two women were wounded during a shooting at the campus of New River Community College. Neil Allen MacInnis was taken into custody.[388]

April 16, 2013 Grambling, Louisiana 0 3 Three students were shot and injured on the campus of Grambling State University.[389]

May 14, 2013 Birmingham, Alabama 0 0 Allegedly responding to a student fight, a parent brought and fired a weapon on the campus of Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School. No one was injured.[394]

June 7, 2013 Santa Monica, California 6 4 2013 Santa Monica shooting: Six people, including the shooter died and four others were wounded at or near the campus of Santa Monica College when a lone gunman opened fire on the school campus library after shooting at several cars and a city bus at separate crime scenes. The gunman, John Zawahri, was fatally wounded by responding police officers. Among the dead were the shooter's father and brother, both of whom died inside a house that was set on fire a mile or so from the Santa Monica College campus.[395][396]

June 20, 2013 West Palm Beach, Florida 2 0 Two custodians at Alexander W. Dreyfoos School were shot and killed. The deceased were Christopher Marshall, 48, and his boss Ted Orama, 56. A third custodian was suspected in the killings and was apparently on the lam.[397]

August 20, 2013 Decatur, Georgia 0 0 A man with an AK-47 fired six shots inside the front office of Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, an elementary school. After the gunman fired the shots, he barricaded himself in the office and police at the scene returned fire. Nobody was injured. Children had to leave the building and were being guided to a corner of a field, where they were picked up by their parents. The alleged gunman is a 20-year-old male named Michael Brandon Hill. In the front office of the school, Hill talked with Antoinette Tuff, a woman who worked in the front office, who had called 9-1-1. Tuff talked him down, and helped him surrender to the police before anyone was hurt. Hill was apprehended.[398][399][400][401][402][403]

August 23, 2013 Sardis, Mississippi 1 2 A student, Roderick Bobo, 15, was shot during a football game at North Panola High School in what was termed as a gang-related shooting. Two others were injured in the shooting, and three men were charged as being responsible for the crime.[404][405]

October 21, 2013 Sparks, Nevada 2 2 12-year-old seventh-grade student Jose Reyes opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun at the basketball courts of Sparks Middle School, injuring one student in the shoulder. A teacher, Michael Landsberry, who was trying to intervene with the gunman was then shot and killed by Reyes, as he was standing on a playground. Reyes shot and wounded student who tried to come to Landsberry's assistance after he fell onto the ground. That student suffered an injury to his abdomen. Reyes then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The shooting happened before classes, and the school was evacuated and was closed for the week.[411][412][413]

November 2, 2013 Greensboro, North Carolina 0 1 A 21-year-old student was shot and wounded at North Carolina A&T State University. The victim was hospitalized for serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The university was temporarily locked down that night, and the lockdown was lifted about half an hour later. No suspects are in custody.[414][415]

November 3, 2013 Lithonia, Georgia 0 2 A Stephenson High School student and a janitor were shot in an apparent confrontation between team members and a group of teens who were not attending the school. Both were innocent bystanders in the ordeal.[416]

November 13, 2013 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 0 3 After classes ended, at least one gunman came out of the woods and opened fire on three students as they were walking to their cars at Brashear High School. One student was grazed in the head, another was struck in the neck and shoulder, and a third was hit in the leg and foot. Six people were taken into custody. The shooting is believed to be drug-related.[417]

December 13, 2013 Centennial, Colorado 2 0 18-year-old Karl Pierson shot 17-year-old student Claire Davis in the head, fatally injuring her, in a hallway in Arapahoe High School. Pierson then committed suicide by shooting himself. Pierson was armed with a shotgun, three Molotov cocktails, and a machete. He was looking for a faculty member who had disciplined him, and intended to shoot him. Claire Davis died from her injuries on December 21, 2013.[420][421][422]

December 19, 2013 Fresno, California 0 1 Four teens went into Edison High School in what was believed as a gang-initiation process. After accosting a 62-year-old woman about a mile away from school grounds, they found an athletic trainer who taught at Edison High and shot him several times in the leg and stomach.[423][424]

January 9, 2014 Jackson, Tennessee 0 1 A student was charged with bringing a gun to school at Liberty Technology Magnet High School and shooting a classmate in the thigh. The incident occurred outside the front of the school.[425][426]

January 13, 2014 New Haven, Connecticut 0 1 A 14-year-old boy was shot outside of a basketball game at the Hillhouse High School athletic facility, suffering wounds in his hand and leg.[427]

January 14, 2014 Roswell, New Mexico 0 3 Two people were shot and wounded inside the gymnasium of Berrendo Middle School, at about 8:10 am. An 11-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were airlifted to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas in critical condition. The 12-year-old suspected shooter, Mason Campbell, a seventh grade student, was apprehended at the scene after he was talked down by a staff member and dropped the shotgun. A staff member received minor injuries. Campbell is facing charges of three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He faces a maximum sentence of confinement in a juvenile detention facility until he is 21 years old.[428][429][430]

January 17, 2014 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 0 2 A student allegedly shot two other students in the gymnasium at Delaware Valley Charter School. Both victims, a male and a female, were shot in the arm. They were taken to a nearby hospital and are in stable condition, police say. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said at a news conference that the shooter ran out of the school after the shooting but was taken into custody near his home. 17-year-old Raisheem Rochwell was arrested and charged as an adult for aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and firearms offenses.[431][432]

January 20, 2014 Chester, Pennsylvania 0 1 One person was shot and critically injured at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. The incident occurred around 10:00 pm outside the university sport’s complex and led to an 8-hour university lock-down. The suspect was not immediately found.[433]

January 21, 2014 West Lafayette, Indiana 1 0 A 21-year-old student, Andrew Boldt, was shot and killed in a classroom building on the campus of Purdue University. A suspect, 24-year-old student Cody Cousins, was arrested and charged with murder.[434]

January 24, 2014 Orangeburg, South Carolina 1 0 A 20-year-old student was shot and killed at South Carolina State University. A 19-year-old was arrested and charged with murder.[435][436]

January 25, 2014 Los Angeles, California 1 0 A man was shot and killed at Los Angeles Valley College. Two suspects were arrested in the fatal shooting.[437]

January 31, 2014 Des Moines, Iowa 0 1 After a basketball game at North High School, there was gunfire in a parking lot of the school. Six males in a black jeep had came moments before the shooting and returned at the time it happened. A 15-year-old girl was injured by a ricocheting bullet. While officers were gaining control of the area, teachers on the scene led students into the school building for safety.[442]

February 10, 2014 Lyndhurst, Ohio 0 0 Five shots were fired in the parking lot of Charles F. Brush High School, including one which hit an unoccupied police car. No one was reported to be injured, though a school basketball game was going on at the time.[444][445]

February 12, 2014 Los Angeles, California 0 1 A male victim was shot in the back in a possible gang-related drive-by shooting near the University of Southern California. The suspect fled into the University Campus. The victim was last reported in stable condition before being transported to a local hospital.[446]

April 9, 2014 Greenville, North Carolina 0 0 Just after the lunch hour, at D. H. Conley High School, a car drove past the school and witnesses said an occupant reached out of a car window and fired shots in the direction of the school. This incident occurred on Worthington and Tull Roads, directly in front of the school. No one was injured.[451]

April 11, 2014 Detroit, Michigan 1 0 After a Friday evening student awards ceremony called "Grammy Night", four men who were affiliated with a gang fired into a crowd in the parking lot of East English Village Preparatory Academy; one nineteen-year-old teen, Darryl Smith, was fatally shot in the head. Smith was not a student at the academy.[452][453]

May 4, 2014 Augusta, Georgia 0 1 Two men fired shots inside a dormitory at Paine College on Sunday, injuring one student in the head. Neither of the suspects were students at the college.[455]

May 5, 2014 Augusta, Georgia 0 1 An active shooter situation was reported at Paine College on Monday with one person reported to be shot. The suspect was apparently apprehended and in custody. It was the second shooting incident to occur at the college campus in two days.[456]

May 8, 2014 Lawrenceville, Georgia 0 1 A person was shot on a student parking lot roof at Georgia Gwinnett College, receiving an injury. The specific cause has not been identified.[457]

May 14, 2014 Richmond, California 0 1 A 14-year-old student was injured during a drive-by shooting in front of John F. Kennedy High School at 8:30 am. He was shot as he was running towards the school campus after a fight took place. The student suffered a serious but stable injury to his leg. Police are searching for a suspect.[458]

May 23, 2014 Isla Vista, California 7 13 2014 Isla Vista killings. 22-year-old Elliot Rodger went on a stabbing and shooting rampage just outside the main campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Some campus buildings were within the route of the shootings. The spree began when Rodger stabbed to death three men in his apartment. Leaving the scene in his car, he drove to a sorority house, where he shot four people outside, fatally wounding two female students. He drove to a nearby deli and shot to death a male student who was inside. He then sped through Isla Vista, shooting at bystanders and striking four people with his car. Rodger exchanged gunfire with police twice during the killing spree. The rampage ended when his car crashed into a parked vehicle and came to a stop. Rodger committed suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.[459][460]

June 5, 2014 Seattle, Washington 1 3 Three people were shot inside a hallway in Seattle Pacific University. One student died. The gunman was tackled by a student as he was reloading his shotgun, and arrested at the scene. The suspected shooter is identified as 26-year-old Aaron Ybarra.[461][462][463]

June 10, 2014 Troutdale, Oregon 2 1 At around 8:30 am, shots were fired at Reynolds High School. 14-year-old freshman Emilio Hoffman was killed,[464] a physical education teacher was injured, and the gunman, 15-year-old Jared Padgett, exchanged gunfire with police officers and then committed suicide in a restroom stall.[465][466]

September 9, 2014 Miami, Florida 0 1 Towards the end of the school day, one alternative school student in Miami was shot as a small group of students tussled. The injury was minor, requiring hospitalization, and five young adults were later questioned.[467]

September 27, 2014 Terre Haute, Indiana 0 1 A 20-year-old Indiana State University (ISU) student was shot by another ISU on Saturday inside a residence hall. The injuries were not fatal, and a full recovery was expected. The shooter was arrested on the following day.
[468]

September 30, 2014 Louisville, Kentucky 0 1 One student was shot and injured at Fern Creek Traditional High School. The incident occurred around 1pm, reportedly after student became enraged in a hallway and pulled out a gun. The student was arrested later that day.[473][474]

October 3, 2014 Fairburn, Georgia 1 0 After a homecoming football game, a fatal shooting of Kristofer Hunter, 17, occurred in the Langston Hughes High School parking lot. The assailant, Eric Dana Johnson Jr., 18, turned himself in a week later.[475][476]

October 24, 2014 Marysville, Washington 5 1 Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting. At around 10:39 a.m. PST, officials ordered a lock-down of the school due to a "emergency situation." A gunman, later identified as Jaylen Fryberg, who was a student in the school, shot five students, fatally wounding four, in the school cafeteria before committing suicide.[477]

November 20, 2014 Tallahassee, Florida 1 3 Florida State University shooting. At around 12:39 a.m. EST, a gunman opened fired in or near the Strozier Library at Florida State University. Three people suffered gunshot injuries and were taken to a local area hospital. One was in critical condition, another was in good condition, and the third was shortly released after treatment. The gunman, later identified as Myron May, an alumnus from the school, started firing towards responding police officers and was fatally shot by them on the steps of the library.[478][479][480][481]

November 20, 2014 Miami, Florida 1 1 Two teens were shot Thursday during a fight on Miami Carol City High School property. One of the boys who was shot died.[482]

December 5, 2014 Claremore, Oklahoma 1 0 38-year-old Thomas Floyd Fees, a former Tulsa police officer, fired two gunshots the campus of Rogers State University before committing suicide. He had previously been arrested the day before for entering a female student's dormitory room with observable intent to commit a sexual assault.[483]

December 12, 2014 Portland, Oregon 0 3 Rosemary Anderson High School shooting. On December 12, 2014, an unknown gunman shot three students and a man outside Rosemary Anderson High School in north Portland. A 16-year-old girl was in critical condition, while the others suffered minor injuries. An 18 year-old man was arrested in connection with the shooting.[484]

January 15, 2015 Milwaukee, Wisconsin 0 3 A 15-year-old boy, a student’s father, and a teacher were each injured at a Wisconsin Lutheran High School shooting that occurred Thursday night in the school parking lot at Wisconsin Lutheran High School. The student had unspecified injuries that were treated. The father was shot in the knee and the teacher was grazed in the toe. A 36-year-old man was charged in the shooting.[485]

January 16, 2015 Ocala, Florida 0 2 Two were injured in gunfire that occurred after a Friday night basketball game. One was injured directly by a bullet, the other by ricocheting glass.[486]

February 4, 2015 Frederick, Maryland 0 2 Two students were shot outside Frederick High School near the gymnasium of Frederick High School during a junior varsity (JV) boy's basketball game. Approximately 200 students, staff, and faculty were placed on lockdown for several hours after the shooting while police searched for the suspects. No suspects have been apprehended, although witnesses report seeing four black males dressed all in black who are considered by police to be suspects in this shooting.[487]

March 30, 2015 Universal City, Missouri 0 1 Police said one person has been arrested for a shooting at Pershing Elementary School. The shooting occurred in the parking lot, with a 34-year-old-man being shot in the buttocks.[489]

April 13, 2015 Goldsboro, North Carolina 1 0 A faculty member was shot and killed in the school library of Wayne Community College. The suspected gunman was arrested in Florida the next day, and is charged with murder.[490]

April 27, 2015 Lacey, Washington 0 0 In the North Thurston High School Shooting, a student at North Thurston High School walked into the commons area and fired two shots into the ceiling from a .357 magnum pistol. Brady Olson, a teacher at the school, was able to tackle the student before they could turn the gun on other students. No one was injured or killed.[491][492]

May 5, 2015 Conyers, Georgia 0 0 Police say a 14-year-old eighth grade boy brought his father's gun to school. The child was arrested and faces charges that include possession of a firearm by a minor.[493]

May 12, 2015 Jacksonville, Florida 0 2 Police report that a 16-year-old shot 5 bullets into a school bus and injured 2 students. Apparently, there was an argument that touched on previous events.[495]

May 24, 2015 Flint, Michigan 0 7 In the early morning hours of Memorial Day weekend, a group of people were at Southwestern Classical Academy in the parking lot. Shots rang out and 7 were injured, with two men being apprehended and charged.[495]

May 24, 2015 Macon, North Carolina 0 0 Tragedy averted. On Thursday morning, a bus driver argued with a man and woman on school property with multiple guns and an intent to commit a crime. One of them had stabbed and shot a cat on school property and apparently drug use was involved. Police arrested Adam Conley and Kathryn Jeter with the aid of a Taser, but lacking any further harm to anyone.[496]

That's a count of fifty-seven events. Ten times as many as non-school shootings, and I cut several out. Certainly, more-stringent qualifications might reduce this count further, but I think the number itself shows that attacks at schools involving guns are hardly "rare".

**Grey Templar**

Not rare compared to what?