"Mass Shootings Not Increasing", Expert Says

[boedicca]

Sorry to harsh the "crisis not going to waste" for the gun control freaks, but mass shooting are not increasing.

As Howard B. Unruh barricaded himself in his home against the police -- after finally running out of ammunition -- he got a call from an assistant city editor at a local newspaper who had looked up his phone number.

“Why are you killing people?” asked the editor, Philip W. Buxton.

“I don’t know,” Unruh replied. “I can’t answer that yet. I’ll have to talk to you later. I’m too busy now.”

It was 1949 in Camden, N.J., and Unruh had just killed 12 people and injured four others with a Luger pistol, including women and children.

Although some indications suggest the American public has reached a breaking point after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting -- yet another tragic mass shooting in a particularly tragic year -- such attacks have long been a part of American history, and some experts say they are happening not much more often than usual.

"There is one not-so-tiny flaw in all of these theories for the increase in mass shootings," James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, wrote for Boston.com in August. "And that is that mass shootings have not increased in number or in overall body count, at least not over the past several decades."

Fox cited a particularly broad set of FBI and police data that counted shootings between 1980 and 2010 in which four or more people were killed: The average pace was about 20 mass murders per year, with a death toll of about 100. Casualty counts fluctuated wildly -- some years would have almost 125 dead, but then be followed by a year with fewer than 50 mass shooting fatalities. Far steadier was the number of attacks, which usually stayed at fewer than 25 per year....

2012 is tragic, but mass shootings not increasing, experts say - latimes.com

 

[PaulS1950]

Publicity has sure increased and the reaction to the shootings has gotten more extreme.
So why the change? It is becoming more important to the government that people - citizens of the US have less power to keep the government from becoming a tyranical body. If the government is to keep increasing its dominance over the citizens then it needs to disarm them. It has spent over 50 years teaching the evils of the gun and how owners of the evil device are the enemy of society. The media has helped by not publishing the many times that people defend themselves and others through the legal use of guns each day. The media rarely publishes the deaths in the US by other criminals like drunk drivers who kill many more people, men, women and children, each day than do the perpetrators of the school and theater shootings. Yet they support the call to restrict the lawful ownership of guns and ignore the same logic when it comes to cars. The main reason for this is that cars do not represent the same barrier to a tyranical government as do guns. Once the guns are gone the government can control everything else but as long as the guns are in the hands of lawful owners they can't dare to be too restrictive. That would incite more people to have guns and then it would be more difficult to stay on the road to absolute control over the citizens of the US.
Gun control is not the goal - control of the citizens is the goal.
C'mon you sheeple, get in line and vote out the evil guns...

 

[Old Rocks]

Really?


Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States
4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five have happened from 2007 onward.

That doesn’t include Friday’s shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The AP put the early reported death toll at 27, which would make it the second-deadliest mass shooting in US history.

 

[waltky]

Kevlar vests for kids?...

Colombian firm makes armored clothes for kids as US shooting sparks demand
Mon, Jan 07, 2013 - A Colombian firm that makes bullet-proof vests is now creating armored clothing for children. Factory owner Miguel Caballero said he never thought about making protective clothes for kids until requests came in following the deadly attack on Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in the US last month.

“After the tragedy in Connecticut, we started getting e-mails from customers asking for protected [clothing] because they were afraid to take their kids to school,” Caballero said. “We have received messages from all over the United States,” seeking the protective gear, added Giovanni Cordero, the company’s marketing director. Products include child-sized armored vests, protective undershirts and backpacks with ballistic protection that can be used as shields.

The products are designed for children aged between eight and 16 and cost from US$150 to US$600 depending on the complexity of their construction. Each piece weighs between 1kg and 1.8kg. “The products were created with the American market in mind, not for the Latino market,” Caballero said. “All the designs and colors, everything is thought out with them in mind.” Caballero performed a test on a pink-and-yellow striped bullet-proof backpack attached to a pale blue protective vest, firing a 9mm pistol and a machine gun to show it could withstand a barrage of bullets. He said the backpack-vest combo and other protective gear have already been ordered by a US distributor, although he would not identify it.

About 250 people work at Caballero’s factory, which has been making armored vests for adults for more than 20 years. Colombia suffers from an internal conflict that has killed thousands of people over the past half-century. Outside Colombia, the vests for adults are sold in about 20 countries, including Ecuador, Costa Rica and Mexico. They are also marketed in parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Twenty first-graders and six educators were killed in the Dec. 14 attack at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. The 20-year-old gunman, Adam Lanza, also shot and killed his mother inside their home before driving to the school and shooting his way inside. He committed suicide as police were closing in.

After the Newtown shooting, at least three US companies that were already making backpacks designed to shield children reported a spike in sales. Massachusetts-based Bullet Blocker reported it was selling between 50 and 100 bullet-proof backpacks a day after the shooting, up from about 10 to 15 in an average week. The backpacks, which are designed to be used as shields, cost more than US$200 each. However, most of the children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre were shot at close range and likely would not have been saved by armored backpacks. At any rate, children do not usually wear their backpacks at their desks or while walking around school.

Colombian firm makes armored clothes for kids as US shooting sparks demand - Taipei Times

 

[JustTheFacts]

Sorry to harsh the "crisis not going to waste" for the gun control freaks, but mass shooting are not increasing.

As Howard B. Unruh barricaded himself in his home against the police -- after finally running out of ammunition -- he got a call from an assistant city editor at a local newspaper who had looked up his phone number.

“Why are you killing people?” asked the editor, Philip W. Buxton.

“I don’t know,” Unruh replied. “I can’t answer that yet. I’ll have to talk to you later. I’m too busy now.”

It was 1949 in Camden, N.J., and Unruh had just killed 12 people and injured four others with a Luger pistol, including women and children.

Although some indications suggest the American public has reached a breaking point after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting -- yet another tragic mass shooting in a particularly tragic year -- such attacks have long been a part of American history, and some experts say they are happening not much more often than usual.

"There is one not-so-tiny flaw in all of these theories for the increase in mass shootings," James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, wrote for Boston.com in August. "And that is that mass shootings have not increased in number or in overall body count, at least not over the past several decades."

Fox cited a particularly broad set of FBI and police data that counted shootings between 1980 and 2010 in which four or more people were killed: The average pace was about 20 mass murders per year, with a death toll of about 100. Casualty counts fluctuated wildly -- some years would have almost 125 dead, but then be followed by a year with fewer than 50 mass shooting fatalities. Far steadier was the number of attacks, which usually stayed at fewer than 25 per year....

2012 is tragic, but mass shootings not increasing, experts say - latimes.com

Big whoop, I could find an "expert" that would swear to you that a monkey could conceivably crawl out of a human's ass.

Gotta take these things with a HUGE grain of salt.

 

[Darkwind]

Really?


Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States
4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five have happened from 2007 onward.

That doesn’t include Friday’s shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The AP put the early reported death toll at 27, which would make it the second-deadliest mass shooting in US history.

Do you know the difference between frequency and subjective deadliest?

 

[auditor0007]

I think there probably is some merit to this. We now have a bigger population, so the odds of having a few more incidents is likely, yet that doesn't necessarily mean we are seeing a massive increase on a per capita basis. All that being said, mass shootings like this are very scary, and they are a real concern to parents, especially when we are talking about schools. What makes it worse is that most of these mass shootings in schools are happening in schools that are considered very safe, in very safe suburban upscale neighborhoods. This isn't an "inner city" problem that affluent parents can turn their heads from, so it becomes a very big deal.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I promise and affirm that if a ban occurs and they try to take my weapons,I will take a couple with me.

 

[JustTheFacts]

I promise and affirm that if a ban occurs and they try to take my weapons,I will take a couple with me.

Whack job

 

[nodoginnafight]

I promise and affirm that if a ban occurs and they try to take my weapons,I will take a couple with me.

That's what David Koresh said. How'd that work out for him?