Actual facts tell a mixed story...
Do most mass shootings happen in gun-free zones?
Everytown for Gun Safety found that among 133 mass shootings between January 2009 and July 2015, 70 percent took place in private homes while 13 percent took place in "gun-free zones," where carrying of concealed guns were prohibited. Another 17 percent took place in public areas where the carrying of firearms are allowed.
Daniel Webster, the director of the
Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, who has disagreed with Lott’s findings, pointed to research by Louis Klarevas, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
In Klarevas’ book
Rampage Nation, he said that Lott has used too loose a concept of gun-free zones.
Klarevas disagrees with gun advocates who define a "gun-free zone" as simply an area that bans private citizens from carrying a gun.
For example, Lott characterized Fort Hood and Washington Navy Yard, military sites attacked by gunmen, as gun-free despite the presence of armed security.
"There’s an obvious logical problem with such a conceptualization: How can a place be a gun-free zone if guns are present?" Klarevas writes. "The implication is that rampage shooters are only deterred by armed civilians, not by armed guards and cops. But that’s an absurd suggestion."
Klarevas uses three definitions: he refers to "gun-free zones" as places where civilians are not allowed to carry guns, and there aren’t armed personnel stationed on the property. He calls "gun-restricting zones" as places where civilians can’t carry guns, yet armed security is routinely present -- such as military facilities or certain college campuses. He refers to places that allow civilians to carry guns as "gun-allowing zones."
Using these categories, Klarevas examined 111 shootings since 1966 in which six or more people had been killed in each incident -- regardless of whether it occurred in a public or private location or if it was in the commission of another crime.
He found 13 took place in gun-free zones and five took place in gun-restricting zones. That means that the majority occurred in areas where there was no evidence that private guns were prohibited.
Since Klarevas includes mass shootings in private residences or during the commission of another crime, that means that he counts several additional incidents that aren’t factored in by Lott.
For example, as a mass shooting in a "gun-allowing zone," Klarevas counts a gunfight between two rival biker gangs in Waco,Texas, in 2015 that left nine people dead. So that’s an example of a shooting that wasn’t in a gun-free zone that is omitted from Lott’s calculations.
The two also disagree on how to characterize whether guns were allowed at certain locations. Lott says that the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon was in a gun-free zone and points to a
school policy that bans possession of firearms "except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations."
Umpqua Community College spokeswoman Anne Marie Levis previously told
PolitiFact Florida the school’s gun-free policy didn’t apply to students with a valid permit. "UCC was never designated as a ‘gun-free zone’ by any signage or policy," she said. "Umpqua Community College does comply with state law by allowing students with concealed carry licenses to bring firearms on campus."
Our ruling
Corcoran said, "Most of these mass shootings take place in arenas where you're not allowed to have a concealed weapons permit."
Corcoran cites research by an advocate for gun rights who used a strict definition to define places where guns were not allowed. In reality, there are places where concealed weapons are permitted, places where police or security officers openly carry weapons, and places where concealed weapons are not permitted. Additionally, there are different ways to define mass shootings.
We found that advocates for more gun control analyzed the data and reached different conclusions.
Our assessment is that it is difficult to draw broad conclusions about the motivations of the perpetrators of mass shootings or whether they are influenced by gun restrictions. We rate Corcoran’s statement Half True.