by Tony Ashcraft-Texas Gun Runners

Mass Shootings Have ‘No Correlation to Gun Laws,’ Says Report

New research reported by the Daly Mail suggests anti-gunners have just lost another point of contention. (Gun Control)

For those of us with the ability to think objectively, the following question may seem a bit rhetorical. “Do stricter gun laws lead to a safer population?” The right answer is “no”. But the anti-gun lobby has long argued that we need more laws to make us safe. A recent study published in The Daily Mail would seem to confirm what law-abiding gun owners already k­­now.

Washington, D.C. has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country. So if we go with the anti-gun lobby’s mantra of “more laws, less gun violence” then D.C. should be one of the safest areas in the U.S. But D.C. actually leads the nation with “the highest rate of mass shootings per capita,” according to a report in the Daily Mail, citing new research released this week by medical researchers in Colorado.

The Daily Mail headlined its story: “America’s mass shooting hotspots revealed: The story is a first of its kind study that breaks down thousands of massacres by state, there’s NO correlation between gun control laws”

The study is published in JAMA Network Open, and it relies on data from the Gun Violence Archive, a database often criticized by the firearms community. The work was done by researchers at the University of Colorado: Leslie M. Barnard, MPH, Department of Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health; Erin Wright-Kelly, DrPH, MA, Injury and Violence Prevention Center, Colorado School of Public Health, and Marian E. Betz, MD, MPH, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora.

This comprehensive study is unlikely to change the minds of the anti-gun left. But to those still living in the real world, this study confirms what we already knew. And here it is.

“The rate of mass shootings per 1,000,000 people was highest in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings), followed by much lower rates in Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings) and Illinois (3.6 mass shootings), the states with the next 2 highest rates”

In a nutshell, there are no laws to stop law breakers from doing evil things. Whether a state has stick laws, or the state is 2A friendly has no correlation with mass shootings. Restrictive laws do not stop mass shootings, and less restrictive laws do nothing to increase the instance.

Detailed by the Daily Mail, the “Top Ten” cities for mass shootings are:

• Washington, D.C. (10.43 per million)
• Louisiana (4.28 per million)
• Illinois (3.61 per million)
• Mississippi (2.91 per million)
• Alabama (2.32 per million)
• Missouri (2.29 per million)
• South Carolina (2.26 per million)
• Delaware (2.18 per million)
• Tennessee (2.03 per million)
• Maryland (2.2 per million)

The report explains, “From 2014 to 2022, there were 4011 mass shootings, ranging from zero events in Hawaii and North Dakota to 414 events in Illinois. For these 9 years, one-third (27.3%) were social-related mass shootings, 15.8% were crime related, 11.1% were domestic violence (DV) related, 1.4% were school or work-related, and 52.0% were not a part of these categories (There was a median of 45 mass shootings per state for all states and the District of Columbia (mean, 78.6). A total of 21 006 people were killed or injured.”

More data which may be problematic for proponents of stricter gun control laws shows Illinois had the most mass shootings (414), California came in second with 367 while Texas reportedly had 270 such incidents. Gun law differences between the three states are dramatic.

The state with the highest rate of gun ownership, according to World Population Review, is Montana, where 66.3 percent of adults own a gun, and it had one of the lowest numbers of mass shootings at 4. Neighboring Wyoming, which is second highest for gun ownership at 66.2 percent of adults owning guns had only one (1) mass shooting.

Meanwhile, New York, with 19.9 percent gun ownership, had 186 mass shootings, and neighboring New Jersey, with 14.7 percent gun ownership, had 93 mass shootings, according to a state-by-state chart published with the study.

And to demonstrate further how gun laws do not correlate with mass shootings, Hawaii, with 14.9 percent gun ownership and North Dakota, with 55.1 percent gun ownership, had no (0) mass shootings, the only two states on the chart with zero incidents during the study period.

The Daily Mail report quotes Ph.D. student Barnard, who stated, “We wanted to help explain the ‘why, where and how often’ to give people an understanding of this issue.

“This study is not intended to answer every question, but highlights components to generate more hypotheses,” she added. Barnard acknowledged that the definition of a “mass shooting” varies, “depending on the source.”

“While we consider mass shootings as four or more persons shot or killed,” Barnard said, “some data sources only count deaths.” She acknowledged that this discrepancy could make research difficult for epidemiologists.

Is this report really surprising? To the majority of us, I think “no” It may however may be eye-opening for the anti-gun left. But sadly, the anti-gun media narrative and the heavy conformation-biased repowering of the Gaby Giffords and Moms Demand Actions of the world will continue to ignore reality and spew the same old tired anti-gun rhetoric that we are all used to by now. Large media outlets are unlikely to cover a word of this report. You won’t see it in the New York Times or the Washington Post, because news isn’t news, it is narrated propaganda.

A few last points. Most, if not all of the top 10 in this report have dense urban populations and are prone to gang violence. Illinois doesn’t make the top 10 if you remove Chicago from the equation. The same could be said for Baltimore. As a statistical matter, gang violence drives up the “mass shooting” statistic. When you say “mass shooting” I don’t most people think of a doubt-by shooting at a house party on the south side of Chicago. But the reality is gang violence is the majority of the statistical value. Anti-gun outlets will tout the sheer number of mass shootings to argue for the safety of children in our schools. As referenced in the report, only 1.4% were school or work-related.