Look at simple history.
The experts agree, gun control works!
Hitler
Castro
Quaddafi
Stalin
Idi Amin
Mao Tse-tung
Pol Pot
Kim Jong-il
Our Nation has become a fascist empire, time to kill all private sector jobs and take the guns!

The Brady Fdn and the other anti-gun advocates tout the CDC statistics as being the ultimate in accuracy. Perhaps, because they paint a hugely more negative picture than those of the FBI. Problem is that the CDC is not accountable for its findings to anyone, while the FBI is accountable to Congress and the President for the accuracy of theirs. Why, then believe the CDC? Because they are convenient to the anti-gun agenda? Isn't that like the famous Goebbels' "A lie told a housand times becomes truth?"

a waste of time - anyone can slant statistics to state their point; but nowhere is the 2nd amendment mentioned.

Put an "air marshal" in every school. Have two or three teachers/maintenance that have received extra training (and extra pay), to have a firearm available. They need to know how to use it, that is the easy part. They need to know when to use it, that is not so easy. Maybe the NRA could step in provide that type of training.

There isn't a debate to be had about the facts: higher rates of gun ownership combined with all the flaws and loopholes in the background check system that stay open because of the gun lobby correlate with higher rates of gun violence. The 2nd amendment isn't a good argument against background checks that work and assault weapon/high capacity magazine bans, the 2nd amendment protects neither of these things. What it does protect is up to the democratic process (obviously right now it doesn't protect tanks, nukes, machine guns, etc.).

does it matter if its 180 school shootings or 1/3 fewer??? Talk about an irrelevant point. Great fact tho. wow.

First, when evaluating available data on whether armed citizens positively impact the number of "mass public shootings," you need to account for the fact that the majority of such incidents occur in schools. It's unfair and corrupt to imply any conclusion because firearms are not permitted on school grounds. Not until such time that the school setting includes armed personal can anyone build a statistically significant study. The practicality and affordability of doing so means that current school environments will not see signicantly improved measures to prevent psychos from playing out their wildest fantasies.
Second, statistics used by the feds and gobbled up by local law enforcement showing a gradual decrease in shooting seldom concentrate on the fact that the majority of incidents which occur are in urban america and exponentially growing. Are we too gullible to believe that those providing this data aren't driven by "outside factors?" That leads us to the farcical nature of Obama appointing his liar,liar VP and our Killy police commish to head yet another "fact-finding" panel in which the object is to skew that these "mass shootings" by pychos are far outnumbered by the daily number of assassinations in urban amerika. Conclusion: Concentrate on the urban neanderthal and his illegal firearms, since pychos will continue to exploit the inability of schools to prevent such actions.

The article isn't about the second amendment. It's about the talking points that both sides are using to debate the issue of gun control. Unless your position is that any weapon should be available to anyone in the public at any time for any reason, then you are going to be exposed to arguments where people try to use 'facts' to support their position. It gets cloudy when the facts 'aint necessarily so'. In this case, even academia can't agree on what the facts are.

Here is the second amendment: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Note, it doesn't say anything about a background check, mental state of mind, age, type of weapon, or anything else. From that one could argue that a 10 year old person judged insane by the medical community has the right to posses a nuclear weapon. Of course that's just stupid, but the second amendment doesn't specify. The crafters of the Bill of Rights were not talking about anyone but white adult male tax paying citizens in good standing 'bearing arms'. Multiple shot firearms had not yet been invented. The reality of the situation in many places is that you can't even carry a knife or nunchuks much less a gun.

Take out of the room the right-wing nuts and the lefty loons and let the reasonable people in the middle take on this issue.

Why is it that when the liberals hate the facts they obfuscate them and say that there is no clear evidence? But in reality, the facts do indicate that when more people are allowed to carry concealed weapons, crime goes down. Criminals are hesitant to mess with people if they think that every person could potentially be carrying. I am fine with banning guns but lets get rid of all of them. Take away the militaries guns as well as the cops and lets not forget the criminals too.

psyrus: Why is it that when the right-wingers hate the facts they obfuscate them? This article noted, as a major point in capital letters, the statistical evidence that More Guns = More Gun Homicides. It also noted, in the section about concealed carry that has you waving your arms, that crime is down in places that DON'T have easy laws on concealed carry, too. So it's unclear whether concealed carry has any beneficial effect. It IS clear, by contrast, that lots of guns correlates with higher gun homicide rates.

What's troubling about this rhetoric and the statistics often cited is that there's confusion about what's truly at issue. "It's the assault weapons stupid !" to paraphrase the slogan of the 1992 elections. This isn't about the 2nd amendment. It's about semi-automatic weapons with multi-round magazines. It's not about mental health except that one has to wonder about the mental stability of those who insist that having a nation awash in assault weans somehow makes us safer. This shouldn't be so hard. The congress and the administration should/must take action to outlaw the possession and sale of all/any semi-automatic handgun or rifle within the next three weeks. Any equivocation must be seen for what it truly is, a failure of leadership.

well, this demonstrates what was pretty much common knowledge: The Brady Campaign is perfectly willing to fabricate numbers to make their case.

Thank you for a great thorough article based on available facts.

Very objective and good at explaining "correlation vs. causality" and data and statistical problems.

Unfortunately, social sciences, unlike natural/physical sciences, cannot usually have controlled experiments and everybody can latch onto the part that supports their own beliefs.

Here's the problem at the center of this conversation - massacre killings in schools (and movie theaters, etc.) and CRIME are two different things. Crime statistics may very well show that concealed carry permits do help lower the overall rate of gun-related crime, which is why you're not hearing very many people arguing for the end of concealed carry as a result of Sandy Hook (after all, an AR-15 is awfully dang hard to conceal). What we SHOULD be talking about is if there are concrete steps that are not unnecessarily onerous to law-abiding gun owners that can reduce the incidence, and the destructiveness of mass shootings. YES - "criminals" will always find ways to get a gun if they want to rob a convenience store. NO - the men who perpetrated the Sandy Hook, Columbine, Aurora shootings are not THOSE kind of "criminals", and we should be just as leery about protecting the rights of legal gun owners while allowing potential mass-murderers access to incredibly efficient tools of death as we should of assuming that "gun control" laws will act as some sort of panacea to reduce "crime".