Posts Tagged ‘mass shootings’

As long as schools remain undefended mass school shootings will continue

Posted: May 26, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Immediately after the news of the tragic school shooting at Uvalde, Texas broke, Democrats and other leftists began their customary shrieks demanding gun control.  Their arguments are just as contemptible as their timing. 

Guns are not to blame for mass shootings.  The National Rifle Associations is not to blame.  The vast majority of gun owners are not responsible for mass shootings. The individuals committing the heinous crimes are the only individuals who are responsible for the mass shootings.  These individuals are aided and abetted by Democrats through their gun free zones.

This article, Kobach: Gun Control Lies that Democrats Will Tell in the Days Ahead (breitbart.com), is a treasure trove of information and statistics to counter all Democrats’ specious gun control arguments, including the necessity and effectiveness of gun free zones.

The empirical data show just how dangerous gun free zones are. As pointed out by John Lott Jr., fully 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 occurred in places where citizens are banned from having guns. Most shooters recognize that they will encounter less resistance if their intended victims are unarmed.  Or stated differently, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun; and the criminals know it.

This quote debunks the lie about the necessity of ‘assault weapon’ bans

However, it turns out that the overwhelming majority of mass shooters don’t actually use AR-style rifles. The Congressional Research Service wrote a lengthy report on this subject in 2015, defining a mass shooting as one in which three or more people are killed in a single incident. The study found that out of 317 mass shootings between 1999 and 2013, offenders used AR-style rifles in 31 incidents – or only 9.78% of the time.

The solution to the mass shooting crisis proposed by the author of this article, Nolte: Why Do We Refuse to Protect Our Schools? (breitbart.com), is so beyond obvious.

Evil has discovered a fast and easy way to become famous: shoot up a school. Better yet, shoot up an elementary school. We’ve known this going all the way back to Columbine. Worse still, we’ve known the pattern since Columbine…

Evil shoots up a school. A corporate media desperate for blood, ratings, and furthering its fascist agenda makes Evil the center of the world for as long as the media can milk it. This OBVIOUSLY gives other Evils ideas. And here we go again…

We live in a free country. A country where we have wisely decided that all the downside — and there are wheelbarrows of downside — that accompany free speech and a free press is worth the upside. Okay, fine. There’s nothing we can do about a craven media that exploits and pimps Evil in a way that encourages more Evil.  So what’s the alternative?  Protect our schools. That’s the alternative. Duh.

Democrats do not want mass shootings to end.  They want them to continue.  IF mass shootings stopped Democrats would not be able to shriek for gun control.  If we the American people are not disarmed, then we will be able to prevent the Democrats from stripping away all of our rights.

Investing in Active Shooter training

Posted: December 7, 2019 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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From Twitter

It’s been a bad week for the Navy. The bad news of two dead in a shooting in Pearl Harbor, HI, followed by three dead from a Saudi flight student in Pensacola is simply devastating. In a less publicized case, a Sailor died after a person ran a gate, traveling 81 miles per hour before he slammed into Petty Officer Oscar Temores’ car, killing him. This follows a string of other shootings in previous years, from the NOSC at Chattanooga, TN in 2015, to the USS Mahan (in Norfolk at the time) in 2014. These aren’t particularly dangerous areas of the country, so what, exactly, is going on?

First, some militarizes in the cases. Most don’t involve legal private firearms. They are either US Navy firearms (Pearl Harbor, Mahan) or illegally obtained weapons (Pensacola). And in all cases, its still illegal to have private firearms on a Navy installation.

Second, there were some warning signs that weren’t followed. The Pearl Harbor shooter was about to go to Mast (equivalent of a court hearing), but was issued a firearm for his watch station. The Virginia Beach gaterunner had multiple law violations before he ran the Little Creek Gate. I’m guessing we’ll find the Pensacola shooter had mental health issues as well.

Lastly, where were the Navy’s police (called Master at Arms)? In all cases, they responded pretty quickly. Nobody can respond instantly though. The Pearl Harbor shooting was over in less than 60 seconds. Police quickly engaged the Pensacola shooter, limiting his damage to 11 people, but if you’re in a big auditorium space with hundreds of people and no instant police, the sad reality is it will take time to lock down, time a shooter can use to murder more victims.

It doesn’t help that the Navy is struggling to recruit young MAs (see the low 2019 numbers here), most of whom are doing the day-to-day “beat” jobs. Less young MAs in cars and at gates, less police presence, and increased police response time. MA jobs have decent promotion chances compared to other ratings, but part of this is likely due to a lack of candidates.

The Navy is spending a lot of effort in conducting active shooter exercises. They’ve become more frequent and more realistic. However, they are always focused on training the police force. But past experience shows a shooting might not last very long, and most people are injured or killed in the initial seconds to minutes. In that case, the quick response by bystanders makes or breaks the encounter. Attacking the shooter in those critical first few seconds may mean the difference between a mass shooting and a few injuries.

Shootings will continue to happen, and given the number of weapons on a base, we can’t stop them. But we can out-think shooters. They’ll expect passive victims that don’t fight back. We shouldn’t give them that.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Busting some myths about mass shootings

Posted: August 22, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Every single time there is a mass shooting gun grabbers immediately flood news programs and social media with a great many myths, mistruths, and outright lies about guns and mass shootings. For this article I assembled a collection of quotes that bust the most outrageous myths I’ve encountered the past couple of weeks. I’ve included a link to the original article for each quote. I highly recommend that everyone check out the original articles because they contain a veritable wealth of information. Unfortunately links are not working at the moment on this website so you’ll have to copy and paste the links into your browser..

The first quotes I’ve included tackles the myth that mass shootings are becoming more frequent

https://fee.org/articles/mass-shootings-arent-becoming-more-common-and-evidence-contradicts-stereotypes-about-the-shooters/?fbclid=IwAR288VJRBph4_99ZazaB3lYJjvrD1b1Cj_drJaS7v1gNUP9Y5O3U3XKRBc0

“Mass homicides get a lot of news coverage which keeps our focus on the frequency of their occurrence. Just how frequent is sometimes muddled by shifting definitions of mass homicide, and confusion with other terms such as active shooter.”

“But using standard definitions, most data suggest that the prevalence of mass shootings has stayed fairly consistent over the past few decades.”

The next quote from the same article disproves the recent claims that mass shootings are a white male problem. The original article contains a really great chart.

“Overall, though, the ethnic composition of the group of all mass shooters in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to the American population.”

This next quote from the same article proves something that I’ve known all along but may be a surprise to many.

“Long-term studies of youth consistently find that violent games are not a risk factor for youth violence anywhere from one to eight years later. And no less than the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2011 that scientific studies had failed to link violent games to serious aggression in kids.”

The next quotes are a series of facts from an article that appeared on the website http://www.federalistpapers.org.

“Fact: There were 387 deaths from mass shootings in the United States in 2018 (defined as four or more shot—not necessarily killed—at one time). Of those, most were regular criminals as we expect to see in gang-related drive-bys, bar fights, and a strangely large number of shootings at parties (like this one). About 100 deaths were the result of the random, psycho-killer shootings that dominated news coverage for days and weeks at a time. Mercifully, those are quite rare. But that’s not the impression we are given by the news coverage.”

“Fact: There are more privately owned guns in the United States than ever before and the number of murders has been declining for decades and has been at or near a multigenerational low for several years. More guns, less crime.”

“Fact: There are between 1.2 million and 1.5 million defensive uses of guns per year in the United States. How many more murders, rapes, thefts, and assaults would there be without armed citizens?”

The next quotes disprove the myth that mass shootings are a curse that only the United States suffers from.

https://www.mrctv.org/blog/more-lies-mass-shootings-america-after-tragedies?fbclid=IwAR1-tiQG4QYPiZUq1gjH0J13paGOQpCmSAnalBNnGH99VCeFZjNF2inaUoI

“After the tragic events of El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH many took to social media and the airwaves to perpetuate the myth that the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings.”

“When factoring in gun deaths per capita, homicide rates, and gun ownership rates compared to gun homicide rates – the U.S. is much safer than a plethora of other developed countries, according to a study by the Crime Prevention Research Center.”

The final quote proves that President Trump is not responsible tor the El Paso mass shooting, or any other mass shooting.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/the_mass_shooting_miasma.html?fbclid=IwAR0YSYqEmvusW7y1Bysu3jOM9YA8Twp4nw18okHXDhKB0jNnllRJ1SiejV4#.XUnNQ6t-GaA.facebook

“President Trump is no more responsible for mass shootings during his tenure in the White House than Barack Obama was for the shooting at the church in Charleston, nor the Sandy Hook school massacre. On the precipice of a presidential election, it’s convenient for Democrats and their media lapdogs to blame Trump.”

Math and MSM / Washington post Gun Control Memes.

Posted: August 13, 2019 by datechguy in media, opinion/news
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One of the disadvantages of having a worldview that relies on passion vs things like objective truth and data or having a staff that isn’t fluent in math is that every now and again such a position bites you.

the Washington Post managed to do this with this publication of the following list:

 

Now I don’t have the time on my hands or the resources of the Washington Post so rather than questioning methodology or asking how they define mass shootings let’s take their data as given and assume that there have been since 1966 166 mass shootings resulting in 1196 deaths.

Now lets take this these figures and do a little math.

2019-1965 = 54 meaning that we are taking about a span of 54 years.

1196 number of deaths / 54 years = 22.1 deaths per year by mass shootings in the United states per year

According to the CDC here are the number of deaths in the US by various causes in 2017

Heart disease: 647,457
Cancer: 599,108
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
Diabetes: 83,564
Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

Now let’s take a specific cause, how about that most eco-friendly of devices the bicycle: what are the numbers there? Well according this site the number of folks killed on bicycles due to collisions iwth cars in 2017 was 783. a number over 35 times that of the number of people killed in mass shootings according to the Post’s own figures, and remember that’s just deaths on bikes from collisions with cars not deaths from falls or other accidents.

Now let’s look at it another way.

Based on the Washington Post’s own numbers we have averaged 22.1 deaths per year in the US since 1965

22.1 deaths per year by mass shootings / 50 states = .4402 deaths per state per year.

In other words we are averaging less that a single death per state every two years by mass shootings based on the Post’s own stats.

OK now let’s look at this the way the government usually looks at fatalities, deaths per 100,000 citizens

We only have a census every ten years but for the sake of argument this site   estimates the US population in 2017 at 325,980,000 people. So to figure out the death rate of a particular cause it is necessary to divide the total number of deaths by 3259.8 ( 325,980,000/ 3259.8 = 100,000 )

Therefore based on the Washington Post’s own numbers the death rate for the United States by mass shootings based on the average number of mass shooting deaths since 1965 is 22.1 / 3259.8

or

.006779 deaths per 100,000

So according to the Washington Post own stats, the stats that they want to use to get you to pass new restrictions on the 2nd amendment rights, An american is more than five times more likely to die from contracting flesh eating bacteria than to be killed in a mass shooting.

Now I will readily concede that for the family of someone who dies in a mass shooting or from contracting flesh eating bacteria for that matter,  the statistical rarities of these event bring little comfort when mourning a loved ones loss.

But I submit and suggest that the sorrow of those directly affected not withstanding only  an idiot or an opportunist pushes to restrict constitutional rights that Americans have fought and died for from a cause that produces the death rates that the Washington Post own figures support.

Closing thought.  I wonder why they used 1965 as a cutoff?  I’d be interested in seeing the figures from say 1945-1965 and seeing if the rate is much lower from that period compared to the period the post used.

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