MKJ wrote:pretty sure that the amount of mass shootings prevented by armed civilians are next to zero.
That's because it doesn't become a mass shooting if it gets stopped, ya dingus
To name a few:
New Life Church,
Pearl High,
Santa Clara gunshop,
Golden food market,
Early Texas shooting,
AT&T Store,
College Park. There were ~600 active shooter incidents in the US in the past ~15 years so there's 1% of them off the top of my head, and we have to agree that any reduction in innocent lives lost is a positive thing.
Of course, these never get wide media coverage and certainly don't make any global news because they didn't become a newsworthy event i.e. not many people died. Sometimes, it's
actively not reported.
What we can easily establish from media reports though is that many mass shootings in USA happen in areas where guns are controlled. Nutjobs still have the wherewithal to target such areas. There's
an FBI report that goes into a lot of detail and, although it skips around drawing any controversial conclusions, there are some relevant stats in there:
- About 5% of active shooter events between 2000 and 2013 were stopped by armed citizens
- About a quarter of all events targeted educational institutes i.e. schools and university campuses, and none of these events were stopped by armed citizens because these are gun-free zones.
- About half of all events were at commercial properties and targeted at employees i.e. people definitely not carrying. In the cases where these were stopped by armed citizens it was of course customers and in states with concealed carry.
The USA does not have a gun problem, it has a mental health problem exacerbated by cultural problems and a high proliferation of firearms both legal and illegal. Reality is that coming from it's current position, gun control is not a practical way forward for the nation. To take gun control measures far enough to have a measurable impact would mean curtailing a constitutional right, and the country's on edge enough as it stands.
Urbanization is another major factor at play here. Go back 100+ years and gun ownership went hand in hand with rural lifestyles, doubly so in America with the pioneer/frontier situation and there there was a genuine need for both hunting and self defense firearm use (most nations moved past the self defense need a long time prior but the USA is a relatively new nation and still has that culture underpinning a lot of modern day attitudes). Fast forward to modern times and migration trends towards urban environments where, outside of sport target shooting, there is no hunting need for a firearm and all that's left is the claim of self defense. Many people alive today have lived their entire lives in urban areas and question the need for anyone to be armed. These same people
don't know butter comes from cows because in their world, it doesn't. It's understandable that their perspective extends as far as the 7-11 and no further. They're not stupid, or in their own context wrong, but they have a very narrow view. The reality is far more complex, and their media sources of information are doing a terrible job informing them impartially (or a great job of keeping them misinformed, depending on your perspective).
It's sadly not productive to say 'USA should increase gun control', because for every successful case like Australia, you have unsuccessful ones like Sierra Leone and Ecuador, or counterexamples like Finland and Switzerland (very high firearm ownership, rock-bottom homicide rates). USA is unique in that across the country you have urban areas that vary socioeconomically and culturally so much that they could be compared case-by-case to any other country you like. Parts of Baltimore and Chicago are not that far from Sierra Leone and Ecuador to exclude those as valid examples, and indeed that's where the greatest amount of gun crime occurs.
. Imagine trying to suggest that to the Americans gun lobby.
