Hello and welcome to my talk on mass shootings in 2019. We’re being force-fed the same tired data over and over again, so I decided to bust out the ole spreadsheets and take a look for myself. If you need reasons to dislike gun control, just skim the pictures.

Giffords, or @GiffordsCourage on Twitter has been heavily politicizing the tragedy that occured at Sandy Hook Elementary roughly seven years ago today. Today, they sent out a tweet urging politicians to take action on “mass shootings,” citing an article from Vox that was heavy on infographics and numbers.

Of course there is no formal definition for mass shooting. This is something the Vox authors acknowledge (in the fine print at the bottom), so in this case the definition, and data, used were those from the Gun Violence Archive.

To quote from the relevant GVA FAQ entry:

GVA uses a purely statistical threshold to define mass shooting based ONLY on the numeric value of 4 or more shot or killed, not including the shooter. GVA does not parse the definition to remove any subcategory of shooting. To that end we don’t exclude, set apart, caveat, or differentiate victims based upon the circumstances in which they were shot.



GVA believes that equal importance is given to the counting of those injured as well as killed in a mass shooting incident.



The FBI does not define Mass Shooting in any form. They do define Mass Killing but that includes all forms of weapon, not just guns.



In that, the criteria are simple…if four or more people are shot or killed in a single incident, not involving the shooter, that incident is categorized as a mass shooting based purely on that numerical threshold.

This means that a number of events that you may not directly associate with “mass shooting” are included in this definition. Gang members shooting each other, police officers who are injured in the line of duty, family-related shootings, etc.

The nice part about the GVA though, is that they make their data easily accessible. So let’s look at these 2,200+ mass shootings that have occurred in 2019.

First, let’s simply split them out by state:

If your expectations align with Giffords and Everytown, this may or may not shock you. A large state like Texas or Florida, with relatively lax gun laws, should have many mass shootings, whereas a smaller state with stricter gun-laws like Illinois should have almost none.

Fortunately, Giffords make this process of comparison slightly easier with an annual scorecard with a letter-based grading system. Unfortunately, they do not include the District of Columbia. Based on their description (“The District of Columbia has enacted some of the strongest gun violence prevention legislation in the nation”) I have assigned it an A.

36.7% of mass shootings happen in a state with grade F. Meaning 63.3% of mass shootings happen in states with passing grades.

Now I could end it there and declare that quite obviously, since the majority of mass shootings happen in states with passing grades, gun control leads to mass shootings. But that would be misleading, and since my name is not Mike Bloomberg, and I don’t work for Everytown, let’s look at this a little harder.

First, looking at the pie charts above, we don’t know how many states have a passing or a failing grade. So let’s check that:

So 43% get a failing grade, and 57% get a passing grade. Perhaps most surprisingly (or not), only 6% of states get an A-rating while they account for 16% of mass shootings.

But again, I have to fess up that these numbers are, again, misleading. Because we’re not accounting for population here at all. So let’s do that too. I used the Census estimates for July 1, 2018. The 2019 numbers are not due to be published until later this month.

This is the number of mass shootings per 1,000,000 resident:

Now if we average those rates out by their letter grades:

This picture suggests that it is far safer to live in an F-state (1.3 mass shootings per 1,000,000) than it is to live in an A state (4.1 mass shootings per 1,000,000).

I also pulled in the “trifectas” from Ballotpedia. Virginia most recently won a democratic trifecta and they are using it to push gun control. Hard. So I felt it might give some relevant insight. The rate of mass shootings per 1,000,000 citizens by government party:

So, simply looking at the above data, it is easy to come to the conclusion that living in a Democratic-controlled state with strict gun control law raises the probability of mass shootings occurring.

I won’t hammer that down your throat. I won’t start a campaign telling you to force-feed these facts to your families over the holidays (looking at you again, Everytown). Because I know it’s bullshit, and I’ll freely admit it’s all bullshit. No, I did not manipulate the facts. I simply chose the presentation.

Using “common sense,” something so heavily praised by Everytown, we know these types of mass shootings are prevalent in “gang cities,” for a lack of a better term. Places like Chicago, Los Angeles, and D.C. These densely-populated places all have high rates of poverty, and high rates of drug-, and gang-related violence.

Simply enacting gun control is not a panacea to prevent mass shootings. Again, look at Chicago, LA, and D.C. We tried a similar approach before, back when we called it “gang violence” instead of “mass shootings.” We banned drugs and stepped up enforcement, thinking that would surely stop the gangs. And look where that got us (and our neighbors to the south).