I don't know whether someone has already touched on a trio of recent debunkings of myths about guns
First
NPR has checked out the number of "school shootings" for this year that was being bandied about
It seems that "school shooting" doesn't mean what most of us assumed that it did. It turns out that what is recorded is any discharge of a gun on a school grounds (I'm not sure what even gets counted as a gun there, airguns?) It doesn't require anyone to get shot. A person suicideing with a gun at a closed school (no kids or teachers had been there for months) got counted as one "school shooting" where someone actually did die.
But the surprising one was when NPR contacted schools where "shootings" were recorded, the majority of them couldn't find anyone who knew anything about it even happening.
It seems that the majority of the recorded events didn't even occur. It's still not clear how they came to be recorded.
Second
An academic called Lankford published a study a few years ago that purported to show that America has a disproportionate number of multiple public shootings for its population size. The "finding" has been widely reported.
Unfortunately Lankford has been remiss in recording his sources for other academics to attempt to replicate his findings.
John R Lott, has made his own attempt, and admits that finding the reports in local non English language press presents a difficulty, as does local censorship in areas where the regime does not want it's reputation with tourists etc to be damaged (eg in Venezuela, relatives of murder victims are told by the police that if they talk to the press, the body will not be released to them for a funeral).
Add onto that, that older reports are often not digitised and are not available to Internet search.
Despite those difficulties, what has Lott found?
That America has around 3% of the multiple shootings (that he could find) and about 4% of the population
Multiple shootings are therefore (thankfully) under represented in America
Lott also includes a comprehensive appendix showing his sources, for anyone who wants to try to replicate his findings to check.
Remember the assertions that "this doesn't happen anywhere else in the world"?
It does.
Lastly, multiple shootings are approximately proportional to the overall homicide rate
There has been a slight uptick in the homicide rate in the past two years
After twenty years of steady declines in both
The numbers of multiple shootings in America and the numbers of people killed are still lower than they were for most of the past 20 years
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Ps,
I'm staying well away from McCain.
