Buffalo, New York. Uvalde, Texas. Tulsa, Oklahoma. A month ago, none of these towns would have been in the news for anything remarkable, but now, they have all shared headlines for the same reason: each has had a mass shooting, all within the last month. And each time, we never actually see what the carnage looks like. Is now the time to change that practice?
It is very, very rare in the United States to see photographs of victims of gun violence. You'll often see it in wire service images from other countries, but not in the United States, and the reason for that is twofold. For one, access to crime scenes is often quickly limited, so journalists can't often get in. When they can get in, photos like these don't often pass what my college journalism professor called the "Cheerios test." It's a question that an editor choosing to run a photo will ask themselves: Will the person eating their cereal at breakfast throw up after seeing such a photo? In most cases, the answer is yes, they will, and so, the photos usually don't run.
That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions. The one I remember most vividly is a 2012 photo that The New York Times ran of a man who was shot near the Empire State Building. You could clearly see his face and a stream of blood pouring from his head into the street. It was a stark, visceral reminder of what a gun can do to a human being.
And it's with the latest spate of mass shootings that it's time to raise the question again: should these photos be released? Would seeing the bodies of children ravaged by an assault rifle change the conversation? Would it be enough to send a message to government officials that inaction, this time, is not the solution?
This photo-editing issue is dissected by The New York Times' Elizabeth Williamson, where she interviews experts and most notably the father of a child victim of the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut in 2012 about this very idea, of releasing photos of the bodies of children that were gunned down while going about an ordinary school day.
Perhaps it's the jaded journalist in me, but I rarely cry about news stories. The last time I remember doing that for a news story was one of the incidents that Williamson references in her piece, where a dead Syrian refugee, a three-year-old boy, washed ashore in Turkey in 2015.
I cried again listening to the accounts from Uvalde of children who are my son's age smearing their murdered friends' blood on themselves to appear dead to the shooter as they repeatedly called 911, begging for help for the better part of an hour. Perhaps it's no coincidence that in both of these stories, the victims were brown children of roughly the same age as my own. It shouldn't take being a parent to have empathy, to do something in light of these heinous acts, but apparently, that hasn't been enough in the past to spur people and elected officials to action.
Perhaps seeing the photos of bullet-riddled bodies of children will be enough? Perhaps not.
Take a read of Williamson's piece above for a nuanced take on this idea.
Yes, yes and yes. When I was at military they showed us real-world gun shot wounds during first aid training. We get such a sterilized and glamorous image of gun fights because of Hollywood moves. It's time to see the nasty truth. And the people who want to arm teachers should get training to simulate a real world shooting scene so they see how confusing such a situation is. If you don't train constantly there is almost no way you can be effective even if you have a gun.
Response time is still critical... By the time police arrive, it's too late...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/uvalde-funeral-attendant-encountered-gunman-0...
Stabbings and bludgeoning should also be included, why just isolate firearms.
Maybe abortions too...in 2019, a total of 625,346 abortions were performed, over 1,700 per day.
Where is the compassion for those children? "If it saves one child."
Mexican news displays assasitations, drug cartel murders, hangings, beheadings, full body mutilations, drownings, vehicle accidents....
Maybe this way we can show that it is not the item but the individual.
The good guy with a gun only works effectively when you are not in a place that is a gun free zone. Nearly 96% (when you take into account ones from 1950 to March 2022) of all mass shootings (using the FBI definition of mass shooting) in the US take place in gun free zones and nearly all of the remaining 4% takes place in cities and towns where conceal and open carry are effectively banned (no 2A rights outside of the home), this happens specifically because there is no good guy with a gun, thus guaranteeing the criminal a few minutes of free reign to cause harm before good guys with guns arrive who can stop the criminal. Gun free zone and a 5 year prison penalty for violating it, will stop a law abiding citizen who is trying to make an honest living, but it does 100% nothing to a violent criminal intent on racking up multiple life sentences, in that scenario, an extra 5 years means nothing to them. In fact if you look at the court cases, the prosecutors often don't even charge them with the violation because it is more they have to argue in court, and the primary charges are more than enough to keep the criminal locked up for life.
What deters those crimes are when people are allowed to effectively defend themselves. It makes it impossible for a violent criminal to plan such an attack since they do not know who and how many people are armed, thus making for a very high likelihood that the criminal would find themself outnumbered by good people who have effective means to stop an immediate threat.
Over 500 school districts covering thousands of schools in various states, allow school staff who already have conceal carry permits, to have the option to undergo additional training and carry in school. So far, they have had a perfect track record of avoiding active shooter incidents. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3377801
As for banning guns, the people who push for that, can never provide a functional definition of what they want banned or can explain how it would solve the issue. Especially when it comes to the already limited range of civilian weapons where people scream about cosmetic features. Most with the agenda will avoid functional definitions, and instead will rely on vague or emotional responses, as well as ad hominem. They also rely on false descriptions of specific guns, for example, you are guaranteed in every discussion to find at least one person who will describe a .22 as if it were a .50 BMG.
Mass shootings are a category of crime that was created by gun free zones.
https://crimeresearch.org/2018/06/more-misleading-information-from-bloom...
So, more guns in more places is the answer?
Can't wait to see how this plays out!
Simple question, how do you explain the rarity of shootings across the whole of Europe, where gun ownership is restricted and governed strictly?
The only school shooting i can ever recall in the UK was Dunblane, and that was what, 30 years ago? There have been a few other isolated incidents here and there (one in Cumbria springs to mind, guy with a shotgun who killed his brother and a couple of other people, and Raul Moat who also killed a family member and shot himself in Newcastle).
If your theory of needing 'good guys with guns' is correct, then surely Europe would be a modern day version of the wild west?
Just to note i was at our local shopping centre a few weeks back (the Metro Centre in Newcastle) and there were armed police patrolling, so its not completely gun free, but we can however send our children to school without feeling the need to have teachers armed.
In many European countries, even before their gun bans, mass shootings were extremely rare, but their bans didn't do much to change the rates of mass killings (if anything, the rate increased overall as criminals switched to other methods). A common misconception is for some to imply or pretend that people can only be killed using guns.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3671740
https://crimeresearch.org/2016/04/murder-and-homicide-rates-before-and-a...
Though on the other hand, the bans in those countries greatly increased violent crime rates as criminals became emboldened due to the lack of defenses for people who are smaller, weaker, or people who they simply outnumber at any given time.
In the US, the issue largely revolves around policies that disarm law abiding people while doing nothing to disarm criminals. Primarily the gun free zone policies which are uniquely bad.
This is why you don't see them for the ultra rish and politically connected in the US. Even if regular guests are restricted, they will have an outer perimeter of armed security, in addition to armed guards stationed at every entry point, and armed patrols within the structure. Then coordinating it all, will be a security team monitoring security cameras in real time.
The areas that are magnets for crime are ones where no additional security is added. To account for the average law abiding citizen being disarmed.
Remember, a sign and a threat of a 5 year prison sentence does nothing to deter a criminal intent on racking up multiple life sentences.
But what has a near perfect track record of safety in the US when it comes to preventing mass killings of all kinds, is allowing citizens to exercise their second amendment rights. It not only prevents those attacks, it leads to lower violent crime rates to a point where much of the country has lower murder rates and violent crime rates than any other country (the US has sections of the country with that are as large many European countries, and just as many people, but can go years without a single murder. The main thing those places have in common are robust self defense laws, constitutional carry, and castle doctrine. The combination where implemented drives out gangs and career criminals, who will opt to go to places where their victims cannot fight back.
The only exceptions are drug and human trafficking corridors where cartel affiliated gangs will battle each other for control over smuggling routes since they net the cartels nearly 200 billion dollars per year.
Things also get crazy when border towns and cities enact local policies that disarm citizens while doing nothing to disarm criminals.
https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-us-counties-2...
PS, while more related to another user's reply, no one is pushing for more guns (the US has far more guns than people). Instead data driven methods of preventing crime shows it being more effective to remove the opportunity for major crimes rather than removing the rights of the people.
Right now, there are violent criminals who are armed, putting up a sign and a 5 year prison sentence that will be ruinous for anyone who wants to live a normal life, will not cause violent criminals to disarm, especially one's where their crimes will already land them in prison for life. Adding more prison time after a life sentence doesn't do anything, since regardless of the extra charges they are still going to spend the rest of their life in prison.
All this reads to me is you have a very specific agenda that you want to project and you are using certain stats to facilitate that agenda.
Carefully chosen opinion pieces being passed off as genuine research.
"greatly increased violent crime rates as criminals became emboldened due to the lack of defenses for people who are smaller, weaker, or people who they simply outnumber at any given time."
Do you have facts to back this statement up please? Because that is a bold claim to make.
Also, please give me a single reasonable argument to why a member of the general public should ever need a semi automatic assault rifle.
If you would like to verify crime rates for yourself look at the the government's own figures https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/historical-crime-data
And here are population figures https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigrati...
There are no semi automatic assault rifles, that is like saying why should anyone own spherical square.
Assault rifles are a specific class of rifle that was effectively banned in the civilian market in 1934, where while there was still a pathway to get one, it was really only something that the ultra rich could do. Then in the 60s they were further restricted before being effectively banned for even the ultra rich in the 80s. (where they can at best do transfers (with ATF approval and a lengthy application process) between other ultra rich people for items that predate the ban.
Does making good people defenseless cause violent criminals to become harmless?
You keep finding new, niche ways of excusing why you have 45000 gun related deaths every year, and I’ll keep enjoying the fact I live in a country where our children and teachers are safe to go about their business without having to carry a weapon 👍🏼
In the year ending March 2020(financial year), England and Wales had 695 homicides, that’s of any nature. In 2020 there were 45000 gun related deaths in the US.
You can massage figures all you want but that really simple number when compared to each nations population is utterly disgusting, even removing the ‘suicide by gun’ deaths it’s still 20000, again a complete joke.
Gun ownership rate has no correlation with suicide rates. The US also has more than 7 times the population, this is why people use crime rates.
Gun related deaths only matter if you believe that humans can only be killed using a gun and that all other forms of death simply cause you to respawn like in video games. The vast majority of the US will go years without a single murder.
If you want to focus more on guns. On average, suicides account for close to 30,000 gun deaths (though gun ownership rates do not correlate with suicide rates. Less than 300 are accidents/ negligent discharge.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-rate-by-country
Around 8000 are murders, of which the super majority are gang on gang violence. Everything else are justifiable homicides (police shooting criminals, making up the super majority, and armed citizens defending themselves).
For suicide, the largest impact on those rates are related to mental health care availability, as well as societal stigmatization and punishment of mental health issues.
For example, countries that do not invest much into mental health, as well as countries that stigmatize and punish it to such an extent that people would rather hide an issue rather than seek help, leads to high suicide, and mental related violence. In many countries, if someone seeks help even for a temporary mental health issue, they will likely face life long penalties that effectively turns them into a 2nd class citizen. In many cases it will restrict which rights they have access to, as well as harm job prospects, especially when background checks are done, thus in those nations, people will hide issues and hope they go away on their own rather than seeking help.
Well done for completely skirting around the facts.. ill repeat in case you missed it.
"In the year ending March 2020(financial year), England and Wales had 695 homicides, that’s of any nature. In 2020 there were 45000 gun related deaths in the US."
Ill also repeat, taking SUICIDE out of it, and only counting HOMICIDE, the US had 20000 deaths from Guns, the UK had 695 total homicides.
7 times the population of the UK, 28 times the amount of 'gun homicides' to 'total homicides'
Im not mathematician but thats pretty damning, whichever way you want to massage it.
And just to add, the AR-15 is an ‘assault’ in everything but name, there is literally zero reason for a member of the public to own such a weapon. Any weapon that can fire multiple rounds without having to reload should not be commercially available to purchase in a ‘civilised’ society.
82 minutes. That is how long the monster from Uvalde was at the school shooting before a Border Patrol (not the local police) unit breached the classroom. When seconds count, help is only 82 minutes away. It is much easier to carry a gun than it is to carry a cop. You asked for one reason. I submit 82 of them.
What so your answer is to give Janis the maths teacher a gun?
Does Janis need to complete 3yrs of military training first, or just fire a few shots down the gun club in preparation for taking out the crazed lunatic with the semi auto rifle?
An increasingly more common solution (now in 20 states that have largely solved the issue) in participating school districts, has been to allow staff members who already have training and are conceal carry permit holders (meaning they already have the tools needed, and are regularly carrying outside of work), to have the option to carry while at work as well. If a staff member optionally chooses to conceal carry at work, they take part in some additional training.
The policy ensures that any attempt at such harm will be met with immediate effective defensive force, thus denying the criminal of the opportunity that they exploit in common gun free zones where they look for places that will allow them to engage in carnage for multiple minutes before any armed resistance shows up.
Those policies also never force anyone to be armed
In the case of Uvalde, while Texas is a participating state, the policy is optional (due to federal law), and that school district as well as the school outright rejected the policy, and even went in the opposite direction and got rid of armed security as well. Furthermore the back door that should have remained locked (not able to be opened from the outside), was left unlocked against security policy (modern security doors in schools will stop .223/ 5.56, as well as 7.62x39). The crazed ended up attacking that school, and over the course of over an hour without the police maintaining a constant engagement on the criminal until stopped, the criminal ended up taking many innocent lives.
define 'training'
What exactly does it involve? are they trained to deal with high pressure hostage situations against armed assailants? because last time I checked only Special Forces and armed police response units have that.
If 'training' means shooting a few rounds down the range, then the whole thing is even more laughable than I first thought.
The training largely involves marksmanship testing, as well as scenario drills, and shoot/no shoot drills tailored to known attack patterns. Different districts and schools will implement different training (avoiding one size fits all training solutions), since much of it is tailored to the environment and taking advantage of the fact that the staff will know the facility well, as well as all of the other staff members.
The super majority of conceal carry permit holders have extensive range time for accuracy already, and most training for various defensive situations, revolves around shooting under stress and from various non-range firing positions. Many will involve tactics for room clearing, as well as more generalized actions such as the more traditional breach and clear.
For example.
https://youtu.be/KibQiUiPHBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5c7cYeo8xc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvVWiQyA8KI
Yeah looks amazing, far better than them spending time learning how to teach more efficiently, or improve the school curriculum, you know stuff that really improves the kids chances.
You missed something, bring combat rolls into the P.E. curriculum, much better than 'Soccer' lessons... perhaps a full Special Forces assault course instead of an athletics pitch too.
I love the fact they expect Janis to become cold blooded assassin at the drop of a hat, algebra one minute, Lana Croft the next.
Never in the history of crime and punishment has the solution to crime been to restrict the rights and freedoms of the law abiding.
The US Constitution recognized "inalienable" rights. These are rights "endowed by our creator". They are not rights the government can just take away. We fought an entire war over that. Maybe they still teach it in schools in the UK. We call it The Revolutionary War.
The rights you take away are the rights of the criminal; not the rights of the law abiding. The criminal voids their own rights when they violate the rights of the law abiding.
The place many gun "control" advocates go from here is to the Driver's License and you went with your speed limit argument. The Driver's License is a privilege; not a right. Driving helter skelter though the streets is not anywhere in the Constitution. The 2nd Amendment protects the inalienable right to keep and bear arms and it "shall not be infringed". You won't find anything close to that in the Constitution for the Driver's License or your perceived right to drive as fast as you want.
So yes. How dare anyone take away my inalienable rights.
Don’t worry about it, you keep justifying gun ownership and we will keep sitting the other side of the ocean scratching our heads over why something so ridiculous is even a thing… with our ZERO gun massacres and 700 yearly homicides.
Also, it’s good to know you can keep kicking the can down the road with it whilst people are walking into your childrens schools shooting people…. All because you think some 16th century law is still relevant in your supposed ‘civilised society’, the American dream right?
I think these people believe that the UK streets are a war zone littered with people wielding knives and robbing and raping each other Lee.
Ignorance is bliss I guess.
My girlfriend is a secondary school teacher, teaching some of the most deprived kids in the country, and yet she can do her job safely without feeling the need to carry a weapon, or have signs up to inform the public that people on site are armed.
IIRC all of the mass killers from Newtown, Las Vegas, San Bernardino, Isla Vista, Uvalde, Buffalo, and so on bought their weapons legally, they were considered "good guys with guns" until they weren't.
By that logic, you can justify arresting everyone for any and no reason. For example, is your neighbor a non-vehicular homicidal driver? If not, what is stopping him or her from becoming a bad person with a car?
What about rape, or pedophilia sexual assaults? Consider what body parts people use to do sexual assaults; also consider how many people you know or how many people in your town have those body parts. Shouldn't something be done about them before they become a bad guy with those parts?
The absurdity of it becomes clear when applied to more neutral topics (things that pretty much everyone can agree on), and it truly is, which is why the concept of punishing pre-crime (before even any criminal intent takes place) is unethical.
Though that gun logic that you used, has been tried before. In Cambodia during the 1970s, the government took a hard tyrannical pivot, and since educated people were a risk to such regimes, they decided to first institute a gun registration (for "safety"), then when sufficient compliance was reached, they issued a ban and confiscation order (for the people's safety of course).
After that the Cambodian government moved to overt tyrannical rule and rounded up people who were intellectuals or were educated beyond an arbitrary point, and had them executed (killing nearly 2.8 million people), under the logic of getting rid of those who have the capability to harm the regime.
Weird analogy. Compare the utility of both of those items. Guns vs Cars. You buy a gun to shoot at things. Even if only at targets or game, you are shooting a projectile inherently designed to terminate another life. A car on the other hand is designed for transportation.
In 2004, the ban on assault rifles was allowed to expire and the statistics of mass shootings and shootings with the use of assault style firearms has tripled. Please don't act like guns are just stuffed animals. If you allow everyone to have one, then you're increasing the odds that someone is going to use it poor intent or negligence.
Even more important to point out with your analogy is that you need a driver's license to operate a car... So to make things as equal as possible, we should maybe.... i dunno.... regulate who can own a firearm? Crazy thought right?!
The analogy was used to point out bad logic. That is why in addition to the analogy, I used a historic example of that kind of thinking. Analogies are used in cases like that because on topics that are more subject to tribalism, some people will rely on irrational emotional thinking rather than facts and logic, and they will be blind to the fact that they are doing so, the best way to avoid it is to find something more neutral to examine the logic.
There was no assault rifle ban in 2004, as they were effectively banned in 1934 and that ban has never been lifted.
The 2004 ban was based on cosmetics. Based on the FBI classification of mass shootings, it had no impact. The groups that claim it had a difference, used different definitions for a short time span while insetting a different metric for every other time period. This is why the DOJ's own study as seen here https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf
found no evidence that it worked.
As for background checks here is the 4473 form that is required for all gun sales. https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-firearms-transaction-recor...
The mental health question is related to if someone has been committed to a mental institution or adjudicated as a mental defective. Even if they lie on that section, those records will still be available to the FBI and any records showing them to be a danger to themself or others, will result in a failed check. The difference is do they fail the check and only lose the background check fee, or do they fail the check and end up with a huge fine and some prison time.
People who own firearms for protection don't do it out of fear. It is done for effective protection. Being victimized in a violent crime is extremely rare, but when it does happen, a lack of protection can cost you everything.
Why do you keep fire extinguishers in your home?
Why do you keep the airbags in your car, (why not remove them, and their various control systems and sensors. It will reduce the weight and save on fuel costs (as well as slightly improve the PIDs on your car's ECU)?
Also, civilian firearms are designed for sport and defense. When faced with a threat, the purpose if DGU is to stop the threat, and not to kill. There are millions of defensive gun uses per year, while typically less than 1000 result in a defensive shooting.
Also consider that civilians in the US purchase and use 5-8 billion rounds of ammo per year. The least likely use of a gun is to kill or harm others, given how often guns are used.
More and more free states are adopting constitutional carry provisions (25+ states now) as they have a good track record of reducing violent crime. The types of crime that the average citizen is exposed to, becomes largely unfeasible from a risk-reward standpoint. Cartels will risk getting shot because well over 100 billion dollars are on the line, but the average person typically doesn't have anything of such value that a criminal will risk getting shot for, thus when states pass those laws, the average citizen notices a significant improvement in quality of life by preventing the super majority of common violent crimes.
It also stops virtually all non-cartel linked gang activity, since it becomes too risky for gangs to operate by preying upon citizens who can now effectively defend themselves in large enough numbers that it becomes more likely than not for their intended victim to be armed. Keep in mind that in vast swaths of the country covering larger populations than most European countries, people will go years without a single murder, and violent crime will be extremely rare. Nearly all of the violent crime in the US happens in 10% of jurisdictions, for the rest of the country, the only place on earth where you can go to be at a lower risk of violent crime, is Antarctica (though the weather there is quite bad).
Cartel linked activity is the US is more targeted at other gangs, and average non criminals are rarely ever attacked. The cartel stuff are gangs killing each other for access and control over drug and human trafficking corridors at the border and within certain states. Thus while it will add a bunch to death counts, the less bad thing is that it is at least violent criminals killing each other and not good.
Most violent criminals are looking for victims and not fights, which is why constitutional carry has been so effective, but the major exception are higher level gangs working with cartels, with them there is enough money on the line for them to effectively go to war. Small skirmishes in the US, and South of the border, full blown combat with makeshift tanks (narco tanks), machine guns, artillery strikes, RPGs, and drones with C4 attached to them.
A good guy with a gun is not a guy with a gun. A good guy with a gun is a guy with a gun who does good.
I'd like to point out that the Uvalde shooter had to lie on his application form. They specifically ask if you have mental health issues. He answered no (I haven't seen the form, but if you answer yes they won't sell you the gun in the first place). Lying on the form makes the purchase illegal.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost every major study on defensive gun use has found that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year. There’s good reason to believe that most defensive gun uses are never reported to law enforcement, much less picked up by local or national media outlets.
He said no, and they just gave him a gun, because he filled a form in.
And you are somehow trying to excuse this, lol.
I'm not sure that showing graphic images will change the mindset of "the right to bear arms" and the widespread use of them...here in Australia we have had tight gun laws since a spate of mass shootings (no graphic images were shown) and since then have had zero mass shootings. Another example of this theory of showing graphic images not working is motor vehicle deaths...as a school teenager in the late 60's-early 70's we were shown graphic photos and footage of dead bodies in vehicles and bodies being retrieved from roadsides after crashes...the road toll didn't change and they eventually scrapped using that method.
So, let's see. How many of photographers who follow Fstoppers want to see your child with his or her brains scattered on the street? Not many I suggest. I would not want to see my grandchild in that way. Just the horror and grief is enough. Nor do I want anyone to invade her dead life. In wars, the newspapers seem to see this different, though one could argue war on our streets by evil ones. I would rather know the pathology of evil men and women regardless of color who do such evil deeds. I don't need to know their names or photos to bring any kind of "sick" glory to there evil people. I can see both sides of this debate. I am so sickened Political leaders ( I should say losers) make "hay" one hour after an horrible event. Those are evil folks too, regardless of party affiliation. I have learned to morn and grieve when one of my loves dies, it takes time. My father lost a son in Vietnam, I lost a brother. He was a helicopter pilot, wanting to be a commercial pilot. His brother in law was killed in Vietnam too, the next week. This has been my views and experience.
Their bodies were so blown apart that parents had to give DNA tests to find which body is their child.
I hadn't heard that detail yet, but I would suggest that sometimes the coroner will request DNA so that the family doesn't need to see their loved one in that state. Sometimes using DNA for identification is an act of mercy and not driven by necessity.
Perhaps.. From experience of covering conflicts, famine and riots in a previous career, a lot is shot but left on the edit room floor. The argument is whether showing the more graphic images will advance the story or not. Showing the results of a bullet to the body generally won't add to the specific story. We know a shooting took place so why show the graphic result? Relatives of victims don't need to see it even with careful camerawork to maintain anonymity. They will know who it was. However almost all those who talk about how to tackle mass shootings in the USA have never seen the actual result. They work off a Hollywood facsimile where the "good guy" with a gun is shot in the leg and still runs about being the hero. It can't be further from the truth and so, perhaps, if what is usually left on the cutting room floor is aired, we won't advance the story we shot it for, but we may add to a bigger story. A uniquely American story.
What has changed? Certainly, not the availability of guns. Guns have always been plentiful in the states. After WWII, there were surplus military arms by the ton floating around. Heck, I had a Luger and an 8mm Mauser that my uncle brought home at the end of hostilities. I sold the Mauser and the Luger is now for display at the WWII Museum in New Orleans.
Back to the topic, in the decade of the 50s, there was ONE mass shooting. Since then, it's gone up every decade. Again, what has changed? It's more difficult to buy a gun legally now than it was in the 50s.
Something to consider.....
Since the gun ban, the rate of mass killings has increased in the UK. as compared to before the gun ban. The rate of mass shootings, for example the 2021 mass shooting in Plymouth UK where 6 people were killed, and 2 others were injured.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-58200336
The rate of mass shootings in the UK didn't change much either; they were rare before the gun ban and they remained rare after, but they didn't become more rare.
Since the ban, they have had 9 non-gang related mass killings.
In the same number of years before the 1997 ban, the UK had 8 non-gang related mass killings.
Another important thing to consider is that there is no magical spell cast upon the earth that makes it so that people can only die if killed using a gun. It may seem crazy but there are people who like to pretend that people only temporarily die and respawn if killed by other means.
I guess that allows them to overlook attacks such as a 2005 mass killing in the UK where 4 criminals killed 52 people and injured over 700 others, or one in 2017 when a criminal killed 23 people and injured maimed 800 others. Or in 2017 when a criminal went on a knifing spree and stabbed 8 people to death and injured 48 others.