The recent Reynolds High School shooting in Troutdale, Oregon proves two things about gun control: good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns, and gun free zones do not prevent shootings.

 

Troutdale OR Police Chief Scott Anderson. Photo credit: modified YouTube video screen capture

Following the Reynolds High School shooting, the usual anti-gun rights activists, liberal politicians and mainstream media talking heads are regurgitating the same-old talking points they always do. However, there are two important points that we all should take away that will likely be missed: armed guards – armed “good guys” – do indeed stop shootings and save lives, and gun free zones do not stop shootings.

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA advocated  the use of armed personnel, in whatever form any particular school district deemed appropriate – police, retired law enforcement, or armed faculty and staff. Liberals lost their collective minds over the suggestion, and the NRA was severely criticized  by liberals, mainstream media, and anti-gun organizations. However in practice, schools do just that, utilizing armed law enforcement on campuses across our nation. According to the Department of Justice, nearly 17,000 officers from almost half of police and one-third of sheriff departments serve as School Resource Officers (SROs) in roughly half of all schools. And since Newtown, some districts have also opted for school staff to be armed.

Like the school shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado last year that was stopped in “less than 80 seconds” because of the rapid response by the armed sheriff deputy officer stationed at that school, the shooting at Reynolds High school was stopped short by two armed SROs. In both incidents, only one student was murdered by the shooter; in both incidents the shooter, a student, committed suicide once pinned down by armed officers.

Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson said the shooter at Reynolds High School killed a fellow student in the locker room. He then shot and wounded a coach, Mr. Rispler, who fled and initiated the school’s lockdown procedure. Wearing a non-ballistic vest used for carrying ammunition and a multi-sport helmet, the shooter moved down the hallway where he encountered and exchanged gunfire with Troutdale Police officers, who were closing in on him from two separate hallways. He then moved into a separate, smaller bathroom where he took his own life.

The shooter was armed with an AR-15 rifle, along with nine magazines of ammunition, loaded with several hundred rounds (likely 270 rounds: nine magazines at 30 rounds capacity each). It is for this reason Anderson said the fast response by Troutdale Police school resource officers saved many lives:

I cannot emphasize enough the role that Mr. Rispler and the responding officers played in saving many, many lives. Given the weapons and amount of ammunition that the shooter was carrying, the early notification and the initial law enforcement response were critical.

Reynolds is the state’s second-largest high school with 2,800 students.

Though the loss of one life was tragic, it could have been much worse if not for the rapid response. Police said they had uncovered no connection between the murdered student and the shooter; it is unlikely that the shooter intended to kill only one student. Police at both Arapahoe and Reynolds schools emphasized the rapid response of armed officers stationed on-site. Police also emphasized school lockdown drills after both shootings. Armed good guys, it seems, do stop tragedies short and save lives.

The other takeaway that should be painfully obvious, is that gun free zone signs do not stop shootings. How many more concrete examples do we need before we recognize this obvious truth? Gun free zones are an utter failure as a policy to make people “more safe,” as they are intended. The Aurora, Colorado movie theater, Virginia Tech, Seattle Pacific University, Arapahoe High School, Columbine High School, Reynolds High School, Fort Hood, and the Washington Naval Yard shootings all took place in so-called “gun free zones.” Indeed every shooting in a so-called “gun free zone” further makes the case against gun free zones. Laws and signs do not self-enforce, which is why we have law enforcement officers. Perhaps is it time to stop advertising that our children’s schools (and movie theaters and military bases) are free-fire victim zones, and end gun free zones.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication June 13, 2014).

Reynolds High School Shooting Proves Two Things About Gun Control

by Matt MacBradaigh | Jun 13, 2014 | Gun Control Facts | 0 comments

The recent Reynolds High School shooting in Troutdale, Oregon proves two things about gun control: good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns, and gun free zones do not prevent shootings.

Following the Reynolds High School shooting, the usual anti-gun rights activists, liberal politicians and mainstream media talking heads are regurgitating the same-old talking points they always do. However, there are two important points that we all should take away that will likely be missed: armed guards – armed “good guys” – do indeed stop shootings and save lives, and gun free zones do not stop shootings.

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA advocated  the use of armed personnel, in whatever form any particular school district deemed appropriate – police, retired law enforcement, or armed faculty and staff. Liberals lost their collective minds over the suggestion, and the NRA was severely criticized  by liberals, mainstream media, and anti-gun organizations. However in practice, schools do just that, utilizing armed law enforcement on campuses across our nation. According to the Department of Justice, nearly 17,000 officers from almost half of police and one-third of sheriff departments serve as School Resource Officers (SROs) in roughly half of all schools. And since Newtown, some districts have also opted for school staff to be armed.

Like the school shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado last year that was stopped in “less than 80 seconds” because of the rapid response by the armed sheriff deputy officer stationed at that school, the shooting at Reynolds High school was stopped short by two armed SROs. In both incidents, only one student was murdered by the shooter; in both incidents the shooter, a student, committed suicide once pinned down by armed officers.

Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson said the shooter at Reynolds High School killed a fellow student in the locker room. He then shot and wounded a coach, Mr. Rispler, who fled and initiated the school’s lockdown procedure. Wearing a non-ballistic vest used for carrying ammunition and a multi-sport helmet, the shooter moved down the hallway where he encountered and exchanged gunfire with Troutdale Police officers, who were closing in on him from two separate hallways. He then moved into a separate, smaller bathroom where he took his own life.

The shooter was armed with an AR-15 rifle, along with nine magazines of ammunition, loaded with several hundred rounds (likely 270 rounds: nine magazines at 30 rounds capacity each). It is for this reason Anderson said the fast response by Troutdale Police school resource officers saved many lives:

I cannot emphasize enough the role that Mr. Rispler and the responding officers played in saving many, many lives. Given the weapons and amount of ammunition that the shooter was carrying, the early notification and the initial law enforcement response were critical.

Reynolds is the state’s second-largest high school with 2,800 students.

Though the loss of one life was tragic, it could have been much worse if not for the rapid response. Police said they had uncovered no connection between the murdered student and the shooter; it is unlikely that the shooter intended to kill only one student. Police at both Arapahoe and Reynolds schools emphasized the rapid response of armed officers stationed on-site. Police also emphasized school lockdown drills after both shootings. Armed good guys, it seems, do stop tragedies short and save lives.

The other takeaway that should be painfully obvious, is that gun free zone signs do not stop shootings. How many more concrete examples do we need before we recognize this obvious truth? Gun free zones are an utter failure as a policy to make people “more safe,” as they are intended. The Aurora, Colorado movie theater, Virginia Tech, Seattle Pacific University, Arapahoe High School, Columbine High School, Reynolds High School, Fort Hood, and the Washington Naval Yard shootings all took place in so-called “gun free zones.” Indeed every shooting in a so-called “gun free zone” further makes the case against gun free zones. Laws and signs do not self-enforce, which is why we have law enforcement officers. Perhaps is it time to stop advertising that our children’s schools (and movie theaters and military bases) are free-fire victim zones, and end gun free zones.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Jun 13, 2014. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.

Liberals exploit bogus mental health talking points to push for gun control

Liberals exploit bogus mental health talking points to push for gun control. Another school shooting, this time in Troutsdale, Oregon, where one student was fatally shot by another student, who later shot himself when pinned down by armed school guards. Another flare-up in the gun control debate and whether mental illness plays an important role in gun violence, and if so, to what extent? Mainstream media pundits and liberal politicians alike are, again, off the mark.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria wrote:

Every time there is a serious gun massacre in the United States — and alas, these are fairly common — the media focuses on the twisted psychology of the shooter and asks why we don’t pay more attention to detecting and treating mental illness… The question we should be really focused on is… why there are so many of them in America… America’s per capita gun homicide rate in 2009 was 12 times higher than the average of Canada, Germany, Australia and Spain. Does anyone think that we have 12 times as many psychologically troubled people as they do in these countries?

Likewise, President Obama also touched on mental illness in his remarks following the shooting, “The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people. It’s not the only country that has psychosis.”

There are several points in which both Mr. Zakaria and President Obama are wrong.

First, the word choice “massacre.” Massacre is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.” One person, although tragic, is not “a number of” people.

Second, the word choice of “fairly common.” This would depend on whose information one bases their assessment. If one bases it on the list of 74 supposed “school shootings” since Newtown compiled by anti-gun rights activist and billionaire-funded group Moms Demand Action, then more than one per week sounds fairly common. The problem? The list is bogus according to analysis done by Politifact, who found they included incidents such as a 2013 Clarksville, Tennessee incident, where authorities were called to a high school parking lot at 2 a.m. and “found the body of a 38-year-old homicide victim with no links to the school.” CNN found the number of actual school shootings since Newtown to be just 15.

Third, the “gun homicide” rate is an arbitrary and misleading comparative to gauge countries’ overall homicide rate, since nations have differing gun laws. We would expect nations with restrictive gun laws to have less murder with a gun, but what about the murder rate overall? Do we feel better if people are murdered, just not with a gun? Of course not! A Harvard-published study of 36 European nations, which have stronger gun control than the U.S., found there is no link whatsoever between gun availability and the countries’ homicide rate. They note this is because guns (or any weapon type) don’t cause crime, socio-cultural and economic factors do. This is why in the U.S., the homicide rate in very restrictive gun controlled Chicago’s South side is so high (over 500 murders in 2012).

Fourth, there is a problem with putting the blame for all murders on “psychologically troubled people” or as President Obama put it, “crazy people.” Arguably, most or all mass murderers are psychologically troubled, but mass murder typically results in “less than 100 victims” out of nearly 13,000 murders reported annually by the FBI.

This amounts to yet another disingenuous, weak-sauce attempt by the left to subtly make the point that “it’s the guns.” The “reasoning,” if we deign to call it that, is obvious: “Gee, if the U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on crazy people, but more gun murders, it must be the guns. We need gun control.”

This fails a basic fact that the left only seems to remember when it’s convenient, that correlation does not equal causation. Guns don’t cause crime, socio-cultural and economic factors do. Knowing this requires more thought than blindly accepting that “it’s the guns,” and that is what the left is counting on – that people are too stupid to critically think about their talking points.

Brenner Brief recently reported that even if absolutely all legally owned civilian guns were banned and confiscated, we should expect little reduction in criminal activity. The Department of Defense states 80 percent of criminals obtain guns illegally, the FBI reports gangs traffic guns along with narcotics into the U.S., and criminologists find that 90 percent of adult murderers have adult criminal records with multiple contacts to the Justice system. In addition, the CDC says that law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves, reduce injury, save lives at least a half million to several million times annually, and that lawful carrying of a gun is a deterrent to crime. Therefore, besides very little to no reduction in criminal activity, we would also remove the lawful deterrent and expect to see an increase in crime, injury and lost lives.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication June 12, 2014).

Liberals Exploit Bogus Mental Health Talking Points to Push Gun Control

by Matt MacBradaigh | Jun 12, 2014 | Gun Control Facts | 0 comments

Liberals exploit bogus mental health talking points to push for gun control. Another school shooting, this time in Troutsdale, Oregon, where one student was fatally shot by another student, who later shot himself when pinned down by armed school guards. Another flare-up in the gun control debate and whether mental illness plays an important role in gun violence, and if so, to what extent? Mainstream media pundits and liberal politicians alike are, again, off the mark.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria wrote:

Every time there is a serious gun massacre in the United States — and alas, these are fairly common — the media focuses on the twisted psychology of the shooter and asks why we don’t pay more attention to detecting and treating mental illness… The question we should be really focused on is… why there are so many of them in America… America’s per capita gun homicide rate in 2009 was 12 times higher than the average of Canada, Germany, Australia and Spain. Does anyone think that we have 12 times as many psychologically troubled people as they do in these countries?

Likewise, President Obama also touched on mental illness in his remarks following the shooting, “The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people. It’s not the only country that has psychosis.”

There are several points in which both Mr. Zakaria and President Obama are wrong.

First, the word choice “massacre.” Massacre is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.” One person, although tragic, is not “a number of” people.

Second, the word choice of “fairly common.” This would depend on whose information one bases their assessment. If one bases it on the list of 74 supposed “school shootings” since Newtown compiled by anti-gun rights activist and billionaire-funded group Moms Demand Action, then more than one per week sounds fairly common. The problem? The list is bogus according to analysis done by Politifact, who found they included incidents such as a 2013 Clarksville, Tennessee incident, where authorities were called to a high school parking lot at 2 a.m. and “found the body of a 38-year-old homicide victim with no links to the school.” CNN found the number of actual school shootings since Newtown to be just 15.

Third, the “gun homicide” rate is an arbitrary and misleading comparative to gauge countries’ overall homicide rate, since nations have differing gun laws. We would expect nations with restrictive gun laws to have less murder with a gun, but what about the murder rate overall? Do we feel better if people are murdered, just not with a gun? Of course not! A Harvard-published study of 36 European nations, which have stronger gun control than the U.S., found there is no link whatsoever between gun availability and the countries’ homicide rate. They note this is because guns (or any weapon type) don’t cause crime, socio-cultural and economic factors do. This is why in the U.S., the homicide rate in very restrictive gun controlled Chicago’s South side is so high (over 500 murders in 2012).

Fourth, there is a problem with putting the blame for all murders on “psychologically troubled people” or as President Obama put it, “crazy people.” Arguably, most or all mass murderers are psychologically troubled, but mass murder typically results in “less than 100 victims” out of nearly 13,000 murders reported annually by the FBI.

The overly simplistic statements that ‘the U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on mentally disturbed people’ also utterly fail to conduct even a cursory examination of how other nations handle mental illness – like involuntary detainment for observation, for instance – compared to the United States. The killer in the Isla Vista Santa Barbara massacre was reported to authorities by family that was genuinely worried he was a danger to himself or others, and law enforcement met with him three separate times, but failed to detain him for observation, or to get a warrant to search his residence, where he kept a journal with detailed plans for his murder rampage. How might other nations handle a similar situation?

This amounts to yet another disingenuous, weak-sauce attempt by the left to subtly make the point that “it’s the guns.” The “reasoning,” if we deign to call it that, is obvious: “Gee, if the U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on crazy people, but more gun murders, it must be the guns. We need gun control.”

This fails a basic fact that the left only seems to remember when it’s convenient, that correlation does not equal causation. Guns don’t cause crime, socio-cultural and economic factors do. Knowing this requires more thought than blindly accepting that “it’s the guns,” and that is what the left is counting on – that people are too stupid to critically think about their talking points.

As this author recently wrote, even if absolutely all legally owned civilian guns were banned and confiscated, we should expect little reduction in criminal activity. The Department of Justice states 80 percent of criminals obtain guns illegally, the FBI reports gangs traffic guns along with narcotics into the U.S., and criminologists find that 90 percent of adult murderers have adult criminal records with multiple contacts to the Justice system. In addition, the CDC says that law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves, reduce injury, save lives at least a half million to several million times annually, and that lawful carrying of a gun is a deterrent to crime. Therefore, besides very little to no reduction in criminal activity, we would also remove the lawful deterrent and expect to see an increase in crime, injury and lost lives.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Jun 12, 2014. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.

Americans have serious and honest questions to ask themselves about mass shootings and gun control: even if we ban and confiscate all legally owned civilian firearms, what then? It seems the fad of our time is to place blame on the inanimate object: the gun; and not on the individual committing the violence. The loss is tragic; it has always been tragic.

Life is fragile.
 
American culture has in it a belief that we can wave our magic wand and take all the inherent risk out of life. This is not, and has never been, the case. The thought we can guarantee safety is absurd. It’s a nearly meaningless gesture to use social media hastags, like #NotOneMore, and quite another to actually achieve that end. Gun control advocates, in particular, must ask themselves if they genuinely want to achieve less deaths, and if so how to realistically achieve that goal, or if they want to merely be seen speaking empty platitudes.

Mass murder events are aberrations. They are difficult to predict or prevent according to Dr. James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, one of the most widely recognized experts on mass murder. Dr. Fox says we have consistently averaged about 20 mass murder events (defined by the FBI as four or more murdered in a single event) every year since 1976. Dr. Fox says what look like red flags in retrospect with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, were only yellow flags – at best – before the event.

On the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, Dr. Fox wrote about the criticisms and supposed red flags. He notes the focus on the shooter’s many hours playing violent video games, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but ignored the many hours playing the dancing game, Dance Dance Revolution. Perhaps the most relevant criticism was that the shooter’s mother kept guns in the house. However, as Dr. Fox points out, critics ignored the fact that he had never acted violently at all before the event, and even his therapists were shocked in hindsight because of this fact. This illustrates that it is indeed difficult to predict beforehand when even therapists who do this for a living have a hard time seeing it beforehand.

Perhaps millions of people are in therapy and almost none of them snap and kill people. If we assume that all 20 mass murder events are the product of mentally ill people – as opposed to career criminals and gangs – then we are still left with something like 99.9999 percent of people in therapy that never become a danger to others. If 0.0001 percent risk becomes our accepted threshold for mass action by society, when do we apply that to any other area? When do we apply that threshold to car ownership, drunk driving, texting while driving, or fatally hitting pedestrians with vehicles?

There are a myriad of things that aren’t on the surface “designed” to kill, and yet do kill more often than guns. There are typically less than 100 mass murder victims out of a little less than 13,000 annual homicides. Put in perspective, about 200 people die every year hitting deer with their cars. In 2012, 4,743 pedestrians were killed after being hit by a vehicle. There are about 4,000 drowning deaths, 26,000 accidental fall deaths, 42,000 poisoning deaths, 30-40,000 vehicle collision deaths, 39,000 drug-related deaths, 24,000 alcohol-related deaths, and 195,000 medical malpractice deaths (some studies say as many as 210-440,000 deaths) every year. It’s all tragic. Are certain causes of death legitimately worthy of moral outrage, while others are not – or is it arbitrary moral outrage based on talking points produced by media talking heads that tell people what they should be outraged over?

If mass murder, particularly from shooting, is legitimately worthy of our singular moral outrage, then what lengths are we prepared to go to eliminate these aberrations that are difficult to predict and prevent? The Seattle Pacific University and Washington Naval Yard shooters used shotguns. The Santa Barbara mass murderer used a knife, his car and handguns with 10-round magazines bought legally with background checks and registered to him. The predictable, vapid response after such events is to call for “more gun control.”

The gun control called for following Sandy Hook was for background checks (the Santa Barbara murderer bought three guns with background checks and they were registered to him), limiting magazines to 10 rounds (which he used), and to ban certain rifles based on cosmetics (he used a handgun), and Vice President Joe Biden urged people to get shotguns (which the SPU and Washington Navy Yard shooters used)! None of these things, promoted as a “solution”, turned out to be any sort of solution at all. Calls in support of these measures to “do something” turned out to do nothing.

Do gun control advocates seriously want to consider banning and confiscating all legally owned civilian firearms? If so, what about the negative consequences of such a decision? What do we do about the criminals, when according to the Department of Justice, 80 percent of criminals obtain their guns illegally? What “solution” is it to ban legally owned firearms, when the FBI reports that gangs traffic arms illegally into the U.S. along with illegal narcotics? What about the fact that the CDC says law-abiding citizens use firearms at least a half-million to several million times a year to defend themselves, prevent injury, and save lives? This is corroborated by multiple academic studies, many of which were commissioned by liberal Democratic presidents and conducted by liberal professors.

If it is tempting to support a total gun ban in ignorant belief that it might “reduce killing” from mass murder, it behooves us to remember that mass murder comprises 0.008 percent of homicides. Most murders, just as most lawful defensive gun uses that save lives, don’t make headlines. So yes, even if we were somehow able to magically stop all mass murders (not likely even if there were no such thing as guns; the worst school mass murder in U.S. history was done with bombs, as the Oklahoma City bombing was worse than the worst mass shooting), that is a reduction of a fraction of one percent. To achieve that fractional decrease, we would have to accept taking away the very same instruments used to protect and save lives millions of times annually, just not millions of times in the national headlines.

Absolutely no one in the gun control debate is talking about the underlying causes for violence – poverty, especially urban poverty, drug abuse (the single greatest predictor of violence with or without mental illness), gangs (responsible for half of the violent crime in the U.S.), and mental illness. These are not cut and dry areas with immediately easy solutions just waiting for us, but this is where we ought to be focusing if we want to actually see a reduction in violence and death. We should ask ourselves if we really want to see people be more safe, or if we want to indulge in arbitrary moral outrage with meaningless social media hashtags.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication June 9, 2014).

Hard Questions on Mass Shootings and Gun Control: Even if We Ban and Confiscate All Legally-owned Civilian Firearms, What Then?

by Matt MacBradaigh | Jun 9, 2014 | Gun Control Facts | 0 comments

Americans have serious and honest questions to ask themselves about mass shootings and gun control: even if we ban and confiscate all legally owned civilian firearms, what then? It seems the fad of our time is to place blame on the inanimate object: the gun; and not on the individual committing the violence. The loss is tragic; it has always been tragic.

Life is fragile.

American culture has in it a belief that we can wave our magic wand and take all the inherent risk out of life. This is not, and has never been, the case. The thought we can guarantee safety is absurd. It’s a nearly meaningless gesture to use social media hastags, like #NotOneMore, and quite another to actually achieve that end. Gun control advocates, in particular, must ask themselves if they genuinely want to achieve less deaths, and if so how to realistically achieve that goal, or if they want to merely be seen speaking empty platitudes.

Mass murder events are aberrations. They are difficult to predict or prevent according to Dr. James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, one of the most widely recognized experts on mass murder. Dr. Fox says we have consistently averaged about 20 mass murder events (defined by the FBI as four or more murdered in a single event) every year since 1976. Dr. Fox says what look like red flags in retrospect with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, were only yellow flags – at best – before the event.

On the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, Dr. Fox wrote about the criticisms and supposed red flags. He notes the focus on the shooter’s many hours playing violent video games, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but ignored the many hours playing the dancing game, Dance Dance Revolution. Perhaps the most relevant criticism was that the shooter’s mother kept guns in the house. However, as Dr. Fox points out, critics ignored the fact that he had never acted violently at all before the event, and even his therapists were shocked in hindsight because of this fact. This illustrates that it is indeed difficult to predict beforehand when even therapists who do this for a living have a hard time seeing it beforehand.

Perhaps millions of people are in therapy and almost none of them snap and kill people. If we assume that all 20 mass murder events are the product of mentally ill people – as opposed to career criminals and gangs – then we are still left with something like 99.9999 percent of people in therapy that never become a danger to others. If 0.0001 percent risk becomes our accepted threshold for mass action by society, when do we apply that to any other area? When do we apply that threshold to car ownership, drunk driving, texting while driving, or fatally hitting pedestrians with vehicles?

There are a myriad of things that aren’t on the surface “designed” to kill, and yet do kill more often than guns. There are typically less than 100 mass murder victims out of a little less than 13,000 annual homicides. Put in perspective, about 200 people die every year hitting deer with their cars. In 2012, 4,743 pedestrians were killed after being hit by a vehicle. There are about 4,000 drowning deaths, 26,000 accidental fall deaths, 42,000 poisoning deaths, 30-40,000 vehicle collision deaths, 39,000 drug-related deaths, 24,000 alcohol-related deaths, and 195,000 medical malpractice deaths (some studies say as many as 210-440,000 deaths) every year. It’s all tragic. Are certain causes of death legitimately worthy of moral outrage, while others are not – or is it arbitrary moral outrage based on talking points produced by media talking heads that tell people what they should be outraged over?

If mass murder, particularly from shooting, is legitimately worthy of our singular moral outrage, then what lengths are we prepared to go to eliminate these aberrations that are difficult to predict and prevent? The Seattle Pacific University and Washington Naval Yard shooters used shotguns. The Santa Barbara mass murderer used a knife, his car and handguns with 10-round magazines bought legally with background checks and registered to him. The predictable, vapid response after such events is to call for “more gun control.”

The gun control called for following Sandy Hook was for background checks (the Santa Barbara murderer bought three guns with background checks and they were registered to him), limiting magazines to 10 rounds (which he used), and to ban certain rifles based on cosmetics (he used a handgun), and Vice President Joe Biden urged people to get shotguns (which the SPU and Washington Navy Yard shooters used)! None of these things, promoted as a “solution”, turned out to be any sort of solution at all. Calls in support of these measures to “do something” turned out to do nothing.

Do gun control advocates seriously want to consider banning and confiscating all legally owned civilian firearms? If so, what about the negative consequences of such a decision? What do we do about the criminals, when according to the Department of Justice, 80 percent of criminals obtain their guns illegally? What “solution” is it to ban legally owned firearms, when the FBI reports that gangs traffic arms illegally into the U.S. along with illegal narcotics? What about the fact that the CDC says law-abiding citizens use firearms at least a half-million to several million times a year to defend themselves, prevent injury, and save lives? This is corroborated by multiple academic studies, many of which were commissioned by liberal Democratic presidents and conducted by liberal professors.

If it is tempting to support a total gun ban in ignorant belief that it might “reduce killing” from mass murder, it behooves us to remember that mass murder comprises 0.008 percent of homicides. Most murders, just as most lawful defensive gun uses that save lives, don’t make headlines. So yes, even if we were somehow able to magically stop all mass murders (not likely even if there were no such thing as guns; the worst school mass murder in U.S. history was done with bombs, as the Oklahoma City bombing was worse than the worst mass shooting), that is a reduction of a fraction of one percent. To achieve that fractional decrease, we would have to accept taking away the very same instruments used to protect and save lives millions of times annually, just not millions of times in the national headlines.

Absolutely no one in the gun control debate is talking about the underlying causes for violence – poverty, especially urban poverty, drug abuse (the single greatest predictor of violence with or without mental illness), gangs (responsible for half of the violent crime in the U.S.), and mental illness. These are not cut and dry areas with immediately easy solutions just waiting for us, but this is where we ought to be focusing if we want to actually see a reduction in violence and death. We should ask ourselves if we really want to see people be more safe, or if we want to indulge in arbitrary moral outrage with meaningless social media hashtags.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Jun 9, 2014. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.