New Research Confirms Gun Rampages Are Rising—and Armed Civilians Don’t Stop Them

Data on 84 attacks echoes MoJo’s investigation and further debunks the NRA’s “good guys with guns” myth.

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By the time the nation confronted the unthinkable school massacre in Connecticut last December, Mother Jonesgroundbreaking investigation of mass shootings, launched the prior summer, had shown that mass gun violence in America was on the rise. The trend appeared to be no coincidence in light of the proliferation of guns and looser gun laws nationwide. One leading criminologist took issue with our criteria, arguing that mass shootings had not become more common. But now, research from an expert on criminal justice at Texas State University further shows that gun rampages in the United States have escalated.

The research, to be published in a book in July, confirms that:

  • Public shooting rampages have spiked in particular over the last few years
  • Many of the attackers were heavily armed
  • None of the shootings was stopped by an ordinary citizen using a gun

The author of the study, Pete Blair, advises law enforcement officials and has conducted extensive research on gun rampages in workplaces, schools, and other public locations. He gathered data on 84 “active shooter events” (ASEs) between 2000 and 2010 in which the killer’s primary motive appeared to be mass murder. This chart shows his findings on the frequency of cases:

Pete Blair, Texas State University

Notably, the jump in attacks in 2009 and 2010 was prior to the massacres in Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, Newtown, and numerous other locations during the last two years. Although Blair’s research does not cover 2011 and 2012, he concludes that “our tracking indicates that the increased number of attacks continued in those years.” As our own investigation showed, there were a record number of mass shootings in 2012.

Blair’s data also underscores a striking parallel we found: The unprecedented spike in these shootings came during the same four-year period, from 2009-12, that saw a wave of nearly 100 state laws making it easier to obtain, carry, and conceal firearms. (We mapped those laws here.)

By comparison, here is the chart from our investigation documenting mass shooting casualties between 1982-2012:

While our study examined cases in which four or more people were murdered, Blair’s dataset includes less lethal rampages in which the median number of victims shot was four and the median number of those killed was two. But casualty counts aside, his research uses similar criteria, excluding cases involving criminal motives other than indiscriminate mass murder, such as gang-related shootings. (He points out that the NYPD does not consider gang-related shootings to be “active shooter events.”)

Blair found that at least 41 percent of the attackers carried multiple weapons. We found that a majority of mass shooters carried multiple weapons, and that more than half of them used assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Moreover, our investigation made clear that so-called “good guys with guns” do not stop public shooting rampages. Likewise, Blair’s data couldn’t be any clearer when it comes to the National Rifle Association’s favorite myth: He found just 3 cases out of 84 in which an armed individual who had been on the scene used a firearm to stop the shooter. And none of the three were ordinary citizens. According to Blair, in two instances those who intervened were off-duty police officers: one in a case in upstate New York in 2010, and another in a case in Philadelphia in 2005. The third case took place in Winnemucca, Nevada, in 2008; the man there who intervened and shot the rampaging gunman, as I’ve reported previously, was a US Marine.

As debate over gun reform climaxes on Capitol Hill, the NRA has continued to call for more guns as a solution to gun violence. The group even used a phony school massacre to push its agenda.

The question now is whether lawmakers will choose to act based on demagoguery or actual data.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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