Mass public shootings are unspeakable tragedies that take innocent lives, shatter families, and traumatize communities. There have been 3 such shootings this year—Apalachee High School in Georgia, a grocery store in Arkansas, and a commuter train in Illinois. Last year, there were 8 mass shootings, including those at a Texas outlet mall, Louisville bank, Nashville Christian school, and Los Angeles dance studio. These 11 shootings left 76 dead.
We must find effective ways to reduce mass public shootings. This requires seriously investigating the underlying causes of the shootings and implementing prevention and protection strategies designed to address those causes.
Unfortunately, the quest for solutions often is hijacked by the media, politicians, and gun-control advocates who exploit mass shootings to advance their own agendas. They offer no real answers to curtailing such shootings, but only schemes ultimately designed to deprive law-abiding citizens of their guns.
Inflate the Number of Mass Shootings
Their first ploy is to make people think that mass shootings are an everyday occurrence. That scares most people, and understandably so. But these exploiters know that fear makes people easier to manipulate.
The Gun Violence Archive, a favorite media source, reports that as of November 4 there have been 445 mass shootings this year and 3,046 mass shootings since January 2020—an average of about a dozen a week. The GVA defines a mass shooting as any shooting where four or more victims are injured or killed, including shootings from gang violence, drug deals, armed robberies, domestic conflict, and violent arguments. And that’s the problem.
The vast majority of these incidents do not involve the type of random public shooting that occurred at the Arkansas grocery store, Texas mall, Louisville bank, or schools in Georgia and Nashville, or earlier shootings at the Uvalde, Parkland, Sutherland Springs, Orlando, and Las Vegas. The GVA’s numbers greatly exaggerate the frequency of mass public shootings as most people think of them. That’s why exploiters always use the GVA for mass shooting statistics—the more shootings the public thinks there are, the more restrictive gun-control measures the public will accept.
Other databases have adopted definitions that focus on the distinct tragedy of mass public shootings, as opposed to different gun violence problems in the United States.
The Violence Project uses a definition of mass public shooting based on that used by the Congressional Research Service and many leading criminologists. It counts incidents where four or more victims are killed with firearms in a single event and at least some of the murders occurred in a public location (e.g., workplace, school, mall, or other public setting). The murders must not be attributable to underlying criminal, domestic, or commonly-motivated violent activities. That excludes gang violence, domestic or romantic conflicts, armed robbery, and arguments that become violent.
The Mother Jones magazine database defines mass shooting incidents where three or more victims are killed, typically in public place, excluding crimes related to gang violence or armed robbery, and killings from domestic violence or in private homes.[1]
Even one mass public shooting is too many, but such shootings fortunately are far more rare than portrayed by the media. Since January 2020, the Violence Project counts 28 mass public shootings in which 196 people were killed. Mother Jones, with its lower fatality threshold, identifies 34 such shootings involving 209 fatalities. By contrast, there were 3,075 fatal shootings in just one city—Chicago—during the same period. In 2022, the most recent year for which complete data is available, mass public shooting fatalities accounted for only one-fourth of one percent (.24%) of the 19,651 total homicides with firearms.
News outlets exploit mass public shootings in their coverage. Hours of live coverage followed the mall shooting last year in Allen, Texas, even when reporters had little information to give viewers. The very next day, a person driving an SUV plowed through a crowd of migrants waiting at a bus stop near Brownsville, Texas, killing 8 persons—the same number of victims that died at the mall shooting. Very few minutes were given to reporting about that tragedy.
The media gave days of coverage to the 7 killed in the July 4, 2002, parade shooting at Highland Park, Illinois, but almost nothing was said about the 8 people killed in shootings in Chicago over the same July 4th weekend.
The media’s excessive coverage of such shootings creates an impulsive public reaction that almost always starts and ends with calls for banning certain guns. Thoughtful measures that stand a far better chance of being effective often are bypassed in the rush to do something immediately.
Focus on the Gun, Not the Shooter
The second ploy is to focus on the gun, not the shooter (unless the shooter fits the preferred narrative of the angry, conservative white male). Within hours of a mass public shooting—often before the firearm used in the shooting is identified—gun-control politicians and advocates typically call for banning commonly-owned semiautomatic rifles they call “assault weapons.” Such firearms, they say, are “weapons of war,” too dangerous for citizens to own and ill-suited for self-defense.[2]
Mass public shootings are tragic no matter what firearm is used. But the danger posed by so-called “assault weapons” is exaggerated. The handgun is the most common weapon used in mass shootings. Shooters used handguns in high-casualty shootings at Virginia Tech (58), Killeen (45), Ft. Hood (45), and Thousand Oaks (33), whose casualties approximate mass shootings with “assault weapons” at Highland Park (55), El Paso (49), Sutherland Springs (45), Uvalde (38), and Parkland (34). Overall, “assault weapons” have been used in 27% of mass public shootings, and all rifles (of which some fraction are designated “assault weapons” under varying definitions) are used in only 3% of firearm homicides. One recent study showed that mass public shootings with a handgun are more lethal than those associated with a rifle.[3]
There is little reliable evidence that banning “assault weapons” will save lives. Pro-ban advocates often cite two “studies” analyzing the effects of the 1995-2004 federal ban. The first was produced by Charles DiMaggio and eight other medical professionals.[4] The study finds that mass shooting deaths decreased during the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban, and that the risk of dying in a mass shooting was 70 percent lower during that period. It then identifies 44 mass shootings from 1981 through 2017 in which four or more fatalities were reported (not including the shooter), resulting in 501 fatalities. It says that 34 of these shootings were committed with assault weapons, which accounted for 430 (86 percent) of the fatalities. The study concludes that had the federal ban been in effect for the entire period from 1981 through 2017, it might have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the non-ban years.
The study is flawed and its conclusions unreliable. Measuring the effect of the federal assault weapon ban requires distinguishing mass shootings with banned “assault weapons” from mass shootings with non-banned weapons, such as handguns. After all, the point of an “assault weapon” ban is to reduce mass shootings with the banned firearms.
An “assault weapon” under the 1994 federal ban included both specific firearms by name and any semiautomatic firearm capable of accepting a detachable magazine and having two or more features like a folding or telescoping stock, pistol grip, barrel shroud, flash hider, or threaded barrel. To identify whether a mass shooting occurred with an “assault weapon,” the DiMaggio study’s authors made no attempt to determine whether the weapons used actually met the federal ban’s definition of “assault weapon.” Instead, they simply searched mass shooting databases for “AK,” “AR,” “MCX,” “assault,” “assault,” and “semiautomatic.”
Although all “assault weapons” are semiautomatic, not all semiautomatics are “assault weapons.” A semiautomatic firearm fires only one round with each pull of the trigger and automatically loads the next round after firing. The federal ban did not apply to all semiautomatic firearms, as the study’s authors assumed, but only to those with detachable magazines and two or more of the specified features. The vast majority of semiautomatic handguns do not have the additional features required by the federal ban.
Using “semiautomatic” as a search identifier vastly overstated the number of mass shootings committed with “assault weapons.” The study’s weapon data set for the 34 incidents shows that in at least 20 (almost 60 percent) of the shootings, non-banned semiautomatic handguns—in 9mm, .45, and other popular calibers—were wrongly identified as “assault weapons.” This obviously skewed the study’s results. Yet, gun-control advocates such as the Giffords Law Center, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Sandy Hook Promise continue to use the study as they push for more “assault weapon” bans. Legislators, media reports, and opinion writers also have cited the study in calling for such bans.
Stanford law professor John Donohue also has studied the effects of the federal assault weapons ban.[5] Using the Mother Jones mass-shooting database, he says the number and deadliness of mass shootings declined during the decade from September 1994 through 2004 when the federal assault weapons ban was in effect, and then “rose sharply” after the ban was lifted. “The decade after the ban elapsed,” he writes, “saw a 266% increase in mass shooting incidents and a 347% increase in fatalities.”[6]
These percentages are shocking until you consider the data behind them. According to the Violence Project mass-shooting database—more comprehensive and reliable than Mother Jones—there were 25 mass shootings in the decade preceding the federal ban that resulted in 156 total fatalities.[7] “Assault weapons” were used in 6 of those shootings with 36 fatalities. During the 10-year federal ban, 33 mass shootings resulted in 173 total fatalities. “Assault weapons” were used in 7 shootings with 42 fatalities. In the post-ban decade, 46 mass shootings resulted in 328 fatalities. “Assault weapons” were used in 8 shootings with 70 fatalities.
Mass public shootings did not decline during the ban. They increased from 25 (pre-ban) to 33 (during ban) to 46 (post-ban). Nor did mass public shootings with the banned “assault weapons” spike once the ban expired. Such shootings increased from 6 (pre-ban) to 7 (during ban) to 8 (post-ban) during this 30-year period. The post-ban increase is the continuation of an existing trend.
Mass shootings and fatalities did increase in the decade following the federal ban’s expiration, but that increase is mostly from incidents involving non-banned weapons. Pre-ban, 19 mass shootings with non-assault weapons resulted in 120 fatalities. During the ban, 26 such shootings resulted in 131 fatalities. Post-ban, 38 mass shootings with non-banned weapons resulted in 258 fatalities.
The Violence Project recently published additional data for firearms used in mass public shootings. It shows that “assault weapons” were used in 17% of mass shootings from 1995-99, 18% from 2000-04, only 8% from 2005-09 (the five years following the ban), and 13% from 2010-14. Counting by calendar year rather than by the exact dates the federal ban was in place, the data also show that “assault weapons” were used in 9 shootings from 1995-2004 and 7 shootings from 2005-2014. These figures contradict the claim that mass shootings with “assault weapons” increased after the federal ban expired. All of this suggests that banning “assault weapons” does not meaningfully, if at all, lower mass shootings.
To be sure, the use of “assault weapons” in mass public shootings has increased substantially since 2015. But that increase appears related to other societal factors, not to the absence of an “assault weapons” ban. The incessant press for such bans is more about denying guns to lawful gun owners, than about stopping mass public shootings.
Gun bans conflict with the Second Amendment. The Amendment protects small arms commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens that are useful for warfare and for lawful nonmilitary purposes such as individual self-defense.[8]Common semiautomatic rifles, including the popular AR-15, are the very kind of dual-use firearms possessed by early Americans that protect citizens from the tyrannical ruler or common criminal, and thus are at the core of Second Amendment protection.
Nobody wants guns in the hands of mass murderers. But the perception that the problem is with the firearm rather than the shooter obscures the complexities surrounding the actual causes of mass shootings and diverts policy makers from effective prevention and protection measures. Reducing violence perpetrated by mass public shooters requires effective and narrowly-tailored laws, mental health reform, media self-restraint, proper family guidance, enhanced security measures, and law enforcement competence. Mass public shootings are a social problem, not a gun problem.
[1] Mother Jones used four or more victims as its baseline for fatalities until 2013, when it lowered the number to three or more.
[2] David Kopel and I recently filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court debunking these claims. For additional sources on this topic, see E. Gregory Wallace, “Assault Weapon” Lethality, 88 Tenn. L. Rev. 1 (2020); E. Gregory Wallace, “Assault Weapon” Myths, 43 So. Ill. L. Rev. 193 (2018); David Kopel, AR Rifle Ammunition is Less Powerful Than Most Other Rifle Ammunition, The Volokh Conspiracy (Apr. 11, 2023) (co-authored with Gregory Wallace); David Kopel, How Powerful are AR Rifles?, The Volokh Conspiracy (Feb. 27, 2023) (same).
[3] Babak Sarani, et al., Wounding Patterns Based on Firearm Type in Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the United States, 228 J. Am. College Surgeons 228 (2019).
[4] Charles DiMaggio et al., “Changes in US Mass Shooting Deaths Associated with the 1994–2004 Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Analysis of Open–source Data,” 86 Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 11 (2019). The following paragraphs on the DiMaggio study are adapted from E. Gregory Wallace & George A. Mocsary, “Fact Check: Mass Shootings Actually Increased During the Federal ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban,” The Federalist (Jan. 31, 2023).
[5] John J. Donohue, The Swerve to “Guns Everywhere”: A Legal and Empirical Evaluation, 83 L. & Contemp. Probs. 117 (2020); see John Donohue & Theodora Boulouta, The Assault Weapon Ban Saved Lives, Stanford L. Sch. L. Aggregate Blog (Oct. 15, 2019).
[6] Donohue, supra note 5, at 117 n.2.
[7] The federal “assault weapon” ban was in effect for the 10 years from September 13, 1994, through September 12, 2004.
[8] District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 623–25 (2008).