OP/ED BYTE: June 22, 2014: The debate about
firearms and mental health can't make K-12 schools or college campuses
safer if it's based on false premises — including the notion of a
mass-shooting epidemic. Writing for The American Spectator, Josh
Blackman, a South Texas College of Law assistant professor, notes that
mass shootings — involving four or more murders — were just 0.02
percent of total homicide incidents from 2002 to 2011, according to the
federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. In fact, the mass-shooting rate —
about two of every 10,000 homicide incidents — has been steady for
nearly four decades. Criminologist James Alan Fox says mass shootings
account for only about 1 percent of campus murders. And the probability
of homicide or suicide killing a K-12 student in school was less than
one in 1 million from 1992 to 1994, a little more than one in 2 million
from 1994 to 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. But people's tendencies obscure such stats.
[Pittsburgh Tribune Review:
There's no epidemic of mass shootings]
