Mark Hemingway
Lefty mag’s own reporting contradicts its conclusions about gun violence
For the purposes of their study, they identified mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people were killed. Right of the bat, this suggests their conclusion is somewhat fallacious. The whole point is that the presence of other armed people on the scene might stop mass shootings from becoming mass shootings. Anyway, I cited a random sampling of examples where exactly that happened. A number of those incidents involved off-duty cops and I acknowledged this explicitly, while making the distinction that Mother Jones’s definition of “civilian” seems odd and slippery…
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Reduced capacity mag.
rogerb on December 22, 2012 at 12:44 PM
Alternate headline for Mother Jones could have been:
“No mass shootings where an armed civilian stopped the perpetrator before he could kill a lot of people”
ProfShadow on December 22, 2012 at 12:48 PM
Well played sir, well played indeed.
abobo on December 22, 2012 at 12:49 PM
The recent mall shooter in Oregon was probably stopped by a citizen who drew his gun. Only two people were killed, so this wouldn’t meet Mother Jones list of mass shootings.
Also, spree shooters often go from location to location to shoot more people. Just because the shooter was leaving the scene doesn’t mean he was done shooting.
juliesa on December 22, 2012 at 12:49 PM
Liberals lie … all the time.
What’s new?
darwin on December 22, 2012 at 12:51 PM
So in order to meet Mother Jones’s criteria, a civilian would have to have the ability to demonstrate, via etra-dimensional portals, two variations of reality based on present actions: one based upon not shooting the assailant, and one where the assailant is taken out by a civilian with a gun. Once it’s demonstrated that the future holds a mass shooting, only then would Mother Jones accept that as proof that a killing of three people would’ve turned into a killing of four or more people. So there you have it, wingnut gun lovers! All you have to do to make your case to Mother Jones is have the ability to demonstrate conclusively two future outcomes, utilizing some sort of multiverse expansion device. Good luck.
Weight of Glory on December 22, 2012 at 12:58 PM
…or how liberals think.
I’m quite sure that because they are not yet arguing that police officers be disarmed, that liberals would like to stress a difference between armed civilians and armed off-duty officers. Thus, armed off-duty officers don’t really count.
Of course, once the populous was disarmed, the same group could be saying it’s not fair that the police can carry in civilian clothes.
Axeman on December 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM
Hmm, I wonder it the fact that mass shootings almost always happen in places where the victims were legally disarmed could be a factor in there not being more of them stopped by armed civilians.
single stack on December 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM
Oddly enough, this is the same liberal media that can tell us that the economy would have been much worse if Obama hadn’t “saved us” with his actions.
However the list of presidents who could not keep unemployment below 10% would still contain Obama.
Axeman on December 22, 2012 at 1:04 PM
The publication will now be referred to as Mother Jones clip.
Bishop on December 22, 2012 at 1:13 PM
The last refuge of a hyperventilating leftist ahole: Blame their inability to logically answer by claiming that YOU are a brainwashed drone.
Bishop on December 22, 2012 at 1:18 PM
Have any of the libs mentioned that murders have decreased by 50% in the last thirty years?
claudius on December 22, 2012 at 1:49 PM
LOL.
From the M article:
The main reasons the preponderance of killings are stopped by police and not civilians is because the schools never call and 911 dispatchers never route the call to civilian stations. When you add that to the fact that armed civilians are not only prohibited from congregating in schools but also near schools and that includes employees from having their weapons stored in their vehicles at the school, it shouldn’t be surprising the incidence of civilians stopping mass shooting at schools is so low and it’s unpersuasive to argue that we shouldn’t have armed civilians in schools because history has shown they don’t stop shootings in schools.
Police Stations, by the way, are nothing more than stations in which civilians are delegated the responsibility of carrying out the civilians’ rights and duties and we pay them to do so. Same with soldiers and Marines. In both cases, they train for it in similar fashion as civilians can and do, only more so and everyday, with a difference being that they also organize in precise and effective manners for their responsibilities and we contact them directly when they are needed instead of ringing the community church or City Hall steeple bell in an emergency to address the public at large.
Another, by the way. Why is it we call delegated armed and trained civilian stations when there are school shootings and not delegated gun-free civilians stations for protection and prevention?
Dusty on December 22, 2012 at 2:07 PM