Thread by @JohnFPfaff

1. So here are the basic facts on mass shootings and homicides:

1. Mass shooting deaths have been rising in recent years.

2. Mass shooting deaths a minuscule fraction of all deaths.

3. Overall homicide levels have been (mostly) declining.

2. Just to stress this point, last year, when mass shootings hit an all-time high, they comprised 0.67% of all homicides: 99.23% of all homicides were not during mass shootings.

This likely has problematic, but expected, policy implications:

3. We often see demands for policies that specifically address mass shootings, like regulating/banning AR-15s.

Gun regulation, though, is politically costly: you don’t get a lot of bites at that NRA-protected apple. Need to focus on core issues—and mass shootings aren’t that.

4. Salience is a tricky thing.

OT1H, mass shootings are awful, and their horror makes them emotionally gripping and fear-inducing—and those are real costs and real harms!

OTOH, far, far more death comes from less shocking but far more common acts of far-more-private violence.

5. Also, mass shootings are perhaps more arbitrary and more terroristic in nature—even if the mass shooter is targeting one specific person for more-common reasons, his (yes, his) act of violence has an extra random component, leaving us all feeling globally less safe.

6. But still, this graph is important: over 99% of all homicides are not mass shootings.

So, to the extent that mass shootings provide an important catalyst for political reform, emphasis should be on changes that target gun violence broadly, not mass shootings specifically.

7. And one last technical note: I used @MotherJones data on mass shootings (motherjones.com/politics/2012/…) bc it is easily publicly available.

But the definition of “mass shooting” (# shot, # killed, etc., etc.) matters: washingtonpost.com/graphics/busin…

Caveat Regressor w this data.