About those mass shootings…

Ted Millar’s article “Another Day in America Means Another Mass Shooting” was simply the latest installment of the Medium echo chamber’s campaign of self-righteous whining by people too lazy to actually examine what they are saying.

Mr. Millar, like so many others, is content to parrot the numbers generated by people with an agenda like his own.

But let’s look at those numbers. I don’t have all the incidents for 2021 compiled yet, but I do have them for 2020. In order to make them easy to understand, I created an illustration.

11 states with strong gun laws accounted for about 49% of all of those mass shootings reported by the Gun Violence Archive. Then you have to toss in eight more for the District of Columbia.

Now look at the green states. They don’t even require a permit to carry a concealed handgun, let alone require universal background checks, have assault weapons bans, or place restrictions on magazine capacities. Their slice of the pie is about 12.3%.

In the illustration, I noted that the Gun Violence Archive has a very loose definition of a mass shooting. Here’s an example:

Two wanted felons were spotted in a shopping center parking lot in Sand City, California. Security at one of the stores notified the police and two officers were dispatched to bring the…