Saturation media coverage of such terrifying events as the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, can leave some people with the impression that these things occur far more often than they do. Three years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo., the
published an article noting that public perceptions of school safety are largely at odds with what the data show.
“The unique horror of mass shootings,” the Times reported, “means they occupy a central place in parents’ fears, and in the nation’s political debate about gun access and school safety, even though they remain rare.” Most gun-related deaths—54% in 2020—are suicides. Mass shooting casualties are less than 1% of all gun deaths, and there have been 13 mass school shootings since 1966. These data points are cold comfort to those mourning the shooting victims in Uvalde, but they ought to inform any public policy response under consideration.
There are an estimated 400 million guns in circulation in the U.S., which leads gun-control advocates to conclude that school shootings are an inevitable outcome of having so many guns around. Correlation is not causation, however, and research has failed to find a causal relationship between changes in gun-ownership rates and changes in the level of school violence involving firearms. A recent analysis of the Rand Corporation’s firearms database by the University of Oklahoma’s
Daniel Hamlin
found significant increases and decreases in school gun incidents during periods when gun-ownership rates remained…