Oh look! It turns out that any increase in people being shot in America’s schools is wholly confined to campuses where teachers aren’t allowed to carry. Who’d-a thunk it?
Carrying in a school is no different than in a grocery store, movie theater, or restaurant. Seventeen million Americans have concealed handgun permits — which is 8.5 percent of the adult population outside of permit-unfriendly California and New York. Nobody knows whether the person next to them might have a gun, unless it happens to be needed.
We found 306 cases of gunshots on school property, 48 of which were suicides. Not counting suicides, 193 people died and 267 were injured in these incidents. Four cases were simply instances of accidental gunshots by police officers.
The rate of shootings and people killed by them has increased significantly since 2000. The yearly average number of people who died between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018 has doubled (regardless of whether one excludes gang fights and suicides).
This increase has occurred entirely among schools that don’t let teachers carry guns. Outside of suicides or gang violence in the wee hours of the morning, there has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting at a school during school hours. Indeed, the one shooting occurred at 2:20 AM in a parking lot when no armed teachers would have been around.
There haven’t been any serious accidents. No student has ever got a hold of their teacher’s gun, and the one accidental discharge by a teacher occurred outside of school hours. The teacher had only very minor injuries.
– John Lott in Texas Is About to Expand Its Program for Teachers Carrying Guns
“This increase has occurred entirely among schools that don’t let teachers carry guns. Outside of suicides or gang violence in the wee hours of the morning, there has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting at a school during school hours. Indeed, the one shooting occurred at 2:20 AM in a parking lot when no armed teachers would have been around.”
He might want to reword that second sentence; people have definitely been wounded or killed in a shooting during school hours in recent years.
Devil’s Advocate; there’s just a wee bit of selection bias going on here, since practically no schools allows carry. I’d have appreciated an estimate of the number of schools that allow carry, the guns carried per capita or similar type measure, and whether his results about the statistical increase in disarmed schools was corrected for the vast overrepresentation. I suspect his findings are probably still valid –after all, they are confirmed every day the crime rate decreases in Detroit– but it seems like some more rigor is needed here to make the claims he is suggesting.
That is exactly my thoughts as well. Maybe 1% of schools allow carry. That would mean 99% of schools don’t allow carry. Just based on statistics, the likelihood of an event happening is almost nil.
Yes, seems to be arguing that in schools that do allow carry, none of the disasters about which the gun control crowd nash their teeth and rend their clothes have come to pass.
Though, mass shoot-outs in the streets have never happened anywhere carry rules became more permissive, but that hasn’t stopped the civilian disarmament movement from crying “rivers of blood” any time and anywhere more permissive carry rules are proposed.
I think he’s referring to schools that allow teacher to carry, not all schools. And yes, needs to be re-written.
Exactly, definitely needs to be reworded / clarified to specify schools where teachers are allowed to carry.
“Outside of suicides or gang violence in the wee hours of the morning, there has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting at a school during school hours.” I”m assuming this is referring to schools with armed teachers? If so, good I’m sure that premise will be tested in Fl before the end of the 2020 school year…
I am in favor of teacher carry as much as the next TTAGet but I have throw the BS flag here. Arming teachers has only been considered towards the latter end of the second period. True school shootings are also a rate event so the sample size isn’t large enough to establish causality and finally there are school resource officers and while Parkland demonstrated that they won’t always respond the shooter doesn’t know that a priori. Logic and the facts are on our side. There is no need to act like anti-gun side and use weak studies to make our case.
What percentage of schools allow teacher carry?
Wrong question. The correct question is “How many schools allow carry and have teachers that actually carry.” In any case teacher carry has not been around long enough to know how it affects school shootings.
Since this is not about whether a school shooting is successful or not, but about schools that have or have not been targeted, whether teachers ‘actually’ carry or not is irrelevant… it shouldn’t be common knowledge whether a teacher (or administrator) is actively carrying (or has immediate access to a gun).
What is relevant is the deterrent factor associated with the knowledge that teachers and administrators could be armed and if so, are trained, making that particular school less of a soft target.
What part of not enough data don’t you get?
Did the SRO at Parkland deter Cruz? There was no way that Cruz knew how Peterson would respond.
Yes; Lott should have framed it as ‘there has been no evidence that teacher carry made things worse’ which would be more supported by his findings. And, at least back when this country still valued liberty, that is more than enough reason to remove the existing restrictions on carry in the classroom.
My point is that _you_ don’t know the answer. Even if it was just a small percent of the schools allowed concealed carry, then the results would already be statistically significant. You’re the one making up your own conclusions.
I can see your understanding of statistics is poor. Parkland-like school shootings are rare events. Teacher carry has been around for a few years. Many mass shooters are often on a suicide and like terrorists not really deterable. We have no idea how many school shootings were seriously considered during the few years where teacher carry has been in place and were deterred. On other word we don’t know enough to draw statistically significant conclusions.
Teacher carry has been around for years. In my county in Ohio the first school allowing teacher carry did so more than 10 years ago, though only went public with that about 7 years ago. Others allow teacher carry and have for years but do not officially acknowledge this publicly. The data may be hard to get, but it is there. The larger problem is that school shootings are so rare that they are statistically a nil value, and it’s difficult to say anything general about them.
“There was no way that Cruz knew how Peterson would respond.”
Are you sure about that?
The shooter knew the SRO and maybe he also knew the SRO was a wuss.
Or at least knew his lazy ass would be parked under an air conditioner and he started shooting as far from him as possible.. Why did they need to go get the asshole? Did he have his radio off? Was he taking a nap? Time wasted to find him and get him moving didn’t really matter anyway because the coward let that punk do his thing while he hid in the parking lot with the backup….
Cruz was no longer a student at Parkland and I doubt he had an opinion one way or another about the SRO.
Don’t know about other states, but in Utah, any teacher who has a ccw permit is allowed to carry on campus. This includes elementary school through college.
California isn’t necessarily unfriendly to CCW. It’s May Issue. If you live in a county not associated with LA or San Francisco/Bay Area, you have a pretty good chance of obtaining a permit.
Teachers cannot carry in school zones, even with a CCW permit.
Most shootings occurring at schools are probably acts of passion or disrespect. Probably most shootings anywhere are. Getting rid of firearms will simply lead to more stabbings & beatings & improvised destructive devices. The UK got rid of most guns and now have a knifing crisis on their hands.
Alternately, schools that don’t allow armed teachers should be required to be single gender with uniforms only, removing some of the stimuli of aggression.
Monday In Japan 51 year old man with two knives killed two school girls and wounded 17 more before having the decency to kill himself… Gotta grab them guns…
Correlation=/=vaccination.
Yes. The vaccination protocol 262 is coming. Soon door to door forced vaccinations will begin, and it won’t be for diseases this time. It will actually be nano sized micro chips which will be forcibly inserted into us all. These chips will be the new economic order globally. Forbidden thoughts and deeds will be known to the powers that be with instaneous speed. Beware.
uhhh say again there good buddy I had to re adjust my tinfoil. Are we bringing out the dead, flattening the Earth, giving mental disorders with the MMR Vaccine, or are we doing the mind control thingy? My NWO/CIA/NSA/AARP/AAA handler wants to know, he forgot.
If the religious people get their way something like that will happen to everyone.
For instance, kids and staff will have their chip give them secure access to the school to make school shootings harder. It will be similar to how cellphones are used to get through the subway’s entrance by swiping it over the sensor. This is already being done in some businesses for various things.
From removing the need for key-cards to giving you easy access to your crypto currency. I remember when this first started with elderly people wanting to have their medical records on them at all times and people getting their animals chipped so they won’t get lost.
America is already requiring a “real ID” by 2020. You must get a new more “secure” license to travel. One step closer to your future…
Don’t forget that the religious texts billions of people follow was made by men as an instruction book. So, the future is predictable because people do what they are told to do. They will do what the books tell them regardless if you believe in a religion or want any part of it. It’s not for you to decide how your life and country is to be, that’s their choice. You won’t do anything to stop it and you alone can’t. They own you.
My tin foil hat just tore. Im getting a diffetent signal from libitard scitzofrentics today then I did yesterday.
Please rezend.
Its a simple equation. “Gun Free Zone” = death zone
How any sane person could approve of them. Just proves they are mental midgets. Or Libitard Dimwits.
“Outside of suicides or gang violence in the wee hours of the morning, there has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting at a school during school hours.”
Lott means only at schools that allow teachers/staff to carry.
Max, not entirely true. We had an elementary school teacher here in Utah who accidentally shot herself in the leg while in the restroom. She was taken to the hospital for treatment, the school admin brought in a sub, and her class continued.
“School shootings continue, and continue their prior decline after a couple decades’ forcibly disarming teachers when they enter school grounds — including teachers w CCWs. Schools that do not disarm teachers also follow on trend.”
“Teachers in classrooms the cause of no mass shootings since the controversial roll back of policies disarming them on school grounds.”
“Occasional “school” violence not associated with teachers, teachers permitted to carry on campus, increased national gun ownership, or “shall issue” and similar laws.”
“Anti-people still looking for correlation between lawful citizen arms and school shootings outside their fevered imaginations — study.”
Dr. Lott could stand to learn the difference between scholarship and polemic.
He won’t get any help with that from the academy, but still…
Also entirely in favor of school employees, not only teachers, being allowed, encouraged, trained and financially supported to be armed to protect themselves, students and co-workers.
But Lott’s conclusions are total BS, heavily biased, false statistics. There are no where near enough schools allowing armed defense to reach any legitimate statistical conclusion claiming bad guys are going elsewhere.
Let’s address the elephant in the room and stop playing the statistics game both sides love to play:
If 400M people could be competently armed tomorrow and gun free zones were gone, there would still be “mass shootings”.
Arming up will not stop mass shootings from occurring. What it will accomplish is providing would-be victims with a chance to minimize the potential casualties.
Treating the symptoms, not the disease.
The disease is the progressive / radical liberal ideology run rampant in schools and universities.
The pic of that woman shooting that gunm for the headline, looks like she is double jointed, cool.
Liberals have no problem if children are shot dead in their classroom. MOST Liberals don’t have children. The gay leadership in California is Liberal. They disarmed the schools in the state.
I believe they want kids shot dead to show how politically powerful they are. They are Socialist progressive in their political orientation.
Liberals do however want kids to be taught about homosexual sex at as young an age as possible. Since they also terminated all of the rifle teams in the High schools decades ago. In California that is.
What a terribly done and horribly worded, biased study.
Way to ruin your own point before you can make it.
John Lott had media attention until people realized his studies used flawed methods and he does not provide backup. His book “More Guns Less Crime” supposedly used FBI data but his computer “crashed” and he “lost” the data but the FBI said they were actually banned from providing the type of data he used.
Similarly here, he claims that the increase in shootings was almost all amongst campuses that ban weapons. He has a very small sample size and he fails to control for the fact that only a very small percentage of Schools actually allow carry. Please don’t publish such baseless articles from bad statisticians.