This Internet meme appeared January 17th on a facebook page called Tea Party Stand Up, which describes itself as a "NOPC Radio Free Speech Tea Party Republican movement".
Apparently one can listen to the group's program live on Blog Talk Radio Saturdays at 10 pm. EST.
The group's stated mission is "To save America one person at a time!"
Since January 17th, 444 people have 'liked' this meme and it has been 'shared' 481 times.
Although I was skeptical of the information presented, I was intimidated by the thought of trying to debunk it.
The creator of the meme did not feel it necessary to provide an attribution or cite sources for the statistics, but I would. It seemed possible that I would invest several hours of research and not be able to offer a credible response, so I moved on.
But the boldness of this assertion kept niggling at me and I wound up doing the work anyway.
I believe the statement comes from this article by John Fund which appeared in the National Review Online on December 16, 2012, just two days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The National Review bills itself as offering "Conservative commentary on American politics, news and culture." It was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Fund's article is entitled, "The Facts about Mass Shootings" with a tag line of "It's time to address mental health and gun-free zones."
The main thrust of the article is summarized in this paragraph:
"Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work."
In that article, Fund offers statistics collected from various sources to support his assertions.
To support his assertion that "gun-free zones" are counter-productive, Fund references a 1999 study by John Lott and William Landes as having found that " . . a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools."
Apparently John Fund spoke with John Lott after the Newtown shooting. He quotes Lott as saying, “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
It was a relief to find the source of the statement so quickly. I was envisioning having to analyze every word of this rather convoluted sentence to determine whether or not it was factual, beginning with an attempt to determine the definition of the word "public" and continuing on with an investigation into the gun laws of every state in which there was a public shooting where 3 or more people died -- since 1950, no less.
In one respect, then, the debunking of the meme was complete. The quote should have been presented like this:
"With just one single exception . . . every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns." -- John Lott
but otherwise, the meme's message seems to reflect the viewpoints of both John Lott and John Fund -- and apparently also the viewpoint of the folks at Tea Party Stand Up.
But I became curious about John Lott and this 1999 study -- are they credible sources? So I kept reading.
What I learned is that John Lott is a controversial figure who has published several books, articles and studies. He maintains a prominent social media presence, including this blog. Just yesterday, he appeared on Glenn Beck's radio show.
The survey John Fund referenced is available in PDF format and makes for interesting reading. The abstract states that the results of the study find that ". . . the only policy factor to have a consistently significant influence on multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws." and "... explain(s) why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce the number of shootings and have an even greater effect on their severity."
Wikipedia's entry for John Lott is extensive and its neutrality has been questioned, but there were several legitimate references cited. A few hours' reading reveals that the credibility of Lott's work has often come into question. It has been alleged that his work was funded by the NRA, that he created a fake persona to offer favorable reviews of his own work and that his statistical studies are "junk science".
In John Fund's article (from which I believe this meme's quote was culled) he cited Mother Jones' statistical study relating to mass shootings, which I take to mean that he considers Mother Jones to be as reputable a source as John Lott. Here's a Mother Jones article from 2003 which does a thorough job explaining the controversies surround Lott's credibility. He's legitimacy as a scholar has long been in question.
Some might say, "where there's smoke there's fire." Others might say that the reason Lott has so many detractors is that he speaks a truth which others seek to hide.
No wonder people like to form their opinions based on Internet memes and sound bites. Choosing to investigate is a lot more work and a lot less cut-and-dried.
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