Guest Post: Guns

Guns

By Geoff Sjostrom

Steven D. Leavitt is a University of Chicago economist who has extensively studied crime and guns. If his name sounds familiar, it's because he and Stephen J. Dubner wrote the book "Freakonomics." Their latest podcast is entitled, "How to Think About Guns," and in it they talk about a study of mass shootings from 1982 to 2012 found on the Mother Jones website.  The podcast can be heard here:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2013/02/14/how-to-think-about-guns-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

A couple of highlights from the podcast:

--A particular handgun in America will, on average, be used in a homicide once in 10,000 years.

--A swimming pool in the back yard is 100 times more likely to kill a young child than a gun in the house.

--That Mother Jones study shows that in that time period, there has been an average of two mass shootings and 16.5 fatalities per year. 2012 was off the charts, with 7 shootings and 72 fatalities, four times the average.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data

My own piece, limited to school shootings, can be seen here:

https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/newtown-a-first-responders-perspective/

*****

Geoff is a retired police officer. ~Bob