"While the recent rash of public school shootings during the 1997-98 school [sic] took place after the period of our study, these incidents raise questions about the unintentional consequences of laws. The five public school shootings took place after a 1995 federal law banned guns (including permitted concealed handguns) within a thousand feet of a school. The possibility exists that attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, may have produced perverse effects. It is interesting to note that during the 1977 to 1995 period, 15 shootings took place in schools in states without right-to-carry laws and only one took place in a state with this type of law. There were 19 deaths and 97 injuries in states without the law, while there was one death and two injuries in states with the law."
Doug
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"Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry
Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law
Enforcement"
BY: JOHN R. LOTT, JR.
University of Chicago
WILLIAM M. LANDES
University of Chicago Law School
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Paper ID: University of Chicago Law School, John M. Olin Law &
Economics Working Paper No. 73
Date: April 1999
Contact: JOHN R. LOTT, JR.
Email: Mailto:john_lott at law.uchicago.edu
Postal: University of Chicago
1111 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637 USA
Phone: (773)702-0424
Fax: (773)702-0730
Co-Auth: WILLIAM M. LANDES
Email: Mailto:william_landes at law.uchicago.edu
Postal: University of Chicago Law School
1111 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637 USA
Paper Requests:
Contact Fred Royall, Program Administrator and Discussion Paper
Coordinator, Olin Law and Economics Program, University of
Chicago Law School, 1111 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.
Phone:(773)702-0220. Fax:(773)702-0730.
Mailto:fred_royall at law.uchicago.edu
ABSTRACT:
Few events obtain the same instant worldwide news coverage as
multiple victim public shootings. These crimes allow us to study
the alternative methods used to kill a large number of people
(e.g., shootings versus bombings), marginal deterrence and the
severity of the crime, substitutability of penalties, private
versus public methods of deterrence and incapacitation, and
whether attacks produce "copycats." Yet, economists have not
studied this phenomenon. Our results are surprising and
dramatic. While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty
reduce "normal" murder rates, our results find that the only
policy factor to influence multiple victim public shootings is
the passage of concealed handgun laws. We explain why public
shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to
concealed handguns, why the laws reduce both the number of
shootings as well as their severity, and why other penalties
like executions have differential deterrent effects depending
upon the type of murder.