> A choice bit from this paper is footnote 10:
>
> "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.
A law that was never emforced and was struck down by the SC as an abuse of federal power under the commerce clause.
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
>
> ----
>
> "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
>
> Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
> http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=161637
>
> Other Electronic Document Delivery:
> http://www.law.uchicago.edu/Publications/Working/
> SSRN only offers technical support for papers
> downloaded from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection
> location. When URLs wrap, you must copy and paste
> them into your browser eliminating all spaces.
>
> 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.
>
--
Joseph Noonan jfn1 at msc.com
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.
-Emma Goldman