The killers' empty cartridge casings still were falling to the ground in the San Bernardino terrorism attack when President Barack Obama issued yet another feckless call for "common sense" gun control, as if somehow more rules would stop terrorists in their tracks.
Obama's predictable response to the well-planned California attack that killed 14 and left 21 wounded should come as no surprise. It is the same tired rhetoric we have heard for years; the same approach. Make a law. It didn't work? OK, make another one. That did not work, either? Make yet another. We are left with thousands of "common sense" gun control laws that have no effect on bad guys with guns. It is business as usual. Again, no surprise. The political left's hallmark, after all, is mindless doubling down on whatever the latest grand notion is that simply does not work.
To further his mission of ridding this nation of guns, especially the evil and wildly popular AR-15, Obama apparently is willing to say or do just about anything. For the longest time, he told anyone who would listen, "Mass shootings just [don't] happen in other countries." Later, he added "advanced" countries to his spiel. Of late, he has tossed in the phrase "with such frequency" after finally being caught in the fib.
Turns out he is wrong on all counts. When the numbers are adjusted for a host of factors -- population, development, ethnicity -- the annual death rate for mass public shootings in the United States ranks eighth when compared to European nations, the Crime Prevention Research Center notes. When you compare the frequency of mass shootings, it ranks ninth.
Obama's penchant to stretch the truth to fit his political agenda is only bolstered by a complete lack of agreement on what constitutes a mass shooting or a mass public shooting. That gives Obama and others so inclined wide latitude to compare apples to Volkswagens in the gun debate, and the resulting confusion allows often baseless attacks on this nation's Second Amendment. Everybody, it seems, is on a different page when it comes to guns and shootings.
The Congressional Research Service, for instance, points out the FBI never has used the terms "mass shooting" or "mass public shooting" in its Uniform Crime Report, or even defined them. The FBI defines mass murder, though, as "four or more victims slain, in one event, in the one location," with the shooter not included if he or she committed suicide or was killed by justifiable homicide, the CRS says. After the horrific Newtown, Connecticut, shootings, Congress agreed "three or more killings in a single incident" is a "mass murder."
Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, using FBI statistics on crimes of all types, and plugging in the agency's definition of mass murder, concludes mass shootings in the United States have averaged about 20 per year since the mid-1970s, with no clear trend.
Using extensive data on shootings compiled by Mother Jones magazine, which uses much narrower criteria -- excluding gang killings, armed robberies, and domestic violence -- researchers from Harvard and Northwestern universities have concluded the frequency of such crimes is, indeed, increasing. The magazine also blames the National Rifle Association for stifling research on such deaths.
Adding to the confusion: Outfits like Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowdsourced website many of the media rely upon for scare numbers, has its own definitions. That website defines a mass shooting as "four or more people shot in one event." Nobody even has to be killed to be included in their tally.
There are mass murders and mass killings, active shooters and serial killers, mass shootings and mass public shootings. There is little agreement on exactly who they are, what they are or how many of them there are. Some say the number of such shootings is skyrocketing. Others disagree. One researcher tosses in gang war shootings and domestic violence. Others do not. Some fiddle with the numbers and rates to get the conclusion they want.
The resulting swirl provides plenty of room for wild statistics and claims to support every agenda. It is possible to assert there is a mass shooting someplace in the United States every 20 minutes, or every two years, if you cook the numbers and bend the definitions enough.
None of that is good for law-abiding Americans who desperately want the attacks stopped and Americans protected, while at the same time wanting their government to leave their guns alone.
Instead of more political rhetoric, this nation needs sensible, accepted definitions of terms such as "mass shooting" or "mass public shooting" before we can even begin to make headway in curbing the killers among us. If we cannot define what is happening, how can we agree on what must be done?
Paul Jenkins is editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet, a division of Porcaro Communications.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com.