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The rate of people who carry unlicensed guns are at a high level. Around 80% of crimes committed were by guns that were obtained illegally.  The fact guns can easily be accessed without the need of a background check is atrocious. There should be no easy way to get a gun at all, there should be stricter ways to obtain such a deadly weapon.

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"The vast majority of crime that is gun related is committed by people who illegally are possessing that firearm."

By Dan Clark on Monday, March 12th, 2018 at 1:57 p.m.

U.S. Rep. John Faso says he opposes some gun-control measures because they target the wrong people.

Laws that limit the rights of law-abiding gun owners don't make sense because most gun crime is committed by those who illegally possess a gun, said Faso, a Republican.

"The vast majority of crime that is gun related is committed by people who illegally are possessing that firearm," Faso said in an interview on C-SPAN.
National data
Faso - who represents parts of the Hudson Valley and Capital Region - supports strengthening background checks for gun buyers, banning bump stocks and raising the age to purchase a firearm to 21. He does not support other measures, like a ban on assault-style firearms.

Is Faso right that the majority of gun crime is committed by those who illegally possess a gun?

The last time the government tracked this kind of data was in 2004 when the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics surveyed inmates in federal and state prisons. Part of the survey asked inmates who had a gun during their crime where they originally got it.

Dr. Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, was part of a team that used the data to estimate how many illegally possessed guns.

In the 13 states with the fewest restrictions on gun ownership, 40 percent of inmates illegally obtained the gun they used, Webster said. Only about 13 percent purchased the gun from a store or pawn shop.

In the other 37 states, including New York state, 60 percent of inmates illegally procured the gun they used, Webster said.

"If you look at the most stringent standards for legal gun ownership, it's more like 65 percent," Webster said.

The data is hard to track because gun ownership laws vary from state to state. New York state has universal background checks, for example. All gun sales have to go through a federally licensed dealer. A state like Mississippi, meanwhile, does not require background checks outside of gun shops.

New York state also prohibits people convicted of several violent misdemeanors from buying or owning a gun. Many other states do not, Webster said.

"What people don't really appreciate is that the standards for gun ownership are so that you can be a legal gun owner but not so much law abiding," Webster said.

About 48 percent of state prison inmates surveyed said they got the gun they used from a family member, friend, gun store, pawn shop, flea market, or gun show. Most states only require a background check if the purchase happens at a gun store, according to the Giffords Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Forty percent of state prison inmates admitted they obtained the gun illegally on the black market, from a drug dealer, or by stealing it.
Local data
Federal agencies have not released research similar to Webster's on illegal gun crime. His study was the only analysis of federal data we could find and experts were not aware of another.

Congress since the 1990s has had an effective ban on federal taxpayer money being spent on research into gun violence as a public health issue and gun control advocacy by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But other government agencies are free to collect data on guns and gun crime.

Regional studies have found that a higher share of criminals did not legally possess a gun when they committed their crimes.
Previous ruling
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh teamed up with the Pittsburgh Police Department in 2016 to look at almost 900 firearms recovered from crime scenes in 2008. They found the criminals connected to these firearms did not legally possess them in 80 percent of the cases.

A study from the University of Chicago looked at 99 inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago in 2015. It found only about 3 percent of inmates who used a gun bought it at a gun store. Researchers did not track the share of inmates who purchased a gun legally through other means.

MSNBC Host Joe Scarborough claimed in 2015 that a very small share of crimes were committed by those who legally possess guns. PolitiFact rated that claim Half True.

For that check, we spoke with Philip Cook, a professor of economics and sociology at Duke University. He co-authored the study from the University of Chicago.

"I think it's safe to say that a low percentage of criminal assaults and robberies are committed with guns that were acquired by legal purchase from a gun store," Cook said in 2015.

As we noted in 2015, not all guns purchased outside a gun store are illegally obtained.

We checked back with Cook for this story. He said the data on violent crimes supports Faso's claim.

"Most people who commit assault, robbery, or murder with a gun anywhere in the U.S. are disqualified under federal law from being in possession of a gun due to age, criminal record, addiction status, immigration status or other reason," Cook said.

But there are caveats to the data, experts warned.
Our ruling

* Some gun crimes are never solved, so it's impossible to know whether the gun was obtained illegally.

* The national data is more than a decade old. The prison population of 2004 may be different from today's inmates.

* The data also varies between states. An illegal gun sale in one state may be legal in another. Someone can legally sell a gun to their friend without a background check in Mississippi, but not New York.

That means Faso's claim may be true in some states but false in others.

Faso said "The vast majority of crime that is gun related is committed by people who illegally are possessing that firearm."

People can differ on what constitutes a "vast majority." What's more, illegal gun crime is not well researched in the U.S. The latest data is more than a decade old. One analysis of the data showed Faso's claim is not true in some states while true in others. But experts say most gun crime is likely committed by those who illegally possess guns.

His statement is accurate but needed additional information. We rate it Mostly True.

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Do illegal gun owners commit most gun crime?

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U.S. Rep. John Faso says he opposes some gun-control measures because they target the wrong people. Laws that limit the rights of law-abiding gun owners don't make sense because most gun crime is committed by those who illegally possess a gun, said Faso, a Republican.

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Statistics have shown that most deaths and injuries have come from the possession of a gun. The main weapon used in suicides has been guns.

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Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

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In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour.

73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010.

Firearms were the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide in 2010, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents.

Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers - less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.

In the first seven years of the U.S.-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the U.S., however, every seven weeks.
Homicide
Guns were used in 11,078 homicides in the U.S. in 2010, comprising almost 35% of all gun deaths, and over 68% of all homicides.

On average, 33 gun homicides were committed each day for the years 2005-2010.

Regions and states with higher rates of gun ownership have significantly higher rates of homicide than states with lower rates of gun ownership.

Where guns are prevalent, there are significantly more homicides, particularly gun homicides.
Suicide
Firearms were used in 19,392 suicides in the U.S. in 2010, constituting almost 62% of all gun deaths.

Over 50% of all suicides are committed with a firearm.

On average, 49 gun suicides were committed each day for the years 2005-2010.

White males, about 40% of the U.S. population, accounted for over 80% of firearm suicides in 2010.

A study of California handgun purchasers found that in the first year after the purchase of a handgun, suicide was the leading cause of death among the purchasers.

Firearms were used in nearly 44% of suicide deaths among persons under age 25 in 2010.

More than 75% of guns used in suicide attempts and unintentional injuries of 0-19 year-olds were stored in the residence of the victim, a relative, or a friend.

The risk of suicide increases in homes where guns are kept loaded and/or unlocked.
Unintentional Deaths and Injuries
In 2010, unintentional firearm injuries caused the deaths of 606 people.

From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the U.S. died from unintentional shootings.

Over 1,300 victims of unintentional shootings for the period 2005-2010 were under 25 years of age.

People of all age groups are significantly more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries when they live in states with more guns, relative to states with fewer guns. On average, states with the highest gun levels had nine times the rate of unintentional firearms deaths compared to states with the lowest gun levels.

A federal government study of unintentional shootings found that 8% of such shooting deaths resulted from shots fired by children under the age of six.

The U.S. General Accounting Office has estimated that 31% of unintentional deaths caused by firearms might be prevented by the addition of two devices: a child-proof safety lock (8%) and a loading indicator (23%).

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Statistics on Gun Deaths & Injuries | Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

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In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour. 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010.

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Statistics in the article show that people who own guns for self defense are not even used for self defense. The article tells you about how owning a gun in a home mostly puts the ones living in it at risk. Something fatal can happen to the ones living in the house, it can cause temptations to hold a gun and most of the time causes death to children. Children have died to just finding a gun in the home and playing with it no safety on then in an instant their lives are gone. Gun owners are often irresponsible with the guns they own and can take an innocent life away.

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Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

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Guns kept in the home are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal unintentional shooting, criminal assault or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense. That is, a gun is more likely to be used to kill or injure an innocent person in the home than a threatening intruder.

Though guns may be successfully used in self-defense even when they are not fired, the evidence shows that their presence in the home makes a person more vulnerable, not less. Instead of keeping owners safer from harm, objective studies confirm that firearms in the home place owners and their families at greater risk. Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that living in a home where guns are kept increased an individual's risk of death by homicide by between 40 and 170%. Another study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology similarly found that "persons with guns in the home were at greater risk of dying from a homicide in the home than those without guns in the home." This study determined that the presence of guns in the home increased an individual's risk of death by homicide by 90%.

Claims that guns are used defensively millions times every year have been widely discredited. Using a gun in self-defense is no more likely to reduce the chance of being injured during a crime than various other forms of protective action. At least one study has found that carrying a firearm significantly increases a person's risk of being shot in an assault; research published in the American Journal of Public Health reported that, even after adjusting for confounding factors, individuals who were in possession of a gun were about 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession.

The gun lobby has often cited to a thoroughly debunked statistic that guns are used defensively 2.5 million times per year in the United States. That discredited estimate came from a 1995 study that suffered from several fatal methodological flaws, including its reliance on only 66 responses in a telephone survey of 5,000 people, multiplied out to purportedly represent over 200 million American adults. The authors of that discredited study themselves stated that in up to 64% of their reported defensive gun use cases, the guns were carried or used illegally, including cases where the victim was actually the aggressor.

A study published in 2013 by the Violence Policy Center, using five years of nationwide statistics (2007-2011) compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice found that defensive gun use occurs at a dramatically lower rate, about 98.5% lower than the gun lobby has claimed. The V.P.C. also found that for every one justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 44 criminal homicides. This ratio does not take into account the tens of thousands of lives lost in gun suicides or accidental shootings every year.

Another study reviewing surveys of gun use in the U.S. determined that a majority of self-reported defensive gun uses may also have been illegal and against the interests of society.

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Statistics on the Dangers of Gun Use for Self-Defense | Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

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Guns kept in the home are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal unintentional shooting, criminal assault or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense. That is, a gun is more likely to be used to kill or injure an innocent person in the home than a threatening intruder.

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Major retailers such as Walmart and Dicks Sporting Goods made a "change" by raising the age limit of purchasing guns to 21. I don't see this as a change I see this as another input on how to get guns, why is a family store such as Walmart selling guns to people? It doesn't make sense to sell something that has no positive remarks to it, it only causes destructions.

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Kroger, Walmart, and Dick's Changed How They Sell Guns, But Here's Why It May Not Make a Difference

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Kroger will no longer sell guns to customers under 21 years old, but that may not actually change gun violence in this country.

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Statistics of Mass Shootings in the USA Compared to Other Countries 

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Statistics of Mass Shootings in the USA Compared to Other Countries 

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The United States has a higher percentage of Mass Shootings than any other country in the world

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Editor's note: This story was originally published in October 2017 and has been republished with updated data on gun violence rates.
Every fall the University of Washington produces a report comparing the past year's rate of gun violence in the United States to the rates in other countries.

The timing of this year's report couldn't be more apt - or more grim. The statistics were released on Thursday just as Americans were waking up to the news that a gunman had opened fire the night before at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He killed 12 people and was found dead at the scene.

The attack came just 11 days after the fatal shooting that claimed 11 lives at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue. Eight months before that, a gunman shot 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. And just over a year ago a gunman massacred 58 people at a music festival in Las Vegas.

As in previous years, the University of Washington's latest data indicate that this level of gun violence in a well-off country is a particularly American phenomenon.

When you consider countries with the top indicators of socioeconomic success - income per person and average education level, for instance - the United States is bested by just 18 nations, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan.

Those countries all also enjoy low rates of gun violence. But the U.S. has the 28th-highest rate in the world: 4.43 deaths due to gun violence per 100,000 people in 2017. That was nine times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people - and 29 times as high as in Denmark, which had 0.15 deaths per 100,000.

The numbers come from a massive database maintained by the University's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks lives lost in every country, in every year, by every possible cause of death. The 2017 figures paint a fairly rosy picture for much of the world, with deaths due to gun violence rare even in many countries that are extremely poor - such as Bangladesh, which saw 0.07 deaths per 100,000 people.

Prosperous Asian countries such as Singapore and Japan boast the absolute lowest rates, though the United Kingdom and Germany are in almost as good shape.

"It is a little surprising that a country like ours should have this level of gun violence," Ali Mokdad, a professor of global health and epidemiology at the IHME, told NPR in an interview last year. "If you compare us to other well-off countries, we really stand out."
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To be sure, there are quite a few countries where gun violence is a substantially larger problem than in the United States - particularly in Central America and the Caribbean. Mokdad said a major driver is the large presence of gangs and drug trafficking. "The gangs and drug traffickers fight among themselves to get more territory, and they fight the police," said Mokdad. And citizens who are not involved are often caught in the crossfire. Another country with widespread gun violence is Venezuela, which has been grappling with political unrest and an economic meltdown.
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Mokdad said drug trafficking may also be a driving factor in two Asian countries that have unusually high rates of violent gun deaths for their region, the Philippines and Thailand.
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With the casualties due to armed conflicts factored out, even in conflict-ridden regions such as the Middle East, the U.S. rate is worse.
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The U.S. gun violence death rate is also higher than in nearly all countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including many that are among the world's poorest.
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One more way to consider these data: The institute also estimates what it would expect a country's rate of gun violence deaths to be based solely on its socioeconomic status. By that measure, the U.S. should be seeing only 0.46 deaths per 100,000 people. Instead, its actual rate of 4.43 deaths per 100,000 is almost 10 times as high.

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Deaths From Gun Violence: How The U.S. Compares With The Rest Of The World

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Editor's note: This story was originally published in October 2017 and has been republished with updated data on gun violence rates. Every fall the University of Washington produces a report comparing the past year's rate of gun violence in the United States to the rates in other countries.

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The BIGGEST mass murder to ever happen. It shocked the world, people were there for a concert suddenly gun shots were fired. This had to been one of the most gruesome events to ever happen, Stephen Paddock killed 59 people and injured more than 500. Camped out in a hotel room shooting from afar, people running, dying and just fighting for their lives.

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Dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured when a gunman opened fire at a country music festival near the Mandalay Bay casino.

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Adam Lanza... The man to gruesomely kill children, teachers and his own mother. Adam Lanza killed his own mother and then took a drive to Sandy Hook there he killed 20 victims that included children and staff.

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Sandy Hook School Shootings Fast Facts | CNN

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Read CNN’s Fast Facts about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.

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The Columbine Shooting was one of the most horrific shootings we have ever heard of. 13 people killed, 23 injured all in the hands of Dylan Klebod and Eric Harris. They were killing student/teachers with bombs, using unlicensed guns that were sold to that at a gun show.

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Republicans and Democrats do not want guns gone. What they want is stricter ways of getting guns. They want more background checks for both store and private sellers. But there are ways of getting around this as people do still sell unlicensed guns so the outcome will still be the same.

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Our gun-data spreadsheet now includes spending on state- and federal-level lobbying; state and federal contributions from gun control groups, gun rights groups, and gun manufacturers; contributions to members of Congress; and current NRA data.

Gun violence is a fact of life in the United States, and mass shootings continue to occur with frightening regularity.

Mass shootings are often quickly politicized as lawmakers and members of the public alike grapple with how to address senseless gun violence. But organizations on both sides of the issue have been working in Washington for decades, contributing to decades of political gridlock broken in June 2022 by the bipartisan gun safety bill.

National outcry for solutions after several high-profile mass shootings preceded recent legislative action. Less than two weeks after a May 10 shooting left 10 people in the Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, N.Y., dead and several others injured, 19 children and two adults were in an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Between the two mass casualty events, another left one dead and multiple injured at a Taiwanese church in California. The and shootings are being investigated as hate crimes.

Congress passed bipartisan legislation that expanded background checks for buyers under 21, funds state intervention programs including so-called "red flag" laws and allocates millions for mental health and school safety resources. The bill also cracks down on gun trafficking and straw purchasers and expands the ban on domestic abusers to include serious or recent partners. Fifteen Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the legislation, although a majority of congressional Republicans, backed by prominent gun rights groups including the National Rifle Association, opposed the bill as too broad.

President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on June 25, 2022.

A week later, a gunman killed seven people at a 4th of July parade in the Highland Park neighborhood in Chicago. The killing highlighted acknowledged limitations of the bipartisan bill to stop such mass shootings, but broader bans on assault rifles or other weapons are unlikely to pass the current Congress.

We've been here before

Deadly shootings across the country shock the conscience and spur debate in both communities and Congress.

In April 2019, a shooting at a synagogue in the town of Poway in Southern California killed one and injured three in what officials deem a hate crime. The Poway synagogue shooting came exactly six months after a man spouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire on worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in an attack that left 11 dead. The Anti-Defamation League described the Tree of Life shooting as on the Jewish community in American history.

The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history occurred one year earlier, in Oct. 2017, at a Las Vegas music festival, resulting in the deaths of 58 concertgoers and injuring hundreds more.

Only 16 months before that, a gunman armed with a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle murdered 49 people and injured 58 at an Orlando nightclub in what was then the country's worst mass shooting. The horrific attack in Orlando came less than six months after a man and a woman opened fire at a San Bernardino, Calif., social services center, killing 14 and injuring 22.

The issue of how to strike a balance between gun rights and public safety has been a political hot potato for years. Prominent gun rights organizations consistently spent millions more on lobbying in Washington than their gun control counterparts, according to OpenSecrets data, contributing to decades-long stalemate.

But former President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to protect Second Amendment rights and often warned gun owners that their Second Amendment rights are "under assault." In an April 2019 speech to NRA members, he will not ratify America's participation in the international Arms Trade Treaty, which would provide some international oversight on arms sales.

In opposition to the Republicans, the Democratic-controlled House prioritized passing gun control legislation. The House previously with some bipartisan support that strengthen and expand the background check process and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, because of the bill's measure that seeks to prevent domestic abusers from obtaining guns.

In June 2016, Democrats mounted a successful filibuster that forced Senate Republicans to vote on four gun control proposals - none of which passed.

A .44 caliber political issue

The last major piece of gun control legislation to make it into law prior to the bipartisan gun bill passed in June was the assault weapons ban, passed in 1994 as part of a larger crime-related bill approved by Congress and signed by then-President Bill Clinton. But the ban, which applied to the manufacture of 19 specific models of semi-automatic firearms and other guns with similar features, expired in 2004, and repeated attempts to renew it failed.

81% of Americans

told Pew Research Center in 2021 that they support expanding background checks to include private firearm sales and purchases at gun shows, including a majority of Republican respondents. Preventing individuals with mental illnesses from purchasing guns is also supported by the vast majority of people on both sides of the political spectrum.

Some Democrats thought their support for the assault weapons ban cost them control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections. Whether or not that's true, there's little question that the politics of gun ownership have swung to the right. Republicans largely oppose gun control, and Democrats are split, with some lawmakers cautious about going against the views of more conservative constituencies, especially in rural districts.

Gun control versus gun rights was a major issue of the 2020 presidential election. One Democratic candidate, Rep. (D-Calif.) made the central issue he ran on. The necessity of more gun control legislation was among all Democratic candidates, several of whom own guns.

Despite highly publicized mass shootings, no earlier gun control measures, with the exception of the bump stock ban, made it into law prior to the recent bipartisan gun safety legislation.

OpenSecrets of the 46 senators who voted against the amendment had accepted significant campaign contributions from the political action committees of gun rights groups. There were exceptions to the rule, notably the measure's sponsors, Sens. (D-W.Va.) and (R-Pa.). But in general, the correlation was a close one.

Guns and money

There's no denying that much of the strength of the leading gun rights organization - the NRA - comes from its broad and passionate membership base and its mastery of grassroots politics.

But if lawmakers seem to tiptoe around gun issues, that could be in part because the NRA and other gun rights groups are loaded for bear with a seemingly limitless stash of cash ammunition.

During the 2018 midterm elections, gun control groups outspent the NRA for the first time by a $2.6 million margin. But gun control groups' total $23.5 million in 2020 election spending was dwarfed by the NRA's spending that cycle, and gun control organizations are outpacing gun rights groups in outside spending ahead of the 2022 midterms.

The NRA spent $29.1 million in 2020 federal elections, most of that to support in the final months of the cycle, with around $19.5 million of that spending bankrolled by its newly created super PAC and $9 million by its traditional .

Just four years earlier, the group spent during the 2016 election cycle, breaking the group's prior spending records. Of that, $31.2 million went to supporting Trump's first presidential campaign. Most of the NRA's 2016 spending was routed through its main " " group, which does not disclose its donors.

During the 2018 election cycle, the NRA made around $9.4 million in outside expenditures, a significant decrease from the $27 million spent during the 2014 midterm election cycle and a massive drop from its 2016 presidential election spending.

Those interests gave $52 million to candidates and party committees from 1989 through the second quarter of 2022, with nearly all of that going to Democrats.

Despite being by gun rights lobbying and campaign contributions, gun control groups have increased outside spending since the 2018 election cycle. Gun control advocates $16.6 million into outside spending in 2020 compared to just $14,000 in 2016.

Most of the gun control movement's political clout comes from two well-connected organizations. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety super PAC is the leading outside spender supporting gun control. The super PAC $3.6 million of the total $4.4 million spent by gun control groups through May in the 2022 cycle. , a super PAC backed by Bloomberg, supports a variety of causes including stricter gun laws. After spending a whopping $56.5 million on the 2020 election, mostly supporting President , the super PAC has poured over $1 million into 2022 midterms as of May. It spent around $37.5 million on independent expenditures during the 2018 midterms. The money supports federal candidates who favor gun control and attacks those who do not.

Another major gun control lobby spender is , an organization founded by gun violence victim and former Rep. (D-Ariz.) and her husband, current U.S. Sen. (D-Ariz.), who is running for re-election in Arizona in the 2022 midterms. Giffords spent about $500,000 on in 2021. The group's hybrid PAC spent more than $11 million during the 2020 election cycle and spent about $6.6 million during the 2022 election cycle as of June figures from OpenSecrets.

Powerful gun rights groups including the NRA and have poured millions into lobbying, campaign contributions and outside spending to advocate for the right to bear arms. At least Americans owned guns in 2021.

Gun rights groups are still powerful in the realm of lobbying, consistently spending more money to influence policy than gun control organizations. Gun rights groups a record $15.8 million on lobbying in 2021 and have $190 million in lobbying efforts since 1998.

Gun rights advocates spent more than $114 million of that total since 2013. Lobbying by gun rights advocates nearly tripled in 2013 after a gunman murdered 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 2012. The following year was the the Senate came to passing meaningful gun control legislation in the decade between the shooting and the bipartisan gun control bill.

Groups advocating for gun control spent a record $2.9 million in 2021. But gun control advocates, spearheaded by and Everytown for Gun Safety , spent just under $30 million on lobbying from 1998 through the second quarter of 2022 - about six times less than gun rights groups spent over the same period.
- Taylor Giorno, Anna Massoglia, Raymond Arke, Geoff West (July 2022)

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Our gun-data spreadsheet now includes spending on state- and federal-level lobbying; state and federal contributions from gun control groups, gun rights groups, and gun manufacturers; contributions to members of Congress; and current NRA data. Gun violence is a fact of life in the United States, and mass shootings continue to occur with frightening regularity.

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Claiming for Mental Illness After a Mass Shooting

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Claiming for Mental Illness After a Mass Shooting

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Many people feel that mental illness is linked to mass shootings. Reading this article it has taught me that mental health and mass shootings are not related. Just because people are different from us doesn't make them "mentally ill" it just makes them different. The two things do not correlate with each other.

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By Phil McCausland
In the wake of the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 students and staff, the Trump administration and many Republicans have said that the best way to end the seemingly constant stream of mass shootings is by combating mental illness.
And while some think it a reasonable idea, mental health and mass shooting experts aren't so sure.

Dr. James Alan Fox, a criminologist with Northeastern University and author of "Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder," said it's dangerous to assume that the mentally ill tend to commit these shootings.
"There's not really a correlation," said Fox, who maintains a database on mass shootings. "We like to think that these people are different from the rest of us. We want a simple explanation and if we just say they're mentally ill, case closed. Because of how fearful dangerous and deadly their actions are, we really want to distance ourselves from it and relegate it to illness."
Related: Trump vows mental health care fix after Florida shooting. He also wants to slash coverage.
Despite this, gun violence is an open question that is now dogging Washington, as politicians discuss how to resolve a seemingly unending number of mass shootings. And now Republicans have primarily framed the issue as a mental health crisis.
Broward County Mayor Beam Furr told NPR that Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz had shown signs of mental illness - as many mass shooters have - and "had been a client at some mental health facilities."
In response to the shooting, President Donald Trump said he would help the nation with "the difficult issue of mental health."
The claim appeared at odds with his administration's 2019 budget proposal that included a 22.5 percent cut to Medicaid, which accounted for a quarter of 2014's mental health spending nationwide, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he intends to have the Department of Justice work with other federal agencies "to study the intersection of mental health and criminality and violence and identify how we can stop people before these heinous crimes occur."
Trump previously pushed that same perspective after the shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, stating "mental health is your problem here" and calling the shooter "a very deranged individual."
House Speaker Paul Ryan Thursday touched on the issue of gun control when he said mentally ill individuals might be "slipping through the cracks and getting guns."
Related analysis: After Florida shooting, Trump offers comfort - to gun owners
But Fox remains skeptical that a greater emphasis on mental health and background checks will bring about change.
"Most mass murderers don't have criminal records or mental health treatment," said Fox. "The reason we should have [background checks] occurs every day in America. We have an average of 40 shooting homicides a day. That's the reason, not the occasional mass shooting."
Experts say that the public has to be careful with how it thinks about gun violence and mental illness, otherwise it could stigmatize those who suffer from mental health issues.
And considering that suicide by firearm killed 313,641 people between 1999 and 2015, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention, it appears much more likely that the mentally ill will hurt themselves than others.
Dr. Jonathan Metzl, director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, said that these mass shootings highlight Americans' desire to reaffirm a stigmatization of the mentally ill as "ticking time bombs" to avoid more difficult conversations about gun violence.
"Mass shootings are horrific and terrifying," he said. "But if we really want to stop gun violence in this country, everyday gun violence is predictable and could be stopped. Ending everyday gun violence would help end mass shootings as well."
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, 34 percent of the mass shootings that occurred between Jan. 2009 and Dec. 2016 were committed by those considered to be "prohibited possessors" - or people who are unable to purchase guns because of their age, criminal conviction(s), history of addiction, a domestic abuse conviction or a person who has been "adjudicated as a mental defective" or been admitted to a mental institution.
According to a 2016 report published by the American Psychiatric Association(APA), just ensuring weapons don't enter the hands of the mentally ill isn't enough to prevent mass shootings from occurring regularly. Instead, the report suggests that public health and education campaigns are needed to teach people how to report concerning behavior to authorities and how to learn coping skills for anger and conflict resolution.
The report also proposes that policies and laws be focused on dangerous behavior that shows risk for committing gun violence, rather than a blanket category for the mentally ill, and recommends that institutions and communities develop threat assessment teams that can evaluate reports of potential danger.
As Fox asserts, the belief that the mentally ill are more likely to take part in a mass shooting appears to be a misleading. There were 198,760 homicides committed by a firearm in the United States between 1999 and 2015, according to the National Center for Health Statistic. Despite the high number, the APA report from 2016 says that fewer than 1 percent of firearm homicides are committed by a person diagnosed with a mental illness.
Metzl has researched the correlation between mental illness and gun violence, and he said that it's a tenuous connection at best.
"There's no mental illness diagnosis that explains causality," Metzl said. "There's no mental illness whose symptoms are shooting anyone else. Most mental illnesses cause people to withdraw from society."

From: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/connecting-mental-illness-and-mass-shooting-misses-the-point-experts-say/ar-BBJlKT5?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnQvX-r7bgI

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Connecting mental illness and mass shooting misses the point, experts say

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By Phil McCausland In the wake of the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 students and staff, the Trump administration and many Republicans have said that the best way to end the seemingly constant stream of mass shootings is by combating mental illness.