FiveThirtyEight: The Mass Shootings Fix

But mass shootings still account for only a small fraction of the roughly 8,000 gun murder incidents in the U.S. each year.1 This suggests that measures aimed at preventing mass shootings would save more lives if they also prevent other kinds of gun death. [...]

In New Zealand, after a man went on a shooting rampage at a neighbor’s house in 1990 and fatally shot 11 people, the country stopped offering lifetime licenses for guns, requiring gun owners to renew their permits every 10 years instead. Military-style weapons were not banned but required a special permit. After a 22-year-old gunman killed 10 students at a hospitality school and then took his own life in 2008, Finland raised the minimum age to own a gun (from 18 to 20) and added requirements to own a handgun (such as two years of supervised target practice and membership in a gun club). Canada and Germany also tightened access to guns after mass shootings within their borders. [...]

Did Australia and Great Britain’s reforms prevent mass shootings? It’s hard to say, simply because mass shootings are relatively rare. In the post-buyback period, Great Britain has had one massacre with guns while Australia has had none. It’s hard to calculate how many would have been expected without a ban. Australia looks more successful in this regard, because it had more frequent mass shootings before the ban (averaging about two mass shootings every three years from 1979 to 1996.3) Mass shootings in Great Britain, prior to the ban, were rarer. Prior to 1996, there hadn’t been a widely covered mass shooting in Britain since 1987. [...]

In parts of Great Britain, there isn’t strong evidence the ban and buyback saved lives. After the new gun law was implemented in 1996, the number of crimes involving guns in England and Wales kept rising through the 1990s, peaking in 2003 and 2004 before subsiding. The post-2004 drop is hard to credit to the buyback and possibly occurred because of an increase in the number of police officers. It’s possible that any effect of the ban, positive or negative, was swamped by other factors affecting gun violence. There has been one notable mass shooting in Great Britain since the law was passed, making it hard to judge whether the law has been a success in that respect.

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Quartz: The cost of US gun violence has finally been calculated—at a minimum of $2.8 billion a year

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have published a new study in Health Affairs medical journal to “help fill this need.” The study aims to quantify the financial burden of gun violence in the United States by looking at data from 150,930 gun-violence patients who visited emergency rooms between 2006 and 2014.

The annual cost for victims of gun violence is an average of $2.8 billion in emergency-room and inpatient charges alone, the study concluded. If lost wages are factored in, the financial burden rises to $45 billion each year. [...]

Gun shots are a very costly medical expense. The average emergency room visit from a firearm injury costs $5,254 and skyrockets to $95,887 if the patient is admitted overnight. Over the nine years of the study, that amounted to a whopping $22 billion just in inpatient charges. Patients who died during an emergency room visit were charged $11,463 on average and represent 11.7% of total emergency charges in the study. Patients who need outpatient care following a hospital visit, about a third of inpatient gunshot victims, pay even more—about $179,565.

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The Conversation: Six things to know about mass shootings in America

In other words, the U.S. had nearly double the number of mass shootings than all other 24 countries combined in the same 30-year period.

Another significant finding is that mass shootings and gun ownership rates are highly correlated. The higher the gun ownership rate, the more a country is susceptible to experiencing mass shooting incidents. This association remains high even when the number of incidents from the United States is withdrawn from the analysis. [...]

A recent study published by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center shows that the frequency of mass shooting is increasing over time. The researchers measured the increase by calculating the time between the occurrence of mass shootings. According to the research, the days separating mass shooting occurrence went from on average 200 days during the period of 1983 to 2011 to 64 days since 2011. [...]

The majority of active shooters are linked to mental health issues, bullying and disgruntled employees. Active shooters may be motivated by a variety of personal or political motivations, usually not aimed at weakening government legitimacy. Frequent motivations are revenge or a quest for power.

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Politico: Emmanuel Macron’s long war

Macron’s solution, which even advisers admit is flawed, was to introduce a new anti-terrorism bill that reproduces most of the important features of the state of emergency. Passed into law on Tuesday, it has been the subject of some of the sharpest debate between MPs since Macron took power. It’s easy to understand why: The law expands police powers considerably, and permanently, ensuring the continuation of practices that both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have denounced as discriminatory against France’s Muslim population.

So now Macron faces another challenge, this one political in nature, but no less risky: He will become known as an authoritarian president who is willing to sacrifice the rights of some citizens in order to avoid being seen as weak. [...]

Stated in numerical terms, the threat is even plainer: Since January, France has suffered no fewer than 11 terrorist incidents related to radical Islam, including a shooting on the Champs Elysées in Paris three days before the presidential election. [...]

Under Macron’s laws, the quick-and-easy raids denounced by rights groups will be included in police forces’ regular toolkit. Officers will be able to “visit” — raid — and question individuals suspected of terrorist activity for up to four hours, without having to consult a judge beforehand. In such cases, no warrant is required, and the definition of what stands for “terrorist activity” is vague enough to cover just about anyone. [...]

But such an extension must be approved by all EU member countries as well as the European Parliament. The effect, critics say, is that France is destroying the spirit of Schengen, since a three-year exception is tantamount to a permanent one, and will only encourage other states more hostile to immigration, such as Hungary, to break European travel laws unilaterally, invoking terrorism.

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Haaretz: Catalonia Crisis: What's Next for Spain if Catalan Leader Declares Independence as Promised

So far no country or international body has expressed any support for the Catalan government(asterisk)s independence drive, so any declaration of independence is likely to be rejected, at the beginning at least. The European Union is standing solidly behind Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and says Catalonia would be expelled from the bloc and the shared euro currency.

Economically it is impossible to predict if it could survive. Catalonia has an annual gross domestic product of about 215 billion euros ($257 billion) — the largest of the Spanish regions and greater than Greece’s — but many of its goods are supplied by the Spanish state. 

Besides the removal of Spanish flags from official buildings, it(asterisk)s hard to see what else Catalan authorities could do. The feeling is that the declaration would be a symbolic one. Catalonia does not have security forces sufficient to set up borders and key areas such as taxes, foreign affairs, defense, ports, airports and trains are in the hands of the Spanish government in Madrid. Spain also recently took virtually full control of Catalonia’s spending. [...]

The other, more extreme alternative would be to declare a state of siege, should Spain’s sovereignty be considered under attack — which a declaration of independence might constitute — and this could allow for the suspension of civil rights and imposition of martial law. It would need to be debated and approved by the lower house of parliament, a difficult matter as Rajoy lacks a majority there.

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