The Kids Are Alright; It’s the Grown-ups Who Scare Me:
A Comparative Look at Mass Shootings in
the United States and Australia
Mark B. Melter*
II. Mass Shootings
A. Mass Shootings in the United States
B. The Typical Mass Shooter
C. How Do Gun Laws Affect Mass Shootings?
D. What About Australia?
III. Importing Australia
A. Constitutional Barriers
B. Cultural Barriers
1. The Role of the American Gun Lobby
2. The Unique Prevalence of Firearms in America
A. Concealed and Carry Laws Will Not Work
B. The Need for Increased Mental Health Screening and a Federal Licensing Program
C. Increased Access for Individuals to Mental Health Professionals and Services
To the casual observer, mass shootings appear to have become commonplace in modern America. Reliable data regarding mass shootings, however, is difficult to obtain. The data that is available is often couched in partisan politics and personal agendas. The following pages attempt to bridge this disconnect by providing a historical and cultural context for mass shootings in the United States.
This article begins by refuting two common myths about modern mass shootings: first, that America is currently experiencing a mass murder epidemic; and second, that mass murder is a uniquely American phenomenon. In rebutting these myths, the author provides a background of mass shooting statistics, a profile of the typical mass shooter, and a brief explanation of the popular assertion that concealed and carry laws lower mass shooting rates. The article then illustrates Australia’s remarkably successful attempt to curb mass shootings through firearm legislation and addresses whether similar results can be achieved in the United States. The author closes by advancing three claims: First, concealed and carry laws are not sound public policy for lowering the mass shooting rate in the United States. Second, increased mental health screening and a national firearm-licensing scheme are reasonable alternatives for reducing American mass shootings. Finally, the best mechanism for curbing the global mass shooting rate is to increase worldwide access to mental health services and professionals.
II. Mass Shootings
The following section analyzes the available data regarding mass shootings in the United States. It then identifies several common characteristics shared by mass shooters and mass murderers. The section continues by discussing whether gun laws—specifically, concealed and carry laws—affect American mass shooting rates and provides international comparisons for contextual support. Ultimately, the section refutes any notion that the United States is currently experiencing a mass murder epidemic or that mass shootings are strictly an American phenomenon.
A. Mass Shootings in the United States
Over the past fifty years, the global community has increasingly viewed mass shootings as a problem unique to the United States. Whether appropriate or not, the perception is that school shooters, clock-tower murderers, and individuals gone “postal,” are strictly an American phenomenon. This perception is problematic because reliable data regarding mass shootings is difficult to obtain.
Part of this difficulty results from the fact that mass murders are in fact rare occurrences. Between 1976 and 2005, less than 1/5th of 1% (0.18%) of all murders in the United States involved four or more victims. Mass shootings accounted for roughly 70% of these, or 0.13% of all murders.
To further complicate the matter, social scientists and criminologists use different definitions when studying mass shootings. First, scholars disagree whether the term “mass” requires a baseline of three victims or four. Virtually all agree on a baseline of three victims, but others use four to minimize “the potential for measurement error in the identification of mass killings.”
Second, some scholars avoid the term “mass shooting” altogether, preferring more narrow definitions, such as “multiple victim public shooting.” These terms are helpful for limited discussions like those involving concealed weapons laws. Such terms are less helpful, however, when discussing mass murder generally since roughly 40% of all mass murders are familicides. In other words, a narrow term such as “multiple victim public shooting” excludes those mass shootings that occur in residences and other private or semi-private locations. Differentiation over the number of required victims also arbitrarily ignores the intention of the shooter. For this reason, some commentators use the term “mass murder by intention” to “refer to the incidents in which fewer than the ‘required’ number of people were killed despite the [shooter’s] clear intention and attempt to murder many more.”
Casting these differences aside, the perception remains that the United States is a society unusually susceptible to mass shootings. This stigma partly results from the fact that mass shootings can be highly publicized. Take, for instance, the massacre at Columbine High School, the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, and the 2012 shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin. Traditional stereotypes, such as the United States’ reputation for being gun-obsessed, also play a role. Still, the following questions remain: Does reliable evidence confirm that the United States is experiencing a mass shooting epidemic? Alternatively, does reliable evidence suggest that mass shootings are primarily an American problem?
The first question is answered more easily than the second. Data compiled by criminologist James Alan Fox indicates that the annual number of mass shooting incidents of “four or more victims in the United States” has increased marginally from 1976-2010. That is, the trendlines for both mass shooting incidents and victims have increased modestly over that period. These increases are not statistically significant, however. More recent data indicates that the number of mass shooting incidents has spiked between 2006-2009.
Looking broadly at mass murder, scholar Grant Duwe asserts that although the American mass murder rate has increased significantly since 1960, this increase is hardly unprecedented. Instead, “mass murder was nearly as common during the 1920s and 1930s as it has been since the mid-1960s.”
Interestingly, the rise in mass murder contrasts with a substantial decline in the rates of homicide and serious violent crime over the past forty years. The decline is significant because of the historically reliable correlation between the mass murder rate and the homicide rate. Thus, disregarding this more recent “spike,” it is notable that the mass shooting rate has remained relatively stable over the past forty years considering that the rates of homicide and serious violent crime have dropped significantly during the same period. In other words, one would expect to see a reduction in the mass shooting rate over the past forty years comparable to that seen in the homicide and serious violent crime rates.
In brief, although the mass murder rate rose substantially between 1930 and 1960, the rates of mass shooting incidents and victims have increased only slightly over the last thirty years. The assertion that the United States is experiencing a mass shooting epidemic is therefore inaccurate. This is further supported by the increase in population over the same period. Population in the United States increased from 218 million in 1976 to 308 million in 2010—or by 40%. Thus, the per capita mass shooting appears stable and perhaps may be in decline. Nevertheless, this decline does not correlate with the reduction in the homicide rate and serious violent crime rate over a similar period.
B. The Typical Mass Shooter
Another common perception among commentators is that the typical mass murderer is an individual gone berserk while the typical casualty is a mere victim of chance. Rather, Fox and Levine assert that the “indiscriminate slaughter of strangers” is generally uncommon among mass murderers. From 1976-1995, 39% of all mass murder victims were family members of the offender and another 38% were other individuals known by the offender, such as coworkers. Strangers thus account for only one of every five persons killed by a mass murderer. Moreover, mass shootings are generally not the result of instantaneous or even short-term decision-making. Instead, the shootings are usually the byproduct of deliberation and planning on behalf of the shooter. This planning often precedes the shooting by months or years in some cases.
Others assert that mass murderers typically suffer from serious mental illness and rarely survive the aftermath of their crimes because they commit suicide or die from police gunfire. Duwe’s data refutes the latter of these presumptions, finding that only 21% of mass murderers commit suicide and only 3% are killed by law enforcement. Admittedly, the percentage of mass murderers suffering from serious mental illness is unclear.
With regard to individual characteristics, the typical U.S. mass murderer is a middle-aged white male. Forty-three percent of mass murderers are aged 20-29, and another 36% are aged 30-49. Therefore, roughly 80% of all mass murderers are aged between 20 and 50 years old. More significantly, men make up 94% of all mass murderers, and 63% of offenders are white.
Fox and Levine’s research categorizes several factors as contributors to mass murder. These factors are known as predisposers, precipitants, and facilitators. Predisposers are characteristics that predispose the actor toward violence, such as severe frustration, disappointment, or failure. In order for these feelings to transform into violence, the individual typically externalizes his or her blame outwardly toward others. Thus, it is common for mass murderers to view themselves as the ultimate victim.
A precipitant is a situation or event triggering violence such as sudden unemployment or divorce. Often times, the perpetrator suffers “a sudden loss or the threat of a loss, which from his point of view is catastrophic.” Fox and Levine contend that the overrepresentation of men among all mass murderers can be partially explained by the fact that men “are more likely to suffer the kind of catastrophic losses associated with mass murder.” For example, men are more likely to be ejected from the family home following a divorce and are also more likely to be psychologically devastated from employment termination. This may partly explain why the 1920s and 1970s exhibit two of the most drastic increases in the mass murder rate within the United States over the last 100 years; these decades also represent the two largest increases in divorce rates over that same period.
Factors that increase the likelihood and extent of violence are categorized as facilitators. Common facilitators include settings that provide little or no sources of emotional support and areas offering access to destructive means. Thus, “loners,” isolated individuals, and individuals who have access to weapons are characteristics of the typical mass murderer. Criminologist Stan Duncan points out that many mass shooters also train with their firearms in public or private and often are members of shooting clubs. He identifies “firearms training” in combination “with a history of mental illness” as a critical characteristic for identifying mass shooters.
Finally, there appear to be few significant behavioral differences between adolescent and adult mass murderers. Both groups display a strong sense of failure, anger, and isolation. Adolescent mass murderers, however, are more likely to be bullied, commit mass murder in pairs, and act impulsively. Further, adolescent mass murderers are also “more likely to communicate their intentions” prior to engaging in mass murder, but are less likely than adults to commit suicide following their acts.
C. How Do Gun Laws Affect Mass Shootings?
One prevalent contention in the American gun control debate suggests that laws restricting the availability of firearms do little or nothing to stop gun violence. The inverse of this argument is equally prevalent: more guns equal less crime. Economist and professor John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, contends that concealed and carry laws have a positive effect on crime rates. He further argues that concealed and carry laws have an even greater effect on mass public shootings because of their natural deterrent effect. According to Lott, this deterrent effect is two-fold: first, the threat of other individuals carrying firearms will dissuade some potential mass shooters from attempting their acts; second, individuals not dissuaded will be less effective because other armed individuals can neutralize the shooter.
Lott’s study, which covered twenty-three years and spanned multiple jurisdictions, reached stunning conclusions. His research indicated that concealed and carry laws decreased the number of mass public shooting incidents by 67%, the number of deaths by 75%, and the number of injuries by 81%. It is fair to say, however, that Lott’s data and conclusions are controversial. Economists Ian Ayers and John Donahue note that the “more guns less crime” argument has inspired an “unusually large set of academic responses, with talented authors lining up on both sides of the debate.” One separate study led by Duwe et al., for instance, concluded that there is little to no evidence that concealed and carry laws have an effect on mass public shooting rates.
It is also worth noting that despite the perception that Americans disfavor gun control, the public has mixed emotions regarding the effectiveness of gun laws and their effect on mass shootings. When asked how much they would blame six possible causes for the recent mass shootings in the U.S., more than 40% assigned “a great deal” of blame to “easy access to guns.” Yet only 24% of individuals from the same poll believed that “stricter gun control laws” could “prevent mass shootings from occurring in the United States.” In other words, “the public consistently supports enactment of gun legislation, even though it does not think it will be effective.”
Given that the United States has some of the most relaxed gun laws of all first world countries, it is helpful to compare mass murder and mass shooting rates in the United States to other comparatively situated countries. However, even basic data concerning the mass murder rate in foreign nations is difficult to locate. Despite this general unavailability of data, it is clear that mass public shootings do take place in nations with much more stringent gun control laws than the United States. For example, Germany—a country with much stricter firearm licensing requirements than the United States—has had three of the five worst school shootings worldwide over the past fifteen years. During the same period, there have been at least eight other school shootings resulting in over seventy persons killed across Europe.
Nor is the United Kingdom a stranger to mass shootings. Following the massacres of sixteen persons in 1987 and seventeen in 1996, Great Britain enacted legislation prohibiting the purchase or possession of handguns. As a result, the U.K. currently has an extremely low rate of only 6.2 registered guns per 100 persons. Nevertheless, a licensed owner of a .22 caliber rifle and a shotgun killed twelve persons in a rampage through Cumbria, England in June 2010.
History’s most gruesome mass shooting occurred in Oslo, Norway in July 2011, when Anders Breivik killed nearly seventy persons over a ninety-minute period at a youth camp. Reports indicate that Breivik spent over nine years and £300,000 (pounds) planning the tragedy. Responding officers noted that Breivik had only one gun, an automatic weapon, and is believed to have stopped his killing spree when he ran out of bullets. Breivik was initially declared insane by Norwegian state psychiatrists, but the Norwegian court system later overruled that assessment. Declaring him sane and fit to serve in a regular prison, the court imposed Norway’s maximum sentence of twenty-one years imprisonment—a sentence that can be prolonged “indefinitely by judges adding a succession of five-year extensions to [Breivik’s] sentence.”
In short, there have been over 110 persons killed in at least 12 mass public shooting incidents in Europe since 2001. These statistics do not account for mass private shootings, which would inflate these numbers considerably. Consequently, this data shows that mass shootings are not merely an American phenomenon. Mass shootings can and do occur in many other countries, such as those in Western Europe.
D. What About Australia?
Australia is a useful comparison to the United States for addressing the topic of gun control. This is partly attributable to the fact that both Australia and the United States are former colonies of the United Kingdom. The two nations share several legal and cultural similarities that contribute to the present day firearm distribution in each country. Australia’s governmental structure, like the United States, is a federalist system consisting of national and state governments. Similarly, Australia’s national government is divided into a judicial, legislative, and executive branch that resembles the American structure. The country’s lawmakers thus deal with many of the same issues seen in the American legal system—checks and balances and states’ rights, for instance.
Culturally, like the United States, Australia faced a large indigenous population during its colonial period. Australia is also said to have undergone a “wild west” phase, although a modest one in comparison to the American frontier. These influences resulted in an Australian gun culture approaching that found in America. Australia remains toward the top tier of all nations in terms of gun prevalence (sixteenth overall) although it has never rivaled the United States in that category.
Nevertheless, Australia appears to have achieved unprecedented success in reducing mass shootings following the enactment of firearms legislation from 1996-1998. Specifically, Australian states banned all semi-automatic rifles and pump action shotguns while simultaneously tightening licensing, registration, and sales of guns within the country. The private selling of firearms in Australia is now a criminal offense; all sales must be performed through a licensed dealer and are subject to approval by law enforcement that the purchaser has a legitimate reason for needing a weapon. Self-defense is categorically rejected as a legitimate reason.
These tightened restrictions were a direct response to a string of Australian mass shootings from 1979-1996 culminating in the Massacre at Port Arthur. There, a rifle-toting gunman killed thirty-two and seriously wounded eighteen others in what was, at the time, the “largest mass shooting in world history in terms of a lone gunman.”  Casting Port Arthur aside, there were at least thirteen additional Australian mass shootings resulting in over 100 persons killed from 1979-1996.
Scholars have documented several positive effects since enacting the legislation in the wake of Port Arthur. Prior to the legislation, the rate of gun-related homicides in Australia was decreasing at approximately 3% per year. In the years following, gun-related homicides fell at 6% per year. Perhaps most importantly, although Australia had thirteen mass shootings in the eighteen years leading up to the legislation, it has had none in the sixteen years since. These results are cause for optimism considering that the new firearm legislation was specifically intended “to reduce mass shootings.” To this end, the elimination of “semi-automatic” long guns used in the Port Arthur Massacre was a major part of the reforms.
III. Importing Australia?
Given Australia’s success in curbing mass shootings over the past sixteen years, it is sensible to ask what lessons, if any, can help reduce mass shootings within the United States. Unfortunately, the United States is limited in number of ways that Australia is not. Specifically, the United States faces constitutional and cultural barriers making the enactment of restrictive firearm legislation, such as that achieved in Australia, improbable.
A. Constitutional Barriers
An initial hurdle to firearm reform in the United States is the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Unlike Australia, whose constitution contains no bill of rights, the Second Amendment provides that “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The United States Supreme Court recognizes this as protecting an individual’s fundamental right to own and carry a weapon for the purpose of self-defense. There is no such right to own a firearm for self-defense in Australia. Because self-defense is a constitutionally sufficient basis for owning a weapon in the United States, any law prohibiting an individual from buying a firearm without prior police approval is unlikely to pass constitutional muster.
Second, it is unclear whether laws banning semi-automatic rifles or pump action shotguns, such as those passed in Australia, could survive judicial review within the United States. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court recognized that the protection of the right to own and carry a weapon extends to weapons “in common use at the time” the Second Amendment was adopted. Because the Court did not elaborate on this passage, it is unclear as to what extent the Second Amendment is qualified and firearms can be regulated. At least some scholars read the Heller majority as suggesting that laws such as those passed in Australia could remain intact as laws banning weapons not “of common use.”
One thing is clear: handguns, as a general class, cannot be criminalized. Nonetheless, because the Heller majority recognized that the right to bear arms is a qualified right and subject to limitations, there may be an opportunity to restrict semi-automatic handguns with extended cartridges such as the one used by Jared Loughner in Tucson. Loughner allegedly used a semiautomatic pistol holding more than thirty rounds when he started firing upon the crowd. Although Heller mandates per se handgun bans as unconstitutional, it is plausible that the Court would view handguns with thirty-round extended cartridges as weapons not “in common use” when the Second Amendment was enacted and, therefore, subject to regulation. Considering the split decision of Heller, one could alternatively foresee other limitations on handgun operation, ownership, or storage as surviving Second Amendment scrutiny.
B. Cultural Barriers
Omitting constitutional issues, considerable cultural barriers remain within the United States that make significant reductions in the mass shooting rate improbable. These interrelated barriers include the ever-influential gun lobby and the sheer volume of firearms currently existing in the United States.
1. The Role of the American Gun Lobby
The first cultural barrier to effective gun legislation in the United States is the gun lobby, particularly the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA was founded in 1871 and currently has over 4 million members. It has been referred to as the “most powerful lobby[ing group] in Washington[.]” The group has contributed over twenty-five million dollars of lobbying funds over the past fourteen years. This gives the NRA significant leverage in the passage (or obstruction) of state and federal firearm legislation.
The NRA also plays a large role in the federal elections process. From 1990-2010, the NRA contributed over eighteen million dollars to Congressional election campaigns. Nearly 85% of that money went solely to Republican candidates. This extensive lobbying has helped make the issue of gun control a deciding factor for many at the ballot box. The NRA’s successful history of defeating incumbents is also well known. Democratic leaders Bill Clinton and James Carville attribute the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress in large part to the NRA’s ardent opposition to Democratic support for gun control.
Although the NRA is easily the most popular American gun advocacy organization, it is hardly the most radical. Unlike the NRA, many gun advocacy organizations oppose all firearm restrictions. These groups contend that otherwise reasonable gun laws are inherently dangerous because they inevitably make further restrictions easier to enact. Stringent opposition to all gun legislation, the argument goes, is necessary to ensure that guns are not slowly and methodically eliminated from the American populace.
Contrarily, Australia’s gun lobby has experienced neither the strength nor success of American gun advocacy groups. Although the Australian gun lobby was gaining considerable momentum in the early 1990s, the Port Author Massacre and subsequent public shift toward stricter gun laws defused any attempt to reduce firearm restrictions. Firearm legislation within the United States is subject to much greater resistance than in Australia. Moreover, unlike Australia, highly publicized mass public shootings, such as the Columbine shooting, the Tucson shootings, and the 2012 shooting in Colorado, have done little to sway American opinion on gun laws. Assuming that Congress could draft constitutionally permissible firearm legislation, the likelihood that such laws could carry enough public and political support to survive the American gun lobby is slim.
2. The Unique Prevalence of Firearms in America
The second cultural barrier to reducing mass shootings in the Untied States is the sheer volume of firearms already existing in the country. Australia’s success in streamlining mass shootings, on the other hand, is partly accredited to the nationwide decrease in firearms following Port Arthur. For instance, during a firearm buyback program following Port Author, the government removed approximately 700,000 guns from a population of 12 million persons. The per capita gun rate dropped from 25 guns per 100 persons, to 15 guns per 100 persons—a 40% decline.
By contrast, there are an estimated 270 million privately held guns in the United States. This sheer volume of guns amounts to a considerable obstacle of its own. With a civilian firearm rate of 89 weapons per 100 persons, there are nearly as many guns in the United States as there are persons. Remarkably, between 55% and 75% of the civilian firearms in the United States are owned by 10% to 20% of all gun owners. Put differently, between 150 and 200 million weapons are owned by 30 to 60 million persons.
Because the vast majority of firearms in America are owned by a small minority of owners, this author speculates that government sponsored gun buy-backs would be largely ineffective at reducing the number of firearms in the United States. An individual with the desire to possess several weapons seems an unlikely candidate to voluntarily relinquish his or her artillery collection. For those that do participate, meaningful relinquishment seems even less likely.
It is not clear how many mass shooters fall into this minority of individuals owning the majority of artillery. Thus, it is equally unclear whether a significant reduction of arms among these persons would have a substantial lowering effect on the mass shooting rate. Some would reasonably contend that persons owning multiple firearms are those least likely to misuse a weapon. However, despite concessions that “almost all gun owners in America are highly responsible,” lawful gun owners do account for a significant portion of mass shootings. Persons possessing concealed handgun permits are responsible for at least sixteen mass shootings since 2007. Thus, like other criminals, mass shooters obtain their weapons both legally and illegally.
Still, even unrealistic reductions in the number of guns within the United States—say by 50%—would leave over 100 million weapons undisturbed. This fact makes it difficult to contend that Americans would be significantly less vulnerable to mass shooters if the number of arms decreased. It is unlikely that a determined individual could not obtain a gun against those odds. An individual willing to slaughter multiple persons should not be restrained by mere gun registration and licensing requirements. Further, assuming these obstacles were effective at denying legal access to a gun, one could still turn to the black market where hundreds of thousands of stolen or unregistered guns are exchanged annually. Absent unforeseen circumstances, reducing access to weapons within the United States is impossible. It is further speculative whether such reductions, if achieved, would deter an individual determined to engage in a mass shooting.
The previous sections illustrated America’s unique barriers to successful firearm legislation. Any reduction in the American mass shooting rate is likely to come from other approaches, if at all. The following section addresses why concealed and carry laws are unlikely to result in meaningful reductions in the mass shooting rate, and further, why such laws have other negative public policy effects. The article then proposes, as a tenable solution, increased mental health screening for purchasers of weapons and routine mental health check-ups for weapons owners. Finally, the article suggests that attention to broader human rights issues—specifically increased worldwide access to mental health professionals and services—is the best available option for reducing mass shooting rates on a global level.
A. Concealed and Carry Laws Will Not Work
Despite the arguments advanced by John Lott and others, concealed and carry laws are not a realistic strategy for reducing the mass shooting rate in the United States. Lott’s assertion that concealed and carry laws do much, if anything, to deter mass shooters is tenuous for a number of reasons. First, assuming that concealed and carry laws deter multiple victim public shootings, the laws should have little impact on the roughly 80% of mass shootings that involve family members or other victims known to the shooter. These shootings typically take place in non-public locations, such as homes or businesses, where the shooter is familiar with the victims. There is arguably no reasonable deterrent effect in these circumstances because the perpetrator is likely aware of whether his or her victims are armed and can adjust his or her plan accordingly.
Additionally, Lott’s contention that multiple victim public shootings typically occur in jurisdictions where guns are outlawed is questionable. For example, the very public shooting of Gabrielle Giffords took place in Arizona, a state with extremely lenient gun laws. As Professor David Hemenway points out, “[i]t was only after [the alleged shooter] started shooting at innocent people that he stopped being a decent law-abiding citizen.” Concealed and carry laws therefore do more than simply allow the “good guys” to have guns. They also make guns more prevalent and accessible for the “bad guys.”
Lott is candidly dismissive of multiple victim public shootings that take place in right to carry states, saying that such attacks “tend to occur in particular places where concealed handguns are forbidden, such as schools.” This example falls victim to the obvious explanation that school shooters are typically school children. Keeping in mind Fox and Levine’s characterization of the typical mass shooter, the school setting is precisely where one would expect a child to carry out a mass shooting.  Admittedly, mass shootings rarely take place within the hunting aisles of Wal-Mart or at the local shooting range. But this brings up a larger point that concealed and carry advocates rarely address: a mass shooter can always pick a location in which his victims will be left unprepared—churches, schools, malls, and movie theatres, to name a few. The deterrent effect only works if another individual is carrying a weapon, something that is unlikely if a shooter meticulously plans out his attack.
Lott would also likely point to the Norway Massacre as an example of how strict gun laws are an ineffective measure for reducing mass shootings. After all, Norway’s laws—known to be “some of the toughest gun laws in the world”—were not enough to keep Anders Breivik from committing the most horrific mass shooting to date. And indeed, the Oslo shootings cast suspicion on the notion that restrictive firearm legislation can prevent mass shootings. Still, Lott’s thesis—that concealed and carry laws may have prevented this tragedy—is equally unlikely. Breivik chose a location for his shooting where he was likely to proceed unobstructed by police or other individuals: an island youth camp. Assuming that Norway had less restrictive gun laws, it seems unlikely that any individuals at the youth camp—short of a security guard—would have been carrying weapons capable of disarming the shooter.
Another problem remains for those advocating that concealed and carry laws prevent mass public shootings: there is little actual evidence that an armed civilian has disrupted a mass public shooting over the past thirty years. In a study of sixty-one mass public shootings dating back to 1982, author Mark Follman found that only one instance could be classified as a “successful armed intervention by a civilian.” Follman does note several other instances—such as the Appalachian School of Law shooting in 2002—in which armed civilians intervened to disarm a shooter. However, in each instance, the shooter had either run out of ammunition or voluntarily ended his shooting spree. Moreover, on several other occasions the armed civilian was either gravely wounded or responsible for wounding innocent surrounding parties while attempting to subdue the shooter.
Further, scholars have noticed several negative effects of concealed and carry laws. First, despite general free falls in the murder and violent crime rates during the 1990s, the violent crime rate fell “twice as fast” in states without concealed and carry laws as those with such laws. Economist John Donahue takes this argument further, contending that concealed and carry laws “‘are associated with uniform increases in crime.’” The noted increase of robberies in Florida following the passage of concealed and carry legislation, for instance, strongly argues against any deterrent effect. Indeed, robberies are precisely the type of crime that concealed and carry legislation should help deter individuals from engaging in. In summary, concealed and carry laws are flawed, both in theory and in practice. They are not a sufficient solution for reducing the mass shooting rate in the United States.
B. The Need for Increased Mental Health Screening and a Federal Licensing Program
At this point, the reader should wonder what, if anything, can be done to prevent mass shootings. As previously discussed, laws restricting general access to weapons within the United States are neither probable nor practical. However, legislation that restricts firearms to the mentally ill is constitutionally permissible and supported by the public. Legislation that restricts ownership and possession of guns by the mentally ill is a reasonable goal for local and national governments.
First, the individual right to own and possess a firearm does not extend to the mentally ill. In Heller, the majority specifically recognized that its decision did not disturb “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by” the mentally ill. Thus, laws ensuring that guns do not fall into the hands of the mentally ill serve important and legitimate interests of the state and can survive a heightened scrutiny attack.
Second, Americans share widespread support for increased restrictions to gun access for the mentally ill. Ninety percent of Americans in a January 2011 Reuters poll expressed support for “fixing gaps in government databases that are designed to prevent criminals, mentally disturbed people and others from obtaining guns.” An additional 86% of Americans and 81% of gun-owners support requiring personal background checks for all firearm sales, whether public or private.
Currently, the federal government requires background checks for some, but not all, sales of firearms. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was implemented in 1998 as a result of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (“Brady Bill”). The NICS allows firearm vendors to run a criminal and mental background check on any potential weapons purchasers. But only “licensed” importers, manufacturers, and dealers are federally mandated to perform background checks on weapons purchasers. The definition of “licensed” dealer contains a notable exception:
[A] person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms . . . .
Persons who occasionally sell weapons “for a hobby” do not fall under the federal mandate. This exception is commonly referred to as the “gun show loophole” due to the frequent gathering of these sellers at gun shows. Consequently, the first step in attempting to keep guns out of the wrong hands is amending the Brady Bill so that all sales of weapons, not just those performed by licensed vendors, go through a mandatory NICS check.
Additionally, further legislation is necessary since the NICS only flags those individuals who have “been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution.” Thus, even with the gun-show loophole “closed,” many individuals who have never been declared mentally defective or committed to a mental institution by a court can obtain firearms despite being otherwise mentally unfit to possess a weapon. The so-called Colorado “Batman Shooter” seemingly qualifies as such an individual.
This article also proposes the enactment of a federal licensing scheme for the private possession of firearms. Under the proposed scheme, no person would be allowed to own a gun without first obtaining a license from a regulatory body, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). A precondition to obtaining a firearm license would involve mental health and psychological screening. This screening would help determine whether an individual was mentally fit for gun ownership. In particular, the exams would be partially designed to identify those characteristics that sharply align with the profile of a typical mass shooter: isolationism, extreme frustration, overt externalization of blame, extensive firearms training, and a demonstrated or expressed desire by the individual for access to unnecessary weapons.
Further, the legislation would require continuous mental health screening for the license to remain valid. Similar to an eyesight exam for renewing a driver’s license, once an individual has been issued a firearm license, he or she would have to periodically demonstrate his or her continued mental wellness in order to renew his or her firearm license. The ATF (or other regulatory body) would be responsible for maintaining records of all individuals licensed to possess weapons. The regulatory body would also be responsible for creating a database that local, state, and federal officials could access in order to verify that an individual is legally licensed to carry or possess a firearm. The database would include, among other information, whether an individual’s firearm license had expired. Finally, the regulatory body would be responsible for taking proactive steps to locate individuals who have failed to renew their firearms license and provided neither proof of sale of their weapon(s) to another licensed individual nor some other legal disposal of a previously licensed weapon.
C. Increased Global Access to Mental Health Professionals and Services
The right to own a firearm is not the only right implicated in efforts to reduce mass shootings. Instead, attention to broader human rights issues is a more likely alternative for curbing curb mass shooting rates worldwide. This article contends that increased access to mental health professionals and services is the best mechanism for preventing mass shootings on a global level. This approach is also consistent with internationally recognized human rights standards.
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that all individuals have “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including . . . medical care and necessary social services . . . .” Similarly, Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights recognizes “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
It is far from clear that all mass shooters are psychotic. Yet it is clear that many suffer from “co-morbid mental disorders such as depression.” Thus,
[t]here is little doubt that many mass murderers were in need of some type of psychological intervention prior to the massacre. It is society’s duty, and that of mental health professionals in particular, to ensure that all members of society have reasonable access to mental health services and resources (without prejudice). It is also the duty of mental health professionals to educate the general public about general mental health issues, using resources such as the media.
Although improved global access to mental health professionals and services will hardly stop every mass shooting, there is good reason to suspect it can stop some. For example, the fact that nearly 80% of all mass shooting victims are persons known to the offender strongly suggests that mass shootings are often the result of family or other social dynamics. Surely, then, increased access to mental health services and professionals would prevent some isolated and frustrated individuals from reaching their tipping point and engaging in a mass shooting. Moreover, the observation that shooters often plan their acts in advance and outwardly express their intentions prior to carrying them out reinforces the notion that these individuals are capable of acting rationally. This further implies that access to mental health services can deter these acts.
Alternatively, this article has already addressed the difficulties in keeping firearms out of the hands of unwavering individuals. To be sure, even an effective federal-firearm licensing program and increased mental health screening will not prevent all firearms from reaching the hands of individuals determined to wreak havoc. Mental health services, however, might be able to reach these individuals prior to becoming so determined. To meaningfully reduce mass shooting levels, the United States and other countries should move toward increased availability for mental health resources in conjunction with other efforts, such as tighter firearm legislation, increased coordination between federal and state law enforcement officials, and reducing the number of available guns. These efforts would serve a broader purpose than simply reducing the mass murder rate and reinforce the international community’s longstanding, yet oft-neglected, commitment to mental health.
This article began by rebutting two common misperceptions involving mass shootings: first, that America is experiencing a mass shooting epidemic, and second, that mass shootings are only an American problem. The article then illustrated that debate as to whether Australia’s 1996 firearm legislation is responsible for the cessation of mass shootings is mostly moot with respect to the United States. In all likelihood, American constitutional and cultural barriers are insurmountable obstacles to enacting similarly effective firearm legislation. In conclusion, this article noted the following: First, concealed and carry laws are an ineffective mechanism for reducing mass shootings in America, and they are also poor public policy. Instead, increased mental wellness screening and a federal firearm-licensing scheme are the best options for reducing the mass shooting rate within the United States. Finally, increased individual access to health care professionals and services worldwide, in conjunction with other efforts, is the best way to reduce the global mass murder rate.
VII. Table 1 
Patterns of Mass Shootings in the United States
* The author is an M.B.A. candidate at the Graduate School of Business at Gonzaga University. He obtained his B.A. from Arizona State University and his J.D. from Gonzaga University School of Law. For a very brief explanation of why grown-ups scare the author—specifically, middle-aged white males—skip to the text accompanying notes 54-57.
. Or, perhaps, the socially disconnected graduate student.
. See infra note 10 and accompanying text.
. See infra notes 14-25 and accompanying text.
. See generally The Gun Control Debate: A Documentary History 58 (Marjolijn Bijlefeld ed., 1997).
. See discussion infra Part II.
. See discussion infra Part II.C.
. See discussion infra Parts II.D, III.
. See discussion infra Part IV.
. A mass shooting is a shooting involving the killing of four or more persons by guns within twenty-four hours. See Grant Duwe, Opinion: The Rise and Decline of Mass Shootings, AOLNews.com (Mar. 1, 2010), http://www.aolnews.com/2010/03/01/opinion-the-rise-and-decline-of-mass-shootings/ [hereinafter The Rise and Decline of Mass Shootings]; see also Mass Murders (Shootings), Guns In American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law Volume II: M-Z, 379-80 (Gregg Lee Carter ed., 2002); Grant Duwe, The Patterns and Prevalence of Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America, 21 Just. Q. 729, 734 (2004) [hereinafter Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America].
. See Lisa Aitken, Piet Oosthuizen, Robin Emsley & Soraya Seedat, Mass Murders: Implications for Mental Health Professionals, 38 Int’l J. Psychiatry In Medicine, no. 3, 2008 at 261, 265 (noting the perception that “an ever-growing wave of mass murders began hitting the United States after the mid-1960s”); Joanmarie Ilaria Davoli, Physically Present, Yet Mentally Absent, 48 U. Louisville L. Rev. 313, 314 (2009) (“[T]he mass murder of strangers by disturbed individuals has become ubiquitous in modern America.”); Matt Crenson, Mass Shootings Part of American Life, Associated Press, Apr. 22, 2007, available at 2007 WLNR 17737504; Editorial, Children Die But Guns Live On Forever, Globe & Mail, Apr. 9, 1998, at A19 (“But mass shootings have become a U.S. tradition.”); James Alan Fox, Editorial, Mass Shootings Are a Fact of American Life, USA Today (Jan. 10, 2011), http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-01-11-fox11_st_N.htm.
. See infra note 26 and accompanying text.
. See New Time For Texas Clock Tower: University of Texas Still Endures the Memory, CBSNews.com, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/11/25/eveningnews /main23610.shtml (last visited Apr. 21, 2011).
. See infra note 43 and accompanying text.
. See Carter, supra note 9.
. See Louis Jacobsen, “This Week” Report Says Hundreds Have Died in Multiple-Victim Shootings, Politifact.com (Jan. 11, 2011), http://politifact.com/truth-ometer/ statements/2011/jan/11/pierre-thomas/week-report-says-hundreds-have-died-multiple-victi/; Editorial, More Guns Equal Less Crime: As Alabama Buries Its Dead, the Anti-Gun Zealots Are Going to Work, The Washington Times, Mar. 12, 2009, at A20.
. Homicide Trends in the U.S., Bureau of Justice Statistics (Feb. 28, 2011), http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/tables/multivictab.cfm.
. Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America, supra note 9, at 749.
. See Crenson, supra note 10, (“Since Aug. 1, 1966 . . . at least 100 Americans have gone on shooting sprees.”) (emphasis added); The Rise and Decline of Mass Shootings, supra note 9, (“[T]here have been 140 mass public shootings in the United States during the last 100 years.”) (emphasis added); Carter, supra note 9; James Alan Fox, Patterns of Mass Shootings in the United States, 1976-2007, Northwestern University (April 6, 2009), www.pressconnects.com/assets/pdf/CB13234547.PDF. Note the different use of “shooting sprees,” “mass public shootings,” and “mass shootings.”
. Compare Carter, supra note 9, with James Alan Fox & Jack Levin, Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder, 23 Crime J. 407, 407 (1998) [hereinafter Multiple Homicide] (“[W]e define it [mass murder] narrowly as the murder of at least four victims.”).
. Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America, supra note 9, at 734.
. John Lott, Think Tough Gun Laws Keep Europeans Safe? Think Again . . ., FoxNews.Com (June 10, 2010), http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/10/john-lott-america-gun-ban-murders-multiple-victim-public-shootings-europe/ [hereinafter Think Tough Gun Laws Keep Europeans Safe?].
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 434.
. See Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America, supra note 9, at 732.
. See Aitken et al., supra note 10, at 262.
. See Mass Murder in Twentieth Century America, supra note 9, at 729 (recognizing that “a number of scholars, journalists, and other commentators” have noted a wave of mass murder within the United States since 1960).
. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and one teacher at their high school in Littleton, Colorado before committing suicide on April 20, 1999. It is the deadliest non-university school shooting in American history. James Brooke, Terror in Littleton: The Overview; 2 Students in Colorado School Said to Gun Down as Many as 23 and Kill Themselves in a Siege, N.Y. Times (Apr. 21, 1999), at A1; see also Carla Crowder, Licensed Dealers Sold 2 of the Guns: Semiautomatics Used at School Initially ‘Purchased Legally,’ Denver Rocky Mountain News (Apr. 24, 1999), at 29A.
. On January 8, 2011, a gunman opened fire at a political event in Tucson, Arizona killing six people including a federal judge and a nine-year old girl. Among the twelve injured was United States House of Representatives member Gabrielle Giffords (D., AZ), left in critical condition after being shot in the head. Amanda Lee Myers and David Espo, U.S. Rep. Shot, 6 Killed in Massacre, Chicago Sun Times, Jan. 9, 2011, at 2.
. On July 20, 2012, graduate student James Holmes allegedly entered a screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opened fired on the patrons inside the theatre. Twelve persons were killed and roughly sixty were injured in the shooting. Dan Frosch and Kirk Johnson, Gunman Kills 12 in Colorado, Reviving Gun Debate, NYTimes.com (July 20, 2012), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/shooting-at-colorado-theater-showing-batman-movie.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Less than one month later, a gunman entered a Sikh temple in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and killed six persons inside and around the building. Steven Yaccino, Michael Schwirtz, and Marc Santora, Gunman Kills 6 at a Sikh Temple Near Milwaukee, NYTimes.com (Aug. 5, 2012), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Guns And Violence: The English Experience 218 (2002) (“‘Americans still think of Britain as a low-crime country. Conversely, the British think of America has a high-crime country.’ ‘Neither impression . . . is true. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is 60% higher than that in the United States.’”).
. See David B. Kopel, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? 419-22 (1992).
. See Mass Shootings in the United States, 1976-2010, JSOnline.com (Aug. 12, 2012), http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/dataondemand/165757356.html (showing data compiled from the F.B.I. Uniform Crime Reporting program by James Alan Fox); see also infra Table 1.
. Id. A trendline, or regression equation, shows the relationship between two variables based on a data sample. For example, the trendline for victims can be written as y = 0.568x + 74.227 where x = years and y = number of incidents. Similarly, the regression equation for victims is y = 0.089x + 16.864 where x = years and y =number of victims.
. The author performed two regression analyses using alpha = 0.05. The first compared incidents and years and the second compared victims and years. The P value for incidents and years equaled 0.316, and the P value for victims and years equaled 0.179. In each analysis, the P value was greater than the level of significance (0.05). This indicates that there is no relationship between the variables. In other words, neither mass shooting incidents nor mass shooting victims are more common now than they were thirty-five years ago. Further, the correlation between incidents and years is 0.175, and the correlation between victims and years is 0.232. These numbers also indicate insignificant, albeit direct, relationships between incidents and years and incidents and victims.
. There were on average 22.25 incidents and 108.75 victims from 2006-2009. By contrast, there were on average 18.46 incidents and 84.46 victims between 1976-2010. See infra Table 1. In response to these figures, some commentators point out that the long-term mass-shooting rate per capita is actually in decline and any recent increases should be attributed to “statistical noise.” See Jacobsen, supra, note 15.
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 435. Note, again, the difference between mass shootings and mass murders. This difference is insignificant, however, given that over 75% of all mass murders are mass shootings.
. Grant Duwe, A Circle of Distortion: The Social Construction of Mass Murder in the United States, 6 W. Criminology Rev. 59, 59 (2005).
. Id. at 59-60.
. Homicide Rate Trends, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Feb. 28, 2011), http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/hmrttab.cfm (showing a 30% drop in the homicide rate from 1976-2006).
. Serious violent crime consists of rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and homicide. Total violent crime dropped from roughly 3.6 million recorded incidents in 1976 to 1.8 million incidents reported in 2005—a 50% decrease. Four Measures of Serious Violent Crime, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Feb. 28, 2011), http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/
. Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America, supra note 9, at 741.
. See supra notes 32, 40-41, and accompanying text.
. Historical National Population Estimates: July 1, 2000 to July 1, 1999, http://www.census.gov/popest/data/national/totals/pre1980/tables/popclockest.txt (last updated June 28, 2000); 2010 Census Data, http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/ (last visited Oct. 21, 2012).
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 437.
. See Ronald M. Holmes & Stephen T. Holmes, Mass Murder in the United States, 34 (2001) (“The victims are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”).
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 438.
. Id. at 434.
. Amanda Phillips, The Mind of a Shooter, Law Enforcement Tech., June 2007, at 38, 40; see also Stan Duncan, Pre-Incident Behavior of Active Shooters, Law & Order, June 2008, at 56.
. Id.; see also Steven Swinford & David Leppard, Derrick Bird Planned Cumbrian Massacre Nine Months Ago, TheTimes.Com (Jun. 6, 2010), http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol/news/uk/crime/article7144895.ece; Aitken et al., supra note 10 (noting that Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho waited the thirty-day required period for obtaining a firearm prior the shooting).
. John Lott, More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Law, 56-99 (2010) [hereinafter More Guns, Less Crime] (“Those who commit these attacks usually die in the attack. They are killed in the attack or, as in the Colorado shooting, they commit suicide.”); Davoli, supra note 10, at 314 ([T]he shooter typically suffers from a serious mental illness . . . . [T]he majority of the mass murderers end up dead themselves, either by suicide or during a shoot-out with law enforcement.”); Duncan, supra note 49, at 74 (“We know that most acts of mass murder end in the suicide of the assailant.”).
. Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America, supra note 9, at 733.
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 436; Phillips, supra note 49, at 39.
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 436.
. Id. at 438; see also Jun Sung Hong, Hyunkag Cho & Alvin Shiulain Lee, Revisiting the Virginia Tech Shootings: An Ecological Systems Analysis, 15 J. Loss and Trauma 561, 564 (2010) (noting a study found that “98% of the high-profile school shooters had experienced loss, grief, or sense of failure”).
. Compare Brooke, supra note 27 (“‘And he just put the gun in my face and started laughing and saying it was all because people were mean to him last year.’”), with Kirk Johnson, Journals Reveal Ruminations of Teenage Columbine Killers, N.Y. Times (Jul. 7, 2006), http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/us/07columbine.html (“‘Do not blame anyone else besides me and V for this,’ said the unnamed writer, presumably Mr. Harris, who often referred to Mr. Klebold as V. ‘Don’t blame my family, they had no clue and there is nothing they could have done.’”).
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 439.
. Id. at 440.
. Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America, supra note 9, at 742, 752.
. Multiple Homicide, supra note 19, at 441.
. Id.; see also Hong et al., supra note 58, at 567-68 (noting that Virginia did not forward Seung-Hui Cho’s mental health information to an FBI database which otherwise might have prevented him from purchasing the guns he used in the Virginia Tech Massacre).
. Duncan, supra note 49, at 69.
. Id. at 71.
. Aitken et al., supra note 10, at 264.
. Id. at 265.
. Id. at 264 (also noting that adolescents may be more likely to view their acts as justified).
. William Carlsen, Consensus Remains Elusive in Nation’s Gun-Violence Debate, San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 23, 1999, at A10 (referencing a 1993 study which concluded that gun restrictions do not reduce the “prevalence of guns and that violence rates do not appear to be affected by most gun control restrictions”); see generally Richard Poe, The Seven Myths of Gun Control: Reclaiming the Truth About Guns, Crime, and the Second Amendment 17-102 (2001).
. See generally More Guns, Less Crime, supra note 52, at 56-99.
. Concealed and carry laws—also known as “right to carry” or “shall issue” laws— “mandate that local authorities issue a permit to carry a concealed handgun to anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria.” Grant Duwe, Tomislav Kovandzic & Carlisle E. Moody, The Impact of Right to Carry Concealed Firearm Laws on Mass Public Shootings, 6 Homicide Stud. 271, 272 (2002) [hereinafter Impact of Right to Carry Laws].
. More Guns, Less Crime, supra note 52.
. Id. at 196.
. Impact of Right to Carry Laws, supra note 78, at 272.
. More Guns, Less Crime, supra note 52, at 196.
. Ian Ayres & John Donahue, Shooting Down the “More Guns, Less Crime” Hypothesis, 55 Stan. L. Rev. 1193, 1197 (2003); see also Andrew J. McClurg, “Lotts” More Guns and Other Fallacies Infecting the Gun Control Debate, 11 J. Firearms & Pub. Pol’y 139, 156 (1999) (noting that “[n]o study has ever created such a stir.”).
. Impact of Right to Carry Laws, supra note 78, at 290.
. See Adam Nagourney & Jennifer Steinhauer, Sadness Aside, No Shift Seen on Gun Laws, N.Y. Times, Jan. 14, 2011, at A1; Jo Becker & Michael Luo, Woven Through Everyday Life, a Fierce Devotion to Firearms, N.Y. Times, Jan. 11, 2011, at A1 (“Public support for stricter gun control, however, has dropped significantly over the last couple of decades, and there is little evidence to suggest that mass shootings change opinions.”).
. Frank Newport, American’s Link Gun Laws, Mental Health to Mass Shootings, Gallop.com (Jan. 24, 2011), http://www.gallup.com/poll/145757/americans-link-gun-laws-mental-health-mass-shootings.aspx (referencing a USA Today/Gallop poll).
. Dennis A. Henigan, Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy 6-7 (2009).
. Think Tough Gun Laws Keep Europeans Safe?, supra note 21.
. Id.; see also Helen Pidd, Students Killed in German School Shooting, TheGuardian.com (Mar. 11, 2009), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar /11/ germany-school-shooting (noting sixteen massacred at a high school in Erfurt in 2002, eleven killed in Emsdetten in 2006, and fifteen murdered at a high school in Winnenden in 2009).
. Bruce Crumley, Massacre Raises Issue of Gun Control in Europe, Time.Com (Mar. 13, 2009), http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885130,00.html.
. Mass Shootings and Gun Control, BBC.co (Jun. 2, 2010), http://www.bbc.co.uk/
. Crumley, supra note 93.
. Swinford & Leppard, supra note 51.
. Nick Owens, Norway Massacre: Killing Ended After Killer Ran Out of Bullets, Mirror.co.uk (July 7, 2011), http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/07/24/ norway-massacre-killing-ended-after-killer-ran-out-of-bullets-115875-23292248/; Ryan Parry, Norway Massacre: Anders Breivik Plotted Killing Spree for Nine Years, Mirror.co.uk (July 25, 2011), http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/07/ 25/anders-behring-breivik-plotted-norway-massacre-for-nine-years-115875-23295128/.
. See Parry, supra note 97.
. See Owens, supra note 97.
. Norway Massacre: Breivik Declared Insane, bbc.co.uk (Nov. 29, 2011), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15936276. It is alleged that Breivik, who has admitted to the shootings, intended to rally conservatives in a fight against Islam. In a YouTube video posted before the shooting, Breivik stated, “We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe, hereby declare a pre-emptive war on all cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites of Western Europe.” Parry, supra note 97.
. Mark Lewis and Sarah Lyall, Norway Mass Killer Gets the Maximum: 21 Years, NYTimes.com (Aug. 24, 2012), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/world/europe/ anders-behring-breivik-murder-trial.html?pagewanted=all.
. Think Tough Gun Laws Keep Europeans Safe?, supra note 21.
. See generally Kopel, supra note 31, at 193-232; Ricardo N. Cordova, The Tree’s Acorns and the Gun’s Clips: The Battle Between Gun Control Advocates and the Constitutions of the United States, Ireland, and Australia, 13 Touro Int’l L. Rev 59 (2010).
. Cordova, supra note 104, at 59.
. Id. at 84.
. Kopel, supra note 31, at 194.
. Cordova, supra note 104, at 94-95 (noting that Australia currently ranks sixteenth in per capita gun rates at 15 per 100 persons and twenty-sixth in total number of firearms at 3.2 million).
. S. Chapman, P. Alpers, K. Agho & M. Jones, Australia’s 1996 Gun Law Reforms: Faster Falls in Firearm Deaths, Firearm Suicides, and a Decade Without Mass Shootings, 12 Inj. Prev. 365, 365 (2006).
. Chapman et al., supra note 113, at 366.
. Cordova, supra note 104, at 94.
. Claudine Kriss, 32 Die in Australian Gunman’s Killing Spree, USA Today, Apr. 29, 1996, at A1.
. Chapman et al., supra note 113, at 366
. Id. at 367.
. Id.; see also John J. Donahue, When Will America Wake Up to Gun Violence, CNN.com (July 21, 2012), http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/20/opinion/donohue-gun-control/index.html.
. Chapman et al., supra note 113, at 370.
. Cordova, supra note 104, at 90.
. U.S. Const. amend II.
. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 628 (2008); see also McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-37 (2010) (holding that the right to “keep and bear arms” is fundamental and applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment).
. See Cordova, supra note 104.
. Heller, 554 U.S. at 628.
. Id. at 627.
. Id. at 625 (the Heller majority does distinguish “short-barreled [sawed-off]” shotguns such as those at issue in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), as arms not of common use).
. Philip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig & Adam M. Samaha, Gun Control After Heller: Threats and Sideshows From a Social Welfare Perspective, 56 UCLA L. Rev. 1041, 1062 (2009) (stating that “machine guns, M-16’s, and sawed-off shotguns are not” considered as weapons of common use).
. Heller, 554 U.S. at 636.
. Id. at 627.
. Id. (‘‘The reason he was able to be tackled was he had to pause to reload . . . . [t]he problem is, he didn’t have to pause to reload until he’d already expended 30 rounds.’”); see also Nagourney & Steinhauer, supra note 85.
. Heller, 554 U.S. at 635; see also Ronald J. Hansen, Sides Are Still Entrenched Despite Tucson Shooting, AzCentral.com (Feb. 27, 2011), http://www.azcentral.com/ arizonarepublic/news/ articles/2011/02/27/20110227gabrielle-giffords-arizona-shooting-gun-debate.html (noting that a bill renewing a “ban on high-capacity magazines” has been introduced). It is unclear whether this bill, if enacted, would survive post-Heller constitutional analysis.
. Cook et al., supra note 133, at 1059-60 (recognizing that “handgun training, registration, and a trigger lock—except when and if self defense became necessary” are plausible firearm restrictions in the wake of Heller).
. A Brief History of the NRA, NRA.com, http://www.nra.org/Aboutus.aspx (last visited Apr. 8, 2011).
. National Rifle Association (NRA) Statistics. Statistic Brain http://www.statistic
brain.com/national-rifle-association-nra-statistics/ (last visited, Nov. 2, 2012).
. Henigan, supra note 89, at 1 (noting that Fortune magazine applied this title to the NRA in 2001).
. Hennigan, supra note 89, at 2 (noting that “[e]ven though the Brady Bill had public support consistently in the 85 to 90 percent range, it took seven years to become law”).
. National Rifle Assn: Totals, Opensecrets.org, http://www.opensecrets.org/ lobby/ clientsum.php?lname=National+Rifle+Assn (last visited Apr. 8, 2012).
. National Rifle Assn: Totals, Opensecrets.org, http://opensecrets.org/orgs/ totals.php? id=D000000082&cycle=2012 (last visited Apr. 8, 2012).
. Henigan, supra note 89, at 8.
. Jeanne Cummings, Why the Gun Lobby Usually Wins, Politico.com (Apr. 17, 2007), http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0407/3563.html.
. Henigan, supra note 89, at 8.
. Bijlefeld, supra note 4; see also Henigan, supra note 89, at 134 (noting that following the Columbine Shootings, the NRA “endorsed the policy of ‘no guns in America’s schools, period, with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel’”); Colorado Kills Gun Laws, CBSNews.com (Feb. 17, 2000), http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/02/16/columbine/main161459.shtml (noting that the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners lobby views the NRA as “too soft”); see generally NRAwol.com, http://nrawol.net/ (last visited, Apr. 9, 2011) (dedicating an entire website to “the NRA’s [d]isastrous [c]ompromises”).
. Gary Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America 9 (2009).
. Kopel, supra note 31, at 203.
. Cordova, supra note 104, at 86-87.
. Prithi Yelaja, Gun Control Losing Support in U.S. Despite Mass Shootings, CBCNews.ca (Jul 23, 2012), http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/07/23/gun-control-polls.html; Patrik Jonsson, Aftermath of Arizona Shooting: More Guns in More Hands? Christian Sci. Monitor, Jan. 13, 2011, available at 2011 WLNR 802968 (noting that increased federal gun control laws were unlikely to result from the Tucson shootings and that Arizona may further relax state gun laws). Moreover, many commenters have noted a general unwillingness among the nation’s leaders to meaningfully debate the issue of control in the wake of these incidents. David Espo and Nancy Benac, Calls for Gun Control Stir Little Support, SeattleTimes.com (July 21, 2012), http://seattletimes.com/html/ politics/2018740152_ apusgunpolitics.html; Linda Valdez, Opinion: We Have to Talk About Gun Control, AZCentral.com (July 31, 2012), http://www.azcentral.com/ members/Blog/Valdez/167764.
. Chapman et al., supra note 113, at 365.
. Cordova, supra note 104, at 94.
. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Firearms, 130 UNOdc.org, www.unodc.org/documents/ data-and-analysis/tocta/6.Firearms.pdf [hereinafter UN Doc] (last visited April 5, 2011).
. Population Distribution and Change: 2000 to 2010, http://2010.census.gov/2010
census/data/ (last visited Apr. 5, 2011) (noting that there are currently 308 million people in the United States).
. Cook et al., supra note 133, at 1046 (“In 1994, about 75 percent of all guns were owned by those who owned four or more, and this slice of gun owners amounted to only 10 percent of the adult population.”); see also Phillip A. Cook & Jens Ludwig, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms, Nat’l Inst. of Justice: Research in Brief, May 1997, at 1, 2 [hereinafter Guns in America] (“[T]he top 20 percent of firearm owners possessed 55 percent of privately owned firearms.”).
. A small data sample provides support for this assertion. In a 1992 Seattle, Washington gun buy-back program, “66 percent of participants retained ownership of firearms other than the gun(s) exchanged. One additional gun was owned by 15 percent of respondents, two additional guns by 12 percent; 10 people had more than 20 guns, and one person reported owning 42 additional guns.” Roughly 500 persons participated in the program. In other words, the more guns an individual possessed, the less likely he or she was to participate in the gun buy-back program. See Charles M. Callahan, Frederick P. Rivara & Thomas D. Koepsell, Money for Guns: Evaluation of the Seattle Gun Buy-Back Program, 109(4) Public Health Reports 472, 472-74 (1994).
. See Cook et al., supra note 133, at 1082 (“The available data about permit holders also imply that they are at a fairly low risk of misusing guns, consistent with the relatively low arrest rates observed to date for permit holders.”).
. Barack Obama, Op-Ed., We Must Seek Agreement on Gun Reforms, Arizona Daily Star (Mar. 13, 2011), http://azstarnet.com/article_011e7118-8951-5206-a878-39bfbc9dc89d.html (“The fact is, almost all gun owners in America are highly responsible. They’re our friends and neighbors. They buy their guns legally and use them safely, whether for hunting or target shooting, collection or protection. And that’s something that gun-safety advocates need to accept.”). But see Andre Mach, Man Drops Gun in Movie Theatre, Shooting Self in Buttocks, NBCNews.com (Aug. 15, 2012), http://usnews.
nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/15/13296949-man-drops-gun-in-movie-theater-shooting -self-in-buttocks?lite (reporting that “the gun fell from the man’s pocket as he was adjusting himself in the seat,” and that the man had “a valid permit to carry a concealed firearm”).
. Henigan, supra note 89, at 43 (“Virtually every gun illegally possessed or used in a criminal act was first made by a government-licensed gun manufacturer.”).
. See Crowder, supra note 27 (noting that weapons used in the Columbine shootings were initially purchased legally).
. See UN Doc, supra note 161.
. Steve Chapman, The Unconcealed Truth About Carrying Guns: What the Gun Control Lobby Doesn’t Want You to Know, Reason.com (Mar. 31, 2011), http://reason.com/archives/2011/03/31/the-unconcealed-truth-about-ca (“[T]he license [was] irrelevant—unless you assume that someone willing to break the laws against murder or rape would not be willing to break another law by packing a sidearm.”).
. See Cook & Ludwig, supra note 164, at 2.
. See Think Tough Gun Laws Keep Europeans Safe?, supra note 21.
. See supra notes 46-48 and accompanying text.
. See Think Tough Gun Laws Keep Europeans Safe?, supra note 21.
. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-3102 (2011) (allowing for the possession of concealed weapons without a permit); § 13-3112 (2011) (creating “shall issue” concealed and carry permits); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 4-229 (2011) (allowing for licensed individuals to possess concealed handguns in establishments serving alcohol); see also Arizona Gun Laws Among Most Lenient in U.S., NPR.com (Jan. 10, 2011), http://www.npr.org/2011/01/10/132801364/arizona-gun-laws-among-most-lenient-in-u-s.
. David Hemenway, Op Ed: Other Nations’ Restrictive Gun Laws Cut Down on Shooting Deaths, AzDailystar.com (Feb. 23, 2011), http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/ article_fbdcca11-0e03-545a-9f90-8d15edf354ab.html.
. More Guns, Less Crime, supra note 52, at 196.
. See Phillips, supra note 49, at 39 (“‘In the middle and high school shootings, however, the gunman has specific animosity and blame toward students and the school.’”).
. See discussion supra Part II.B.
. See James Alan Fox, Opinion: Gun Control or Carry Permits Won’t Stop Mass Murder, CNN.com (July 21, 2012), http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/20/opinion/fox-mass-murder/index.html (“Mass killers are determined, deliberate and dead-set on murder. They plan methodically to execute their victims, finding the means no matter what laws or other impediments the state attempts to place in their way.”)
. Simon Tisdall, Norway’s Gun Laws Prove Easy to Ignore, TheGuardian.co (July 24, 2011), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/24/norway-strict-gun-laws-circumvented. But see Editorial, Norway Massacres: National Tragedy, TheGuardian.co (July 24, 2011), http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/24/norway-massacres-national-tragedy (“Highly sophisticated weaponry of unprecedented lethality is available in Norway. Hunting with guns is much more common in Scandinavian countries than in Britain.”).
. See Owens, supra note 97; see also E.D. Cain, Less Restrictive Gun Control Laws Would Not Have Stopped the Oslo Massacre, Forbes.com (July 25, 2011), http://www.
. Mark Follman, More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?, MotherJones.com (Sep. 26, 2012), http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/mass-shootings-investigation?page=1.
. Ayres & Donahue, supra note 83, at 1214; Henigan, supra note 89, at 133.
. Ayers & Donahue, supra note 83, at 1214 (emphasis added).
. Id. at 134.
. See discussion supra Part III.
. Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27.
. Katherine L. Record & Lawrence O. Gostin, A Robust Individual Right to Bear Arms Versus The Public’s Health: The Court’s Reliance on Firearm Restrictions on the Mentally Ill, 6 Charleston L. Rev. 371, 372 (2012); see infra notes 202-204.
. Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27.
. See id.
. Steve Gorman, Gun Owners Support Wider Background Checks: Poll, Reuters.com (Jan. 19, 2011), http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/19/us-usa-shooting-survey-idUSTRE70I0QO20110119.
. Overview, National Instant Criminal Background Check System, http://www.fbi.
gov/about-us/cjis/nics/general-information/nics-overview (last visited, Apr. 20, 2011).
. The background check will return a “deny” sale message if the purchaser “has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;” “is under indictment for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;” “is a fugitive from justice;” “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance;” “has been adjudicated as a mental defective or . . . committed to a mental institution;” is “illegally or unlawfully in the United States;” “has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions,” “having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced [U.S.] citizenship;” “is subject to a court order that restrains [the] person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner . . . or child of such intimate partner;” or “has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)-(5)(A), (6)-(7), (8)(B), (9), (n) (2008).
. 18 U.S.C.A. § 922(t) (2008).
. 18 U.S.C.A. § 921(a)(21)(D) (2008) (emphasis added).
. Closing the Gun Show Loophole, MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org, http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/federal/gun_show.shtml#_edn2 (last visited Nov. 3, 2012) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(21)(D), (22) (2008)).
. 18 U.S.C.A. § 922(g)(4).
. See id.
. Trevor Hughes and Gary Strauss, Attorneys Say Colorado Shooting Suspect Is Mentally Ill, USAToday.com (Aug. 10, 2012), http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/ nation/story/2012-08-09/colorado-holmes-hearing/56923068/1.
. These are just a few of several potential characteristics discussed supra Part III.
. See Virginia A. Leary, The Right to Human Health in International Human Rights Law, Health and Human Rights, 24, 28-29 (1994).
. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 (III) A, U.N. Doc. A/RES/217(III) (Dec. 10, 1948).
. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. G.A. Res. 2200 (XXI) A, U.N. Doc. A/RES/2200(XXI) (Dec. 16, 1966).
. Aitken et al., supra note 10, at 264.
. Id. at 267.
. See discussion supra Part I.B.
. See supra notes 59-75 and accompanying text.
. See supra notes 49-51 and accompanying text.
. See supra note 74 and accompanying text.
. See discussion supra Part III.B.2.
. See Leary, supra note 216, at 26 (recognizing “that there have been few serious efforts by international organizations or scholars to consider the scope of the right to health”).
. Data compiled from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program by James Alan Fox and reprinted in Mass Shootings in the United States, 1976-2010, JSOnline.com (Aug. 12, 2012) http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/dataondemand/165757356.html.