Fewer mass shootings occur in states with more background checks: report

Alan Yuhas
Thursday 12 November 2015 18.46 GMT

States with background checks for all handgun sales had 52% fewer mass shootings as states with more lax rules, according to a report by reform advocates who examined more than six years of data.

Researchers for Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that supports gun control checks, also found that between January 2009 and 15 July those states that checked for a criminal history in buyers had 64% fewer mass shootings related to domestic violence.

More than one in three of the gunmen in mass shootings had a history of felonies, domestic violence or mental illness that should have prohibited them from owning a gun, according to the gun control group.

The researchers relied on the FBI’s definition of a mass shooting – an incident in which at least four people are murdered by a gun – and found 133 such shootings in the six years and seven months of the analysis. They also controlled for population differences between states when accounting for percentages.

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