The past three months have seen mass shootings of schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas, and July Fourth celebrants in Highland Park, Illinois. Cries for greater gun control to stop such avoidable, premature deaths grow after each event. President Joe Biden recently signed a gun control measure into law, but overall, little substantive change has occurred and is unlikely to occur anytime soon.
Politicians have had their chance. Let someone else take the wheel — namely, the medical community.
I’m a data scientist, and data informs much of my thinking and decisions. A few years ago, I studied trends in mass killings in the United States and found them to be remarkably steady, around 30 events per year, defined as four or more people killed unrelated to the assailant. They also follow a pattern that makes them difficult to predict.
