Chapter 15 - The Sandy Hook Effect

Summary

After the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, my lecture agent Scott Wolfman, whose offices are located only eight miles from the site of the deadliest school shooting in history, contacted me to inquire if I would be willing to engage in a debate over gun control. He felt the need to do something – anything – to address the problem, and as gun violence was a subject I had done some research on, I undertook a thorough review of the social science literature and, in the process of preparing to debate the pro-gun advocate John Lott, penned this research article, first published in Skeptic for a special issue on gun violence. In brief, I concluded that while preventing highly improbable mass murders like that at Sandy Hook is impossible, there are some things we can do to decrease violence and reduce the carnage, which has only gotten worse since that tragic event.