I wasn’t going to write about this but I was trying to understand citations and what was going on.
The footnote is:
Kleck Rebuttal Report, ¶¶7,11 and Deposition of Gary Kleck in Oregon Firearms Federation, Inc., et al., v. Brown, et al., taken on January 25, 2023, 20:22-21:3.
— Supplemental Sur-Rebuttal Expert Report of Lucy P. Allen in Support of Defendant
What do the “¶¶” mean? I know that “¶” means paragraph. Found out it means “paragraphs”. Since I miss read the footnote I read that Lucy was linking to paragraphs 7 through 46. That is the entire rebuttal. What was she actually referring to?
Here is the paragraph that had me scratching my head:
Dr. Kleck criticizes the focus of the Allen Report because he claims that the number and impact of public mass shootings in the Allen Report is “trivially tiny” and that the “legislative intent” behind California’s weapons bans is unrelated to these public mass shootings. 6 First, contrary to Dr. Kleck’s assertion, it is my understanding that California passed its first assault weapon ban, the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989, in response to a public mass shooting – the public mass shooting in Stockton, CA. Second, Dr. Kleck’s claim that public mass shootings are “trivially tiny” is based on his claim that “less than 1% of all U.S. murder victims are killed in any kind of mass shooting,” and that public mass shootings are “even tinier.” Dr. Kleck’s implication that the only impact of mass shootings is based on the number of victims killed is misguided. To claim, for example, that the only impact in the Newtown, CT mass shooting was on the 27 children and adults killed ignores the greater impact that mass shootings have had on American society. For example, according to the Department of Education, 98% of public schools in the U.S. now have drills and procedures regarding active shooters. Moreover, the very source cited by Dr. Kleck to support his claim that the list of mass shootings in the Allen Report is “trivially tiny” also states that “[m]ass shootings are arguably one of the worst manifestations of gun violence” and that “the national dialogue on gun violence has been focused on mass public shootings.”
— Id. ¶ 8
Hmmm, that sounds pretty bad trivially tiny
, we’ll come back to that.
She then goes on to move the goalposts. When we talk about the victims of a shooting, we are always talking about those that were shot or injured at the event. More limiting than that is that we normally exclude those that were injured or shot by friendlies.
This will get twisted a bit by different number crunchers, for example when they include the shoot in the list of victims because he was shot dead by a good guy with a gun, but in general we talk about those that were shot by the shooter, not those shot by the cops.
Lucy wants to use the impact
of the mass shooting
rather than victims. The impact
of the cowards of Uvalidi is huge. It reverberated throughout the world. Children were murdered by some asshole while law enforcement cowarded in the hallways.
It had a huge impact, no doubt about it.
Let’s turn to what Dr. Kleck actually said though before we judge him to harshly for downplaying such horrific incidents.
Allen claims that there is substantial benefit to banning LCMs because a large share of mass shooting involve the use of LCMs (defined herein as magazines holding more than 10 rounds). She is only able to sustain this claim by limiting her analysis to a trivially tiny and unrepresentative subset of mass shootings,
public mass shootings. She claims she did this because “it is my understanding that the state of California is concerned about public mass shootings and enacted the challenged laws, in part, to address the problem of public mass shootings” (p. 4). Her “understanding” is both subjective and unsupported by any evidence pertaining to legislative intent behind enactment of California’s ban on LCMs and assault weapons (AWs). Indeed, defense expert Louis Klarevas’ description of California’s legislative intent (Klarevas 2023, p. 23) indicates that concern about mass shootings was
not limited to those occurring in public places. The fact that the State of California is concerned about public mass shootings does not mean it is
not concerned with all the other shootings that do not fall into this narrow category. Further, Allen’s own statement concedes that California’s assault weapons ban (AWB) was enacted only “in part” to address these kinds of shootings and thus must have also been based on concerns about other kinds of gun violence. Thus, her proffered explanation does not justify her narrow focus. It will be shown later that the narrowness of her focus produces some highly misleading results.
—
Kleck Rebuttal Report – ¶7Dr. Kleck isn’t claiming that mass shootings are trivial in anyway. He is stating that Lucy limited her analysis to public mass shootings for some reason. And that the number of public mass shootings compared to all mass shootings is a trivial number.
Dr. Kleck is using language in a very studious and specific manner. He has pulled emotion out of it. He is telling the court what the numbers are and then giving his opinion of what those numbers mean.
Lucy uses the standard 2 and 3 word quote trick. Pulling such small quotes out of context that you can’t tell what the actual meaning was.
And interesting find.
