Statistically, arming the public will cause more shooting deaths, not fewer

More shootings this week...and more talk about arming the public. The reason I doubt that that would ever work comes down to pure statistics--the numbers and odds of something happening. Keeping in mind how incredibly rare mass shootings are, let's see what would happen if we start inviting people to arm themselves--"just in case".

Scenario 1: Let's say one in five (20%) of all college students and professors carries a gun to class...along with some 20% of all high school and elementary school teachers and administrators. Of all the hundreds of thousands of schools across the country...and all the hundreds of millions of people who attend them, what do you think the chances are that a particular armed good guy would ever have the opportunity to use his or her weapon against a bad guy? Almost nil, I'd say--maybe one in 50 million? And, if there were, say, a 50% chance of him or her actually winning that confrontation, the chances go to perhaps one in 100 million of him or her successfully warding off an attacker. To me, given those odds, it would not be worth my time and effort to bother getting a gun, the training and the permits.

Now...Scenario 2: I would bet money that of the 20% who are eager for the chance to carry a gun to a classroom, many are people who either have some sort of bad-ass attitude or a dose of paranoia, or both.   So, given the likelihood of those groups of armed good guys containing a few deranged morons, what do you suppose the odds would be of some student or teacher with an ax to grind or some personal or mental issues, going off the deep end and becoming the bad guy (the attacker)? Way higher, I'd say, than the Scenario 1 figures of 100 million to one.

So...bottom line: If I were in one of those classrooms, I would be much more worried about one of my fellow classmates packing heat and then going berserk than I would about some intruder storming in with guns blazing. Having classrooms full of armed people would make the chance of one of them CAUSING mass shooting deaths a lot greater than the chance of one of them ever PREVENTING mass shooting deaths.

(I know, it sounds like a convoluted argument. Sorry. But ponder it over and over, and see if it doesn't start to make sense).