Multiple victim Public Shootings at alternative definitions requiring greater number of deaths and Tables 1 and 2 present data on multiple shootings for the United states as a whole. and for states with and without shall issue laws We find that states without shall issue laws had more deaths and injuries from multiple shootings per year(both in absolute numbers and on a per capita basis) during the 1977 to 1995 period Note also that the number of states without shall issue laws declined from 43 to 29 and the percentage of the U.S. population in these states fell from 91.5 to 68 percent in this period. Yet states without shall issue laws still account for the overwhelming majority(often over 90 percent) of deaths and injuries. The different rates of shootings, murders, or injuries are very consistent over time and do not arise from a few unusual years Tables 3 and 4 look more closely at the 14 states that adopted shall issue laws between 1977 and 1995.15(No state has ever repealed this law. Table 3 shows a sharp drop in multiple murders and injuries per 100,000 persons after the passage of a shall issue law Murders fell by 89 percent and injuries by 82 percent. Table 4 indicates that this drop occurred largely during the first full yean. the a state enacted its law (year"" in the first column). Overall, the decline is so large that we observe zero multiple killings in three of the eight years after the passage of a law, an event that did not occur 15 The fourteen states that enacted"shall issue"or"right-to-carry"laws in th 1977 to 1995 period (dates in parentheses)are as follows: Alaska (1994 Arizona (1994), Florida(1987), Georgia(1989), Idaho(1990), Maine (1985). Tennessee(1994), Virginia (1988), West Virginia (1989), and Wyoming (1994). The following eight states had"shall issue"laws over the entire period Alabama, Connecticut, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Washington. Data on states having laws prior to 1993 are from Clayton E. Cramer and David B Kopel, Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, 62 Tennessee Law Review, 679(1995) We used a Nexis search to determine the state and date for states passing laws between 1993 and 1995. These two sources were also used in Lott and mustard (1997). Because of objections raised to the dates for"shall issue" laws in Maine and Virginia(see the discussion in Lott and Mustard), the regression analysis presented in part III examines the sensitivity of our findings to alternative dates for Maine and Virginia.9 Multiple Victim Public Shootings at alternative definitions requiring greater number of deaths and injuries. Tables 1 and 2 present data on multiple shootings for the United States as a whole, and for states with and without shall issue laws. We find that states without shall issue laws had more deaths and injuries from multiple shootings per year (both in absolute numbers and on a per capita basis) during the 1977 to 1995 period. Note also that the number of states without shall issue laws declined from 43 to 29 and the percentage of the U.S. population in these states fell from 91.5 to 68 percent in this period. Yet states without shall issue laws still account for the overwhelming majority (often over 90 percent) of deaths and injuries. The different rates of shootings, murders, or injuries are very consistent over time and do not arise from a few unusual years. Tables 3 and 4 look more closely at the 14 states that adopted shall issue laws between 1977 and 1995.15 (No state has ever repealed this law.) Table 3 shows a sharp drop in multiple murders and injuries per 100,000 persons after the passage of a shall issue law. Murders fell by 89 percent and injuries by 82 percent. Table 4 indicates that this drop occurred largely during the first full year after a state enacted its law (year “1” in the first column). Overall, the decline is so large that we observe zero multiple killings in three of the eight years after the passage of a law, an event that did not occur 15 The fourteen states that enacted “shall issue” or “right-to-carry” laws in the 1977 to 1995 period (dates in parentheses) are as follows: Alaska (1994), Arizona (1994), Florida (1987), Georgia (1989), Idaho (1990), Maine (1985), Mississippi (1990), Montana (1991), Oregon (1990), Pennsylvania (1989), Tennessee (1994), Virginia (1988), West Virginia (1989), and Wyoming (1994). The following eight states had “shall issue” laws over the entire period: Alabama, Connecticut, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Washington. Data on states having laws prior to 1993 are from Clayton E. Cramer and David B. Kopel, Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, 62 Tennessee Law Review, 679 (1995). We used a Nexis search to determine the state and date for states passing laws between 1993 and 1995. These two sources were also used in Lott and Mustard (1997). Because of objections raised to the dates for “shall issue” laws in Maine and Virginia (see the discussion in Lott and Mustard), the regression analysis presented in part III examines the sensitivity of our findings to alternative dates for Maine and Virginia