I will not ask Congress to get involved, since their idea of involvement is to pretend they’re experts, then when they can’t “solve” it, throwing money at an issue.

I also disagree that the most horrific types of violent deaths are mall/school/whatever shootings. More horrific, to me, are auto accidents, poisonings, stabbings, and other deaths that are either prolonged or against which one has no real recourse. You see, I carry a gun. Should a mass shooting start, I have a reasonable chance of stopping it (accounting for proximity, angle, line of sight, distance, and crowd conditions, for example). I don’t carry a gun to shoot someone, but I do carry a gun to keep someone from shooting me — or someone else, if possible.

But back to your point. The statistics you seek seem to be one set of data, in one way. To meet NVDRS’ goal of correlating disparate facts would require massive amounts of analysis, with a set of conclusions that has at least an equal chance of describing only symptoms as it does pointing to any causes.

I’m not convinced, either, of the impartiality of this system. Bringing the Joyce Foundation in, given that foundation’s strong anti-gun stance, lessens credibility. A quick skim through the coding manual shows many instances of prejudicial language, lessening credibility.

Finally, a federal system to measure the instances, separate from the FBI’s NIBRS, simply to get more (not necessarily more relevant, just more) data, seems too close to a nanny state for my tastes.