Despite mass shootings being on the decline in 2025 (and the last couple of years), CBS Evening News Plus (on the network’s streaming service), dedicated an interview segment to pushing for the return of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. They highlighted a study from Northwestern University that claimed that if the ban was still in place, then it would see “a significant reduction in mass shootings,” but the segment never actually addressed how many we were talking about.
“For a decade, there was a ban on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, like those used in the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday,” announced CBS anchor John Dickerson. “Minneapolis` mayor today called for the ban, which expired in 2004, to be renewed. A study published last fall looked at the ban`s effectiveness.”
Dickerson spoke with Lori Ann Post, who was the director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University and was one of the eight co-authors of the study.
Post made several allusions to their study with comments such as “significant reduction in mass shootings,” “significant difference,” and that mass shootings were thwarted altogether, but she never actually told the viewers what that those numbers actually were (Click “expand”)
POST: Well, thank you for having me, first of all. Basically, we found that during the imposition of the federal assault weapons ban that there was a significant reduction in mass shootings, and that went from September of 1994 through September of 2004.
DICKERSON: And walk me through the study. What -- what accounted for that finding? How did you -- how did that conclusion -- how was that conclusion reached?
POST: Basically, we just do a natural experiment where we look at what -- you know, basically what was the impact on the number of mass shootings. We looked at also the lethality, the number of injuries. And we found that it`s intuitive that if you have assault weapons with high-capacity magazines, that you can shoot many more rounds, you know, per minute.
And so we found that shooters were shooting -- when they -- when they didn`t have access to assault weapons, far fewer people were killed in mass shootings. And far fewer people were injured during mass shootings. And so we looked at before, during, and after. And then we found significant difference.
DICKERSON: So, if I -- I think I hear you, you`re saying that it`s both the number of fatalities, but also the actual number of shootings. Is that -- is that right?
POST: That is correct. But we also found something else really interesting, and that is that it actually stopped some mass shooters from committing mass shootings because the number of mass shootings themselves stopped. So, there`s something about assault weapons that emboldens mass shooters to commit a mass shooting.
What they failed to mention during their praise for the FAWB, was the fact that it really didn’t put an end to mass shootings. The arguably most infamous school shooting happened in the midst of the ban: the 1999 Columbine school shooting. The massacre was significant not only because of its timing during the ban, but it’s often cited as the start of the modern school shooting trend since many school shooters want their actions to generate more media attention and thus become more infamous.
Since Post didn’t want to mention the numbers on-air and Dickerson didn’t pry for them, NewsBusters sought them out.
According to Northwestern’s webpage for the study, the FAWB would have stopped 38 of the 184 “public mass shootings” that occurred between 1966 and 2022. Notice that those so-called assault weapons only made up a fraction of all mass shootings. The study also admitted that “there was no difference in trends when it came to mass shootings where the perpetrator didn’t bring an assault weapon[.]”
Despite Post’s insistence that mass shootings were avoided because of the ban, the study didn’t appear to address the obvious notion that, when met with the inability to get an assault weapon, the would-be shooter would just use a different weapon not covered by the ban; which, by their own numbers, was the vast majority of mass shootings.
One of Post’s co-authors on the study, Northeastern University Criminology professor James Alan Fox had a less alarmist approach to mass shootings.
In a May 26 interview with The Reload’s Stephen Gutowski, Fox noted that there was a fairly major decline in the number of mass shootings in 2025; in complete contrast to the media narrative that there’s an “epidemic of mass shootings”:
But what we saw in 2024 over 2023 was a 24 percent decline in mass shootings. And this year, compared to last year at the same point in time, another big drop, mass shootings of four or people injured or killed are down this year by a third. And mass killings by gunfire, which this time last year were 11, now they're down to four.
“But it's still good news and no one knows about it because it has not been reported,” he lamented.
Speaking on the public’s misperception of mass shootings and the media’s attention, Fox noted that “45 percent of mass killings and mass shootings are within the family in a private residence. Those don't scare people because they say, ‘well, that's not my family.’ And they don't tend to get the same level of publicity either, but they're just as dead.”
Fox also took issue with how the media had drummed up undue concern about the likelihood of a school shooting:
The FBI active shooter database, the average number of active shooters in a school is two-a-year. And that's out of 130,000 schools. And by the average number of students who were killed in school a year is five … but the average is 5. And that's out of 50 million school children, which basically is the likelihood that your students gonna get killed in school by an armed assailant is 1 in 10 million. Now again, I don't want to minimize and one is one too many, but compare it to the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of school-age children who, who drowned in pools every year. What we really need is more lifeguards at pools, maybe not armed guards at schools.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
CBS Evening News Plus
August 28, 2025
7:18:50 p.m. EasternJOHN DICKERSON: For a decade, there was a ban on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, like those used in the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday. Minneapolis` mayor today called for the ban, which expired in 2004, to be renewed. A study published last fall looked at the ban`s effectiveness.
So, for tonight`s interview, we are joined by Lori Ann Post, Director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern and a co-author of that report.
Professor, thank you for joining us. What does your study tell us about so- called assault weapon bans and the impact they would have on mass shootings?
LORI ANN POST (Director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern): Well, thank you for having me, first of all. Basically, we found that during the imposition of the federal assault weapons ban that there was a significant reduction in mass shootings, and that went from September of 1994 through September of 2004.
DICKERSON: And walk me through the study. What -- what accounted for that finding? How did you -- how did that conclusion -- how was that conclusion reached?
POST: Basically, we just do a natural experiment where we look at what -- you know, basically what was the impact on the number of mass shootings. We looked at also the lethality, the number of injuries. And we found that it`s intuitive that if you have assault weapons with high-capacity magazines, that you can shoot many more rounds, you know, per minute.
And so we found that shooters were shooting -- when they -- when they didn`t have access to assault weapons, far fewer people were killed in mass shootings. And far fewer people were injured during mass shootings. And so we looked at before, during, and after. And then we found significant difference.
DICKERSON: So, if I -- I think I hear you, you`re saying that it`s both the number of fatalities, but also the actual number of shootings. Is that -- is that right?
POST: That is correct. But we also found something else really interesting, and that is that it actually stopped some mass shooters from committing mass shootings because the number of mass shootings themselves stopped. So, there`s something about assault weapons that emboldens mass shooters to commit a mass shooting.
DICKERSON: And is it possible to know the mechanics of how a piece of legislation like that one actually play out? In other words, what friction they put in the system that -- that causes fewer incidents?
POST: Just hard to obtain. I mean, now it`s -- you know, more difficult to say what would be the impact of a federal assault weapons ban if another one were put into place because so many weapons have been sold. In 1994, not that many people had them.
But anyways, just having them dry up or disappear or access to them became very difficult. And so somebody who would plan a new, you know, mass shooting wouldn`t have a way or means to do so. So, prohibiting that was, you know, very effective at stopping mass shootings and then lowering the lethality.
DICKERSON: Is there -- is there anything that can be learned or that you learned about the psychology, the psychological role that some of these weapons play in the sort of fantasy that these shooters engage in?
POST: Yeah, well, first of all, let me start off with I`m not a psychologist. However, we do look at, you know, many mass shooters, what they wrote about, what they would post on social media. And there are many mass shooters that like to dress up commando style. It`s almost like putting on a costume and needing an assault rifle to do that and posing with it, taking pictures of it, posting signs or social media postings on how they would use those guns.
DICKERSON: And are you working on anything at the moment on this -- in this area?
POST: Yeah, I am. I`m working currently on a study about mass shooter typologies because we can`t predict from past mass shootings about who future mass shooters might be, but we can look and identify what typologies are.
DICKERSON: All right, Professor Lori Ann Post, thank you so much for being with us.
POST: Thank you.