One of the issues which has dogged gun-violence research has been the difficulty in retrieving valid data from any countries outside of a small grouping of the most advanced nation-states, a.k.a, the OECD.

For that reason, I was pleased to join John Lott in his attempt to measure mass shootings on a worldwide basis, particularly since I was not able to find the data allegedly collected by other scholars whose work on this issue has been circulating throughout the mass media, as well as within the gun violence prevention community, a.k.a., the GVP.

John and I have substantive disagreements about many issues which form the core of the gun-violence debate. But where we come together is on the absolute and unquestioned requirement that scholars should always be willing to share access to the data which they use to define and support their research. Either we debate and argue on the basis of facts or we don’t – it’s as simple as that.

Here is our op-ed in today’s New York Post.  The data can be accessed here.